A short excerpt from a YouTube interview in which Chris Collins reads and reflects on a passage from Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha about the river as a metaphor for life. The passage emphasizes that the world is perfect in every moment and that permanence and change coexist (the river is always the same and always new); the speakers discuss related ideas using the ‘stone’ image (the stone as self) and the interplay of movement, acceptance, and self-improvement.
Chapters
This time on books that changed my life. So this is the. The one part about the river. He says. But all of the secrets of the river. He today only saw one. This one touched his soul. He saw this water ran and ran incessantly. It ran and was nevertheless always there. Was always and at all times the same and yet new in every moment. Great is he who could grasp this and understand it.
I think that maybe this next part explains that part in a sense. But you tell me what. What you think. The world, my friend, is not imperfect or on a slow path towards perfection. No, it is perfect in every moment. All sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself. All small children already have the old person inside themselves. All infants already have death. All dying people the eternal life. Is that the river?
Exactly. Yes. Yes. He keeps the stone.
He says, I love the stone. Because this stone can be me, can be you. And also the stone goes into the river.
And stay over there. Nothing can.
Move that stone. Because that's stone's nature and river. We are like river. We go. Everything happened to us. Bad thing, good thing again comes to us. You know what? I can't explain it.
What is in my mind, what I feel. But I'm trying to. To fix myself. To be.
