Siddhartha

So far, I have loved everything I've read by Hermann Hesse, and I'm excited to dig into the rest of his works.

This was a book that felt like it should be cliche, but somehow wasn't? There's just a consistent authenticity present that just makes it feel so... human?

The lessons and ideals expressed seem like they could be very shallow, but the more you think about them, the more depth is revealed. This feels like the type of book you could read 10 times, and take away something differently every time you read it depending on what stage of life you are in. I do think a lot of the philosophy was lost on me, due to not being read at the right time in life.

That being said, the discussions about the river were amazing, and very profound. I show more loved that whole section: the lesson that a river is simultaneously the small stream at it's source, as well as the large body of water, ending, and returning the water to the ocean and not one or the other. Similarly, a person is not removed from their past, their source, nor defined by their future, but it is a part of them. To accept that is the only way to truly exist in the present, and live, and grow. Time does not exist. (sidenote: this greatly reminded me of Slaughterhouse Five, one of my favorite books of all time). show less

I really loved this one. It's especially illuminating if you have some understanding of Vedic religion and how that fed developments in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, though that's not essential. Set on the Gangetic Plain about 2600 years ago, it's about one man's search for enlightenment. This man, Siddhartha, son of a Brahmin, even in the presence of Gautama Buddha himself, is unable to find a way if it depends on the teachings of others. There is, Siddhartha comes to believe, no single illuminated path for all men and women to follow. We must each of us make our own mistakes. We must all suffer, and no warning against it will ever help us. For to live some kind of bizarre life of comfort that prevents suffering also prevents our show more finding peace. The writing style is very honed down, lean, without abstruse digressions. It fulfills for me that fundamental need that all good fiction must meet: it reveals a completely imagined world. And isn't that what we really require from fiction: that it take us out of ourselves? That it, to paraphrase John Gardner, perpetuate the dream? Highly recommended. I much prefer it to Steppenwolf. Up next Journey to the East and The Glass Bead Game. show less

Earlier this summer I read Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist' and wondered to myself, 'Why am I not having to think right now?' I read the whole book, trying to think about thinking about it, and I was continually blocked. Perhaps, I concluded, there isn't as much to think about here as there is supposed to be.

'Siddhartha,' on the other hand, is a book that demands that you think whilst reading it. It doesn't give you any real answers, but instead lets you think of your own. It is instructive, it is difficult in places, it is irksome, it is enlightening. It isn't always wonderful, and some of the writing is heavy-handed by today's standards. Hesse's is a style often copied or imitated, though not usually to any degree of success.

If you want show more a spiritually compelling book, read this, not 'The Alchemist.' Or, better yet, take a weekend and read both, and compare - I wonder if you'll come to the same conclusions that I did. show less

This might have influenced me when I was younger, as it has many others. While Hesse is again exploring his theme of the intellectual's place in society, this famous novel of course is also strongly centered on Eastern religion. But it follows a character arc I never saw coming. The opening chapters lulled me with their expected tone, filled with contemplative and indulgent overlapping sentences. I had falsely assumed this was a fictionalized biography of the Buddha, but in an early chapter Siddhartha actually meets the Buddha (Gotama), and from that point on I had no idea where this was going.

Siddhartha steps away from the Buddha's teaching - from all teaching - in the belief that he cannot find true peace of soul through following show more anyone else's path, only through pursuing his own to self-discovery. He begins to indulge in the world, to experiment with the senses, beginning with sexual pleasure and then proceeding to capitalism and riches. This proves to be a dead end that I felt was an unfair analysis, but Siddhartha has more stones to turn over before his journey is complete and these bring missing shades of meaning to his experience. The lesson about fathers allowing sons to make their own errors and follow their own paths was well portrayed. There are many paths up the spiritual mountain and all may arrive at inner peace. We must allow for this in witnessing the journeys of others, and in looking back on our own. show less

I was always curious as to why I was named so - my mother tells me that my father started reading this book two to three months before I was born. He finished it a week before my birth - and it made such an impression that I was named Siddhartha after the book's central character. This book, for this reason, has a permanent place in our bookshelf. I picked it up on a whim, and was absolutely blown away. This book is truly timeless - Hesse expresses simple and pure ideas with magnificent elegance.

In Buddhist mythology, Siddhartha Gautama is a man who realises that the world is meaningless, if lived either fully in desire or asceticism - after achieving enlightenment, he becomes the Buddha, and spreads the concept of a 'middle path'. show more Hesse takes this concept even further, and separates Siddhartha and Gautama - in his work, Siddhartha is the son of a Brahmin who longs to rise above his mortal shell, and Gautama (stylized as Goutama) is the Buddha, who has already achieved enlightenment by the time Siddhartha steps to find out meaning in his life.

The journey of Siddhartha never stops - whether sinning, repenting or at peace with himself, Siddhartha never ceases to be static. And yet he would not trade these experiences for anything in the world - because they are what has moulded him. Learning that money, love, cowardice and avarice exist - and learning to experience them, while rising above them, is what Siddhartha learns through the course of the novel.

In a sense, Siddhartha is the ultimate existentialist. He loves everyone and everything, warts and all, simply because they are - thus freeing himself from both human and material attachments, and achieving enlightenment. He can be easily dismissed as something to be read about, absorbed and dismissed, because of his philosophy's seeming naïveté.

However, the central theme of Siddhartha is not the protagonist's teachings per se, but his unwavering belief that introspection and self-taught lessons are always better than what a teacher may impart, because secondhand knowledge can be dangerous. And that is a belief that is as valid in a utopia, as it is in ours. This, and other such concepts scattered around the work, makes the book stay with you long after you've read it. show less

Forty-odd years ago, when everyone else my age was reading and quoting Hesse at each other (and me, dammit) interminably, I kind of missed out: I had perhaps three tries at The Glass Bead Game, but never got beyond about page 50. The turn of the year from 2009 to 2010 inspired me to redress this lack in my literary education, so I doughtily pulled from the shelf Siddhartha, purchased somewhere a few years back and having the considerable merit of being shorter than his other books.

Oh, my, what a treat I have been missing all these years.

Telling the tale of a religious seeker who meets but does not become a disciple of the Buddha, instead wending his own merry way through thickets of cod philosophy, this reads like the sort of book show more you expect to be given at airports by people in brightly coloured clothing. The translation is either godawful or should have been copyedited. Take this, from page 76 of my edition, for a flavour of so much more:

". . . But today you have met such a pilgrim in such shoes and dress. Remember, my dear Govinda, the world of appearances is transitory, the style of our clothes and hair is extremely transitory. Our hair and our bodies are themselves transitory. You have observed correctly. I am wearing the clothes of a rich man. I am wearing them because I have been a rich man, and I am wearing my hair like men of the world and fashion because I have been one of them."
    "And what are you now, Siddhartha?"
    "I do not know. I know as little as you. I am on the way. I was a rich man, but I am no longer and what I will be tomorrow I do not know."

Hands up anyone else who's reminded of that old MAD Magazine parody of Longfellow, in which Hiawatha sets out to make a pair of gloves: "First he turned the skin side inside . . ." and so on for about fifty similar lines in which the mittens are no closer to being completed.

I suppose Siddhartha was really the Jonathan Livingston Seagull of its day -- short, pretentious, ultimately empty, seemingly designed for those who want to absorb just enough off-the-rack metaphysics to see them through an outburst or three of gastric upheaval. show less

Told with remarkable clarity and refreshing brevity, Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha is a fantastic book for providing oneself with an environment in which to ponder deep spiritual questions. It tells the story of the eponymous Siddhartha, a restless and thoughtful young man who embarks on a spiritual quest of self-discovery. Despite being only 117 pages long (in my Penguin Modern Classics edition), Hesse manages to tell the story of Siddhartha's whole life, from restless youth to contented, enlightened old age.

Indeed, it is because of this brevity that Siddhartha is a better spiritual treatise than it is a novel. As a novel, a story in which to become engrossed, it is practically non-existent. Aside from Siddhartha's spiritual fulfilment show more which serves as the plot line, there is no character development. We do not know why Vasudeva embarked upon or continued his own spiritual quest, why Siddhartha and Kamala developed a relationship of such intensity, or why Govinda possesses such loyalty, or a spiritual restlessness that mirrors Siddhartha's. There is also little description of the world which Siddhartha experiences (except perhaps the river which is so important to the final part of the story), and indeed little narrative.

However, when taken as a spiritual treatise, Siddhartha is exceptional. There is a persistent theme that one cannot attain spiritual harmony through established teachings and doctrines, and certainly not organised religion. As early as page 4, the young Siddhartha is contemptuous of the Brahmin (Hindu priests) and rejects becoming one like ten thousand others of [his] kind"; he rejects being a "good stupid sheep amongst a large herd". He becomes obsessed with transcending the body and mind to become one with the Self (Atman), "the eternal which each person carried within him" but few realised (pg. 5), which will connect him to Brahman (with an 'a'), which is the unchanging, divine oneness of the universe. From then on, Siddhartha is a chronicle of the titular character's spiritual journey. Riffing on a phrase found on page 73, there is Siddhartha the Brahmin, Siddhartha the Samana (a sort of spiritual pilgrim), Siddhartha the materialistic rich man, Siddhartha the child, Siddhartha the father and, finally, Siddhartha the ferryman. Siddhartha's spiritual beliefs change throughout this time, but there is a clear progression and maturation of his philosophy so that, by the end, his thoughts seem a logical summation of all that he has learned and experienced.

That phrase - 'learned and experienced' - is crucial to whether the reader enjoys and appreciates this book. Whilst Siddhartha's spiritual philosophy is refined over time, the themes of learning and experience are a constant foundation. As mentioned above, there is the conviction expressed by Siddhartha that established teachings and doctrines, even those of the venerable Buddha, cannot in themselves bring spiritual enlightenment. They may set one on the right path (it is Siddhartha's time as a Samana that opens up the world to him) but cannot in themselves bring an achievement. Siddhartha samples various spiritual philosophies and teachings but every time his thirst is quenched, he feels new thirst, and although these paths take him away from the Self, "in the end they always led back to it." (pg. 13). Somewhat unusually for a writer, someone who makes a living based upon his utilisation and manipulation of words, Hesse argues that words cannot communicate spiritual truth. In Siddhartha's meeting with the Buddha, he tells the 'Illustrious One' that he cannot become his follower because "... nobody finds salvation through teachings. To nobody, O Illustrious One, can you communicate in words and teachings, what happened to you in the hour of your enlightenment." (pg. 28). In contrast to the teachings of the Western monotheistic religions, there are no set of rules, teachings or commandments that one must follow in order to be considered a holy man in the same way that one must follow the holy texts and gospels to be a good Christian, Jew or Muslim.

Hesse, through Siddhartha, tells us that one's own life experiences dictate our progression, not the teachings of others ("I will learn from myself, be my own pupil. I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha." (pg. 31)). After Siddhartha has succumbed to the materialistic life of a merchant, he acknowledges that he needed to experience it himself in order to reject it. He had been taught in his youth that shallow materialism was not good, but the teaching, the rule, was not enough. Now he had experienced it, and overcome it, he now knew the lesson "not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach." (pg. 77). We cannot always decide what experiences we may have, but we can be more receptive to them, and more willing to learn from them, and indeed, increase our chances of attaining more valuable experiences through conscious and thoughtful choice (Siddhartha, after all, chooses to embark on a journey of self-discovery, to leave home and pursue the path of the Samana). Many are unwilling to be receptive to new ideas and experiences; there is a neat example where Vasudeva notes how the ferry across the river which serves as a great spiritual inspiration to Siddhartha has "taken thousands of people across and to all of them my river has been nothing but a hindrance on their journey." (pg. 83). To them, the river is an inconvenient obstacle to their ordinary daily lives. In contrast, through his introspective thoughtfulness and receptiveness, Siddhartha seems able to see the spiritual lessons in earthly events (see pages 53-54 for an example of how a trip to a village becomes a lesson on the benefits of karma). More than anything, it is Hesse's advocacy for individualistic, non-conformist spiritual thinking that is the most rewarding and life-affirming lesson from Siddhartha.

Although the spiritual conclusions reached by Siddhartha at the end were not entirely convincing to me, they were told with such clarity and assertiveness that, though they may not harmonise completely with one's own thoughts, they are rewarding for the reader merely to ponder and digest them. Indeed, through the final dialogue between Siddhartha and Govinda, Hesse seems to acknowledge this and implies at the end that he knows many people will not be wholly accepting of his findings. As people are at different stages of their journeys, and have different experiences to draw from, they may not find Siddhartha's professed enlightenment convincing, just as Govinda could not completely accept them from Siddhartha himself ("... yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another", Siddhartha mischievously muses on page 112). As with page 28 mentioned above (when Siddhartha told the Buddha he could not communicate the sensation of his enlightenment to others), one must experience it for oneself before they can truly understand it. It is through his own experiences that Siddhartha comes to find enlightenment and contentment. Realising that all the things in the world are connected in spiritual harmony, Siddhartha claims that "love is the most important thing in the world" (pg. 113); not necessarily love for another human being, but compassionate understanding and affection for all things. As he tells Govinda, "everything needs only... my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me." (pg. 111). Time and suffering, life and death, are all relative; whereas one may feel pain in this moment, one may feel happiness in another, or in another life. Like the river, these moments are ever-flowing and exist alongside one another: "... every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people - eternal life." (pp110-11). Whereas the hippy-istic message that 'all you need is love' may seem like a cop-out, when it comes at the end of this small but seismic book, it is a revelation. After a restless journey, Siddhartha no longer needs to compare the world to "some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it." (pg. 111). Contentment and affection for the world, after a difficult journey: that is as life-affirming as any message can be." show less