Vladimir Oane's Key Ideas from Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha experiences the bliss of Enlightenment early in life, but this is not the end of the book. Through the process he decided:

"I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha."

He will live like there is no tomorrow, experience extreme pleasure, find true suffering, repent, get enlightened again and so on. 

“Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”

Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. When put into words it usually sounds like cliches or inspirational bs.

Monks and holy people keep searching all their life. Siddhartha stopped searching:

"When someone is searching, 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. Striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are directly in front of your eyes."

At the end Siddhartha stopped searching, and began to truly listen — and his innate wisdom flowers: “It was nothing more than a readiness of the soul, a mysterious knack: the ability at every moment in the midst of life to think the thought of unity, to feel and breathe unity.”

He understood one of Zen's most valuable lessons, that life has to be experienced, not understood.