In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the river bank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and the fig tree, Siddartha, the handsome Brahmin’s son, grew up with his friend Govinda.
I was in my favourite used book store last week (thousands of kms and decades back in time from where I find myself now), and browsing the spinner of the kind of cheap pocket paperbacks that I used to buy in my early twenties, this worn copy of Siddartha spoke to me: as just exactly the kind of thing I would have bought back then. Although I’ve never read Herman Hesse before, I always expected to, and if nothing else, this was an interesting entry into his work. Taken at face value — a young seeker, Siddartha, goes in search of teachers and experiences in order to understand the world; a quest that will take his entire, long life — I didn’t find this to be particularly deep or engaging. But taken in the context of Hesse’s experience — as a seeker himself who had fled an evangelical seminary in his youth to become an autodidact and influential author — I found this to be a more interesting commentary on early twentieth century spiritual thought than whatever exploration of Buddhist beliefs it may have been marketed as at the time. I didn’t love this for what I found on the page (although I can see how it might have blown European minds in its day), but I found a lot of value in what it says about the author and I am very interested in reading more from Hesse and seeing how this fits into his entire oeuvre.
In the evening, after the hour of contemplation, Siddartha said to Govinda: “Tomorrow morning, my friend, Siddartha is going to join the Samanas. He is going to become a Samana.”
Govinda blanched as he heard these words and read the decision in his friend’s determined face, undeviating as the released arrow from the bow. Govinda realized from the first glance at his friend’s face that now it was beginning. Siddartha was going his own way, his destiny was beginning to unfold itself, and with his destiny, his own. And he became as pale as a dried banana skin.
Long story short: Siddartha was raised a wealthy Brahmin and educated in the traditions of sacrifices and ablutions, but as a young man, he encountered a group of Samanas (poor wandering ascetics) and decided to join them. He eventually meets the Buddha himself, and while his friend Govinda will join the Illustrious One, Siddartha decides that what he needs are more experiences in his life; realising that wisdom cannot be taught, only self-discovered. Siddartha becomes rich — revelling in the pleasures of the flesh and wine and dice — but will one day awaken heartsick and nauseated by this life. He eventually settles down with a poor ferryman who had once been kind to him, and taking his cue from this uneducated but holy man, he will gain wisdom from the voice of the nearby river. In one last chance meeting between Siddartha and Govinda when they are old men, he explains:
Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, into illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real. Time is not real, Govinda. I have realized this repeatedly. And if time is not real, then the dividing line that seems to lie between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, good and evil, is also an illusion.
Reading this, I was put in mind of The Alchemist — another book that didn’t really resonate with me despite its popularity — and I had to remind myself that Siddartha came first (by some sixty-five years) and was no doubt ground-breaking in its day (even if today we’d find it inauthentic or problematic to learn of Indian philosophy from a German man). Still, I’m glad to have read this and am looking forward to discovering what it ultimately reveals about Hesse; it fits perfectly within my own life's quest for wisdom and meaning.
