Siddhartha and the Gorilla

I was talking to two of my teenage son's the other day and they asked me what I actually believe. My answer, "Not much."  I went on to try to explain why that's a good thing but I felt my answer fell short.  The point I tried to make wasn't coming across.  There are plenty of people who don't have beliefs because they haven't bothered thinking about them.  That's not my case but the words needed to explain that to my sons were failing me that day. 

Thankfully, help was on the way.  I read  Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha many years ago and recently got an audio copy to listen to on my commute to work. Brilliant book. I listened to the whole thing twice and the last CD four times.

More on Siddhartha in a little bit.  First, I would like you to watch the short video and try to do what it says.  It's pretty simple.  You just have to count how many times the team in white passes the ball. See if you can get it right.

Did you get the right number?  And are you one of the fifty percent the missed the gorilla?

Now back to Siddhartha.  The following is an expert from it towards the end of the book where Siddhartha is talking to a long lost friend, Govinda.

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"It's true, I'm old," spoke Govinda, "but I haven't stopped searching. Never I'll stop searching, this seems to be my destiny. You too, so it seems to me, have been searching. Would you like to tell me something, oh honourable one?"

Quoth Siddhartha: "What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?" 

"How come?" asked Govinda.

 "When someone is searching," said Siddhartha, "then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal. Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal. You, oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a searcher, because, striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are directly in front of your eyes."

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I think Hermann Hesse summed up the gorilla experiment perfectly.  

If a person is looking for something they can miss the beauty right in front of them.  If someone has a static and ridged belief system the truth can be held in the book they are reading or the person they are talking to but they will miss it if ideas and concepts don't fit what they are seeking.  

Our beliefs are the container in which our truth is held.  The shape of our beliefs and the size of our beliefs limits or filters truth. We cannot escape that but be can change the shape and size of the container to accommodate a greater Truth.

Recently I heard an old saying twice within a few days.  I hadn't heard it in a long time but as I was getting ready to write this blog the saying conveniently made itself available for me.   "If you're a hammer every problem is a nail."  The meaning is clear.  It's saying you need to open yourself up to look at problems in more than one way.  We're lucky to have a tool box full of extraordinary tools to solve problems and to deepen our understand of the mysteries of life.  These tools have many names, Christianity,  Hinduism, Buddhism,  Republican, Democrat, Atheist, spirituality, skeptic, Socialist, Communist,  naturalist, environmentalist, and on and on.   None of these tools can answer all questions and solve all problems alone.  If a person picks one as their hammer everything is a nail.  If someone seeks the truth solely through one belief system they miss the Truth.  Finding Truth can only be done with a full toolbox.

We have seekers and we have explorers.  Explores set out to find what there is to find but seekers have their eyes set on a target and everything else is irrelevant or an obstacle.  So now I can tell my sons I am an explorer and I don't want my beliefs to stop me from finding.