ABSTRACT
As he stands on the banks of the river seeing his own reflection in the water, Hermann Hesse’s character Siddhartha is reminded of something he had forgotten; the person he once was. He has been searching for truth from great teachers, from worldly pleasures and riches, from family relationships and from an old ferryman. The river flows and laughs at him as he sees within it that answers do not lie in any of the places he has searched and that wisdom grows only by coming face to face with oneself (Hesse 1973). This is a powerful metaphor for academic research today. For while academic research is a systematic process for understanding aspects of our experience, we too have found that truth is problematic. We too have found we have to look elsewhere to develop wisdom, including within ourselves.
