Siddhartha

I've read Siddhartha before and still the idea that i found most interesting was his ideas about his teachers. I like the idea that he didn't expect to be able to learn how to find true peace from another human. I think the best learning we do is on our own. The knowledge we discover ourselves seems to be the most important knowledge we learn. Siddhartha had many teachers and learned a lot from those teachers but he knew that there would always be something lost in translation from their thoughts and feelings to the words they use to express it. This is why the best lessons we learn cannot be expressed in words but have to be learned individually by experience. What we learn from others is very important in life and gives us the basis and tools to go out on our own and learn on a higher level, but we can't expect to have this level of learning from a teacher, especially from just one teacher.
I also like how he had to experience things that he knew to be wrong in order to discover the truth about the world. Without opening yourself up to new ideas and concepts that others know and experience, it is impossible to truly know the whole world. In order for anything to exist it must have an opposite and I think this shows up in Siddhartha, to truly complete himself he needed to experience what he had not been. This is the part of pilgrimage right before the metaphorical death when the person is reborn and appreciates and knows their old life in a new light.