Siddhartha.

Eighteen days on the Colorado River, through 226 miles of the Grand Canyon, and my study during that time was Hermann Hesse’s allegory of one man’s search for truth and meaning—wisdom.

Early on in the story Siddhartha encounters Gotama, the illustrious Buddha, and revels in his radiance. “Not for one moment did I doubt,” he tells Gotama, “that you were the Buddha, that you have reached the highest goal which so many Brahmins and Brahmins’ sons are striving to reach.”

I have never seen a man look and smile, sit and walk like that. I also would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A man only looks like that when he has conquered his Self.

And Siddhartha tells Gotama that he will not become his student, his follower. “There is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the Illustrious One himself experienced.”

Wisdom can only be learned, acquired. It cannot be taught.

And most certainly cannot be given.