Reflection on Herman Hesse's Siddhartha

A heron flew over the bamboo forest—and Siddhartha took the heron into his soul, he flew over the woods and the mountains. He was a heron: he fed upon fish and hungered with the heron's hunger, he spoke the cawing of the heron and died the heron's death. A dead jackal lay there on the sandy riverbank, and Siddhartha's soul slipped into the dead body. He was a dead jackal: he lay on the beach, he swelled up and stank, he rotted away and was dismembered by the hyenas before being skinned by the vultures. He turned to a skeleton and then to dust, and then he blew into the fields. And Siddhartha's soul returned.

Preamble

To write about Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha may contradict the ideology of the book, “Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish… Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom.” However, if these truths were absolute, why write the book at all? “...in every truth the opposite is equally true.”

Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha was recommended to me in a Discord channel (a chat room) for international educators. The book was recommended as an unconventional but approachable entry to the otherwise rather heady ideas found in the writing of Carl Jung. The next day while running errands, I passed by a used bookstore and found a paperback for $2.50.

I hadn’t read anything about the book or Hesse prior to reading Siddhartha. My first impression was from the cover–its electric blue (water, deep space, introspection, reflection) intermingling with a seated Buddha figure, the far east title, and the contrast of all of that with Hesse's distinctly German name. I had previously read Alexandra David-Née’s Mystery and Magic in Tibet, and though I found it interesting, I took its value as a genuine source of wisdom second to its value as an interesting cultural artifact and story. I mention this because, like Siddhartha, Mystery and Magic in Tibet also has roots in Theosophy and attempts to understand Indian wisdom traditions through the lens of an outsider, a Westerner. In the case of Alexandra David-Née’s book, the story is written as non-fiction from her point of view; Siddhartha, on the other hand, is written from the perspective of an Indian boy born within these traditions, despite Hesse being German himself. Interestingly, Hesse’s mother was born in India, her father was a Protestant Christian missionary. Herman Hesse briefly visited “India” himself, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, before getting a stomach flu that required him to return to Germany. From what I understand, the story is inspired in part by the life of the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama.

Many artists: Mondrian, Kandinsky, Hilma af Klimt, etc., whose work I find interesting and profound, had connections to the Theosophical movement. In terms of Western interest in Eastern religion, I believe one could draw a line from Romanticism, to Theosophy, to the Beatniks, to the Hippies, to the “New Age” movement today. There is certainly a lineage of Westerners looking to Eastern spiritual philosophy as a remedy to the spiritual degradation of Western culture. Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums is a favorite novel of mine, and another in this tradition. In short, I came to the book with interest but also some skepticism as Hesse’s position as an outsider to the traditions he attempts to write a story within.

Summary and Quotes

Siddhartha is written with a simplicity that cuts to the essential. Neither sparse nor baroque, the prose expounds on the journey of its protagonist, Siddhartha, sharing his inner feelings, and reflections with occasional dialogue and gem-like descriptions of shimmering nature. The book follows Siddhartha throughout most of his life–a spiritual journey as a “seeker” searching for Atman, inner peace, or enlightenment. Siddhartha finds what he is looking for, but not without an arduous journey ripe with pain and transformation.

Already he knew how to pronounce Om silently–this word of words, to say it inwardly with the intake of breath, when breathing out with all his soul, his brow radiating the glow of pure spirit. Already he knew how to recognize Atman within the depth of his being, indestructible at one with the universe.

Siddhartha is born the son of a Brahmin, a sort of priest, and at a young age proves to be exceptional. He is handsome and quickly learns the Hindu traditions passed down from his father and the village elders. His presence alone makes all of those around him happy and yet, he is unhappy, feeling as though the traditions passed down to him are valuable but ultimately a distraction from the one eternal truth that is Atman, something that hides within the innermost corridors of the self.

To press towards the self, towards Atman–was there another way that was worth seeking? Nobody showed the way, nobody knew it–neither his father, nor the teachers and wise men, nor the holy song…

Your soul is the whole world.

One must find the source within one’s own self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking–a detour, error.

With the reluctant permission of his father, Siddhartha resolves to leave his village and family to follow the Samanas, a group of half-naked starving Jackal-like ascetics who believe enlightenment can be reached only through a rejection of the body and physical desire. He is joined by his best friend, and shadow, Govinda who also leaves the village to follow Siddhartha as a Samana.

All were doomed to decay. The world tasted bitter. Life was pain. Siddhartha had one single goal–to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure, and sorrow–to let the self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought–that was his goal. When all the Self was conquered and dead… Then the last must awaken… the great secret.

Siddhartha and Govinda live as Samanas for three years, torturing themselves through fasting, meditation, and denial of the self. Siddhartha and Govinda subject themselves to pain, hunger, and the elements, all of this in order to overcome themselves, but Siddhartha is not satisfied. Though he excels at the Samana mediation practices he feels as though they are only a “temporary escape from the torment of life” and that he is only fleeing from himself. He becomes skeptical of the teachings of others in general.

I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins… one can learn nothing. There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything. Something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only knowledge–that is everywhere, that is Atman, that is in me and you and in every creature, and I am beginning to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the man of knowledge, than learning.

It is around this time that Siddhartha and Govinda start hearing rumors of a holy man who has attained Nirvana, the Buddha. Govinda suggests that Siddhartha and he go to meet the Buddha to see if these rumors are true. Siddhartha is doubtful, he maintains that no one can teach him anything of true importance, but he decides to go with Govinda to seek the Buddha. The Samanas are unhappy about Govinda and Siddhartha leaving, but using the techniques learned from the Samanas, Siddhartha is able to hypnotize the Samana elder.

His peaceful countenance was neither happy nor sad. He seemed to be smiling gently inwardly. With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child, he walked along, peacefully, quietly. He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace.

Govinda pays his allegiance to the Buddha after hearing his teachings. It is clear to Siddhartha just by looking at the Buddha that the Buddha has found enlightenment. He realizes that the Buddha has found what he is seeking and that his teachings are near perfect, and yet he still believes that he must find his own path, just as the Buddha found his own path.

Slowly the thinker went on his way and asked himself: What is it you wanted to learn from teachings and teachers, and although they taught you much, what was it they could not teach you? And he thought: It was the Self, the character and nature of which I wished to learn. I wanted to rid myself of the Self, to conquer it, but I could not conquer it, I could only deceive it, could only fly from it, could only hide from it. Truly, nothing in the world has occupied my thoughts as much as the Self, this riddle, that I live, that I am one and am separated and different from everybody else, that I am Siddhartha; and about nothing in the world do I know less than about myself, about Siddhartha…

The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing — I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself....

I will learn from myself, be my own pupil; I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha…

The world was beautiful, strange, and mysterious. Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, sky and river, woods, and mountains, all beautiful, all mysterious, and enchanting, and in the midst of it, he, Siddhartha, the awakened one, on the way to himself.

Siddhartha has the realization that things around him are not falsehoods concealing truth from him, but rather are true and beautiful in and of themselves. He turns his back to unity and instead celebrates the diversity of the world. He thinks about returning home to his father whom he hasn’t seen since leaving to become a Samana but decides that his values wouldn’t align with those of his Brahmin father. He resolves to walk his own path, and in doing so feels a deep loneliness. It is also in this moment that he realizes he is no longer a child.

He had known for a long time that his self was Atman, of the same eternal nature as Brahman, but he had never really found his Self, because he had wanted to trap it in the net of thoughts…

Both thoughts and the senses were fine things, behind both of them lay hidden the last meaning; it was worthwhile listening to them both, to play with both, neither to despise nor overrate either of them, but to listen intently to both voices.

Siddhartha takes in the beauty of the world with a new appreciation and wonder. At night he sleeps in a ferryman’s hut where he has a strange dream about his friend Govinda, who becomes not Govinda, but a woman. The next day Siddhartha crosses the river, noting its beauty and appreciating the child-like innocence of the ferryman. He meets a young woman, a courtesan named Kamala, who leaves an impression on him, and despite resisting his initial urge to be with her he later seeks her out in the city. Siddhartha wants to learn love from Kamala, but Kamala says in order for Siddhartha to do that he first needs fine clothes, and wealth so he can present her with gifts. She asks him what skills he has, to which he replies, “I can think, I can wait, I can fast.”

...when you throw a stone into the water, it finds the quickest way to the bottom of the water. It is the same when Siddhartha has an aim, a goal. Siddhartha does nothing; he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he goes through the affairs of the world like the stone through the water, without doing anything, without bestirring himself; he is drawn and lets himself fall. He is drawn by his goal, for he does not allow anything to enter his mind which opposes his goal. This is what Siddhartha learned from the Samanas. It is what fools call magic and what they think is caused by demons. Nothing is caused by demons; there are no demons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait and fast.

Kamala listened to him. She loved his voice, she loved the look in his eyes. “Perhaps it is as you say, my friend,” she said softly, “and perhaps it is also because Siddhartha is a handsome man, because his glance pleases women, that he is lucky.”

Kamala helps Siddhartha get a job with a merchant, Kamaswami, in town, so that he may acquire wealth.

“‘I possess nothing,” said Siddhartha, “if that is what you mean. I am certainly without possessions, but of my own free will, so I am not in need.”

“But how will you live if you are without possessions?”

“I have never thought about it, sir. I have been without possessions for nearly three years and I have never thought on what I should live.”

“So you have lived on the possessions of others?”

“Apparently. The merchant also lived on the possessions of others.”

“Well spoken, but he does not take from others for nothing, he gives his goods in exchange.”

“That seems to be the way of things. Everyone takes, everyone gives. Life is like that.”

Kamaswami finds Siddartha useful initially because he can read and write, but Siddarhatha excels at business and becomes a close advisor and partner to Kamaswami, despite Siddartha never taking business too seriously. He regularly visits Kamala who he considers his real purpose, and she teaches him the art of love.

So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of being used or misused.

…Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path.

“Maybe,” said Siddhartha wearily. “I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can–that is their secret.”

Many years pass by without Siddartha noticing. He passes through life in a sort of stupor. He becomes a rich and successful businessman. He becomes accustomed to the many pleasures of his new life, and slowly his life as an ascetic, as a thinker, and as a seeker becomes diminished. He becomes more like the other people in the village who get upset and anxious over things he used to consider trivial, and yet, he envies aspects of them.

He envied them the one thing that he lacked and they had: the sense of importance with which they lived their lives, the depth of their pleasures and sorrows, the anxious but sweet happiness of their continual power to love. These people were always in love with themselves, with their children, with honor or money, with plans or hope.

Siddartha begins to despise himself and the many vices he gains from his new life: pleasure, covetousness, idleness, and acquisitiveness. He feels trapped by his riches and acquires a gambling addiction as a way to express his contempt for riches. It begins to be one of the few things that make him happy. After losing money gambling, he begins to work harder at business to earn more money, becoming more cruel in the process. He notices that he, and Kamala, whom he still frequently visits, are showing signs of getting older. He feels as though he is wasting his life.

…and in love play she clasped him to her with extreme fervor, fiercely and tearfully, as if she wanted once more to extract the last sweet drop from this fleeting pleasure. Never had it been so strangely clear to Siddhartha how closely related passion was to death.

Siddartha feels as though the only thing with meaning in his life is Kamala, and that he and she are playing a game without end, samsara, ignorance and attachment to worldly desires as opposed to wisdom and a deeper understanding of reality. He feels that he has no lofty goal or aim in life, such as he did in his youth, and feels that parts of him have died. He resolves to leave the life he had been leading as a merchant. His business partner, Kamaswami, tries to find him, but Kamala is not surprised when Siddartha goes missing, nor does she seek him.

Siddartha wanders into the forest, feeling a deep misery about what he’s become; he finds his current position unbearable and resolves to kill himself. He ends up wandering next to the river that he crossed many years ago and decides he will throw himself in the river, when in the river he hears the sound of Om.

He was full of ennui, full of misery, full of death; there was nothing left in the world that could attract him, that could give him pleasure and solace.

He wished passionately for oblivion, to be at rest, to be dead… There was no more purpose; there was nothing more than a deep, painful longing to shake off this whole confused dream, to spit out this stale wine, to make an end of this bitter, painful life.

…he heard a sound. It was one word, one syllable, which without thinking he spoke indistinctly, the ancient beginning and ending of all Brahmin prayers, the holy Om, which had the meaning of “the Perfect one” or “perfection.” At that moment, when the sound of Om reached Siddhartha’s ears, his slumbering soul suddenly awakened.

“Om” he pronounced inwardly, and he was conscious of Brahman, of the indestructibleness of life.

With “Om” on his lips, Siddartha gains a new awareness. He is astonished that he was thinking of killing himself. He falls asleep under a tree. When he wakes up, he feels like a new person, and happens to see his old friend Govinda, opposite him. Govinda is dressed as a monk and is still following The Buddha. Govinda didn’t recognize Siddhartha and is watching over him so that he won’t get bit by a snake. The two have a brief conversation before Govinda goes on his way again.

He falls asleep under a tree. When he wakes up he feels like a new person, and happens to see his old friend Govinda, opposite him. Govinda is dressed as a monk and is still following The Buddha. Govinda didn’t recognize Siddhartha, and is watching over him so that he won’t get bit by a snake. The two have a brief conversation, before Govinda goes on his way again.

–he loved everything, he was full of joyous love towards everything that he saw. And it seemed to him that was just why he was previously so ill–because he could love nothing and nobody.

How strange his life had been, he thought. He had wandered along strange paths. As a boy I was occupied with the gods and sacrifices, as a youth with asceticism, with thinking and meditation. I was in search of Brahman and revered the eternal in Atman. As a young man I was attracted to expiation. I lived in the woods, suffered heat and cold. I learned to fast, I learned to conquer my body. I then discovered with wonder the teachings of the great Buddha. I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood, but I also felt compelled to leave the Buddha and the great knowledge. I went and learned the pleasures of love from Kamala and business from Kamaswami. I hoarded money, I squandered money, I acquired a taste for rich food, I learned to stimulate my senses. I had to spend many years like that in order to lose my intelligence, to lose the power to think, to forget about the unity of things. Is it not true, that slowly and through many deviations I changed from a man into a child? From a thinker into an ordinary person? And yet this path has been good and the bird in my breast has not died. But what a path it has been! I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. But it was right that it should be so; my eyes and heart acclaim it. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace, to hear Om again, to sleep deeply again and to awaken refreshed again. I had to become a fool again in order to find Atman in myself. I had to sin in order to live again. Whither will my path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it…

It is a good thing to experience everything oneself, he thought. As a child I learned that pleasures of the world and riches were not good. I have known it for a long time, but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach. It is a good thing that I know this.

Sidhartha realizes in his youth he was too clever, too eager, too arrogant. That in order to be child-like the priest and Samana, the intellectual in him, had to die. That is why he had to undergo all this years living in the city as a merchant. He looks at the river and realizes parts of him had drowned in the river, and that he loved the river. He decides he will stay with the river. He wants to learn from the river. He believes the river has many secrets for him to discover.

Too much knowledge had hindered him; too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rites, too much mortification of the flesh, too much doing and striving. He had been full of arrogance; he had always been the cleverest, the most eager - always a step ahead of the others, always the learned and intellectual one, always the priest or the sage. His Self had crawled into this priesthood, into this arrogance, into this intellectuality. It sat there tightly and grew, while he thought he was destroying it by fasting and penitence.

He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new. Who could understand, conceive this? He did not understand it; he was only aware of a dim suspicion, a faint memory, divine voices.

Sidhartha becomes the apprentice to the ferryman, the same ferryman that took him across the river many years ago. The ferryman listens to Siddartha’s life story. He is an exceptional listener, a skill he claims to have learned from the river. He assures Siddhartha that the river will teach him many things.

"You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths. The rich and distinguished Siddhartha will become a rower; Siddhartha the learned Brahmin will become a ferryman. You have also learned this from the river. You will learn the other thing, too."

Siddhartha learns some from the ferryman, Vasdeva, but Vasdeva prefers listening to talking. And most of what Sidhartha learns is from the river itself.

He once asked him, "Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" A bright smile spread over Vasudeva's face. "Yes, Siddhartha," he said. "Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?" "That is it," said Siddhartha, "and when I learned that, I reviewed my life and it was also a river, and Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man and Siddhartha the old man, were only separated by shadows, not through reality. Siddhartha's previous lives were also not in the past, and his death and his return to Brahma are not in the future. Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence."

…And once again when the river swelled during the rainy season and roared loudly, Siddhartha said: "Is it not true, my friend, that the river has very many voices? Has it not the voice of a king, of a warrior, of a bull, of a night bird, of a pregnant woman and a sighing man, and a thousand other voices?" "It is so," nodded Vasudeva, "the voices of all living creatures are in its voice." "And do you know," continued Siddhartha, "what word it pronounces when one is successful in hearing all its ten thousand voices at the same time?" Vasudeva laughed joyously; he bent towards Siddhartha and whispered the holy Om in his ear.

… the voice of being, of perpetual becoming.

Siddhartha lives with Vasdeva for many years. The two grow old and similar, rarely speaking, and helping others across the river. They eventually catch wind that the Buddha is ill and near death. Siddhartha recounts his brief encounter with the Buddha with love, and also considers his own arrogance when he spoke to the Buddha. Many monks seek out the dying Buddha. Among these pilgrims is Siddhartha’s old lover, Kamala, with her son… Siddhartha’s son. On her way to the Buddha Kamala is bit by a snake, Vasdeva discovers her and takes her to his hut, where she is reunited with Siddhartha, and where she dies.

"You have achieved it?" she asked. "You have found peace?" He smiled and placed his hand on hers. "I'm seeing it," she said, "I'm seeing it. I too will find peace." "You have found it."

For a long time he looked at her mouth, her old tired mouth and her shrunken lips, and remembered how once, in the spring of his life, he had compared her lips with a freshly cut fig. For a long time he looked intently at the pale face, at the tired wrinkles and saw his own face like that, just as white, also dead, and at the same time he saw his face and hers, young, with red lips, with ardent eyes and he was overwhelmed with a feeling of the present and contemporary existence. In this hour he felt more acutely the indestructibleness of every life, the eternity of every moment.

Despite Kamala’s death Siddhartha is happy to be reunited with his son. He gives his son space to deal with his mother’s grief. He is patient with him. But over time he realizes his son comes from a very different life than that of the two ferrymen, and slowly Siddhartha’s disobedient son brings unhappiness into Siddhartha’s life.

You are not strict with him, you do not punish him, you do not command him - because you know that gentleness is stronger than severity, that water is stronger than rock, that love is stronger than force. Very good, I praise you. But is it not perhaps a mistake on your part not to be strict with him, not to punish him? Do you not chain him with your love? Do you not shame him daily with your goodness and patience and make it still more difficult for him?

Siddhartha knows that he cannot protect his son from suffering, and that his son must experience life to learn the many lessons that Siddhartha has learned himself. But this is difficult for Siddhartha to accept because of his deep love for his son. Siddhartha realizes he has finally become like other people, he has finally lost himself in love.

Once, when the boy’s face reminded him of Kamala, Siddhartha suddenly remembered something he had once said to him a long time ago. “You cannot love,” she had said to him and he had agreed with her. He had compared himself with a star, and other people with falling leaves, and yet he had felt some reproach in her words. It was true that he had never fully lost himself in another person to such an extent as to forget himself; he had never undergone the follies of love for another person. He had never been able to do this, and it had then seemed to him that this was the biggest difference between him and the ordinary people. But now, since his son was there, he, Siddhartha, had become completely like one of the people, through sorrow, through loving. He was madly in love, a fool because of love. Now he also experienced belatedly, for once in his life, the strongest and strangest passion: he suffered tremendously through it and yet was uplifted, in some way renewed and richer. He felt indeed that this love, this blind love for his son, was a very human passion, that it was Samsara, a troubled spring of deep water. At the same time he felt that it was not worthless, that it was necessary, that it came from his own nature. This emotion, this pain, these follies also had to be experienced.

Eventually Siddhartha’s son runs away, stealing the small amount of money Siddhartha and Vasdeva earned. Siddhartha follows his son, despite the advice of Vasdeva, but he does not find him. Eventually Siddhartha accepts that he cannot help his son, and returns to his life as a ferryman with Vasdeva. The pain of losing his son sticks with Siddhartha for a long time. After this experience Siddhartha is better able to relate to other people and their “foolish” urges. He is able to see Brahman in everyone. He realizes that all of his thinking and seeking has allowed him to see the unity of all things, but that that in and of itself is not so important.

The men of the world were equal to the thinkers in every other respect and were often superior to them, just as animals in their tenacious undeviating actions in case of necessity may often seem superior to human beings.

One day after hearing the river laugh at his pain, Siddhartha realizes that he too left his father, and that his father probably experienced a similar pain to that which Siddhartha felt now having had his son run away. He confides his pain to his friend Vasdeva, and he realizes now that Vasdeva, now old and weak, is like a river, a tree, or a god. He “washes” himself in Vasdeva, relating his feelings to him, when Vasdeva insists that Siddhartha listens to the river. After which Vasdeva goes into the forest to die, returning to the unity of all things.

Siddhartha tried to listen better. The picture of his father, his own picture, and the picture of his son all flowed into each other. Kamala’s picture also appeared and flowed on, and the picture of Govinda and others emerged and passed on. They all became part of the river. It was the goal of all of them, yearning, desiring, suffering; and the river’s voice was full of longing, full of smarting woe, full of insatiable desire. The river flowed on towards its goal. Siddhartha saw the river hasten, made up of himself and his relatives and all the people he had ever seen. All the waves and water hastened, suffering, towards goals, many goals, to the waterfall, to the sea, to the current, to the ocean and all goals were reached and each one was succeeded by another. The water changed to vapor and rose, became rain and came down again, became spring, brook and river, changed anew, flowed anew. But the yearning voice had altered. It still echoed sorrowfully, searchingly, but other voices accompanied it, voices of pleasure and sorrow, good and evil voices, laughing and lamenting voices, hundreds of voices, thousands of voices.

…He could no longer distinguish the different voices–the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indignation and the groan of the dying. They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life. When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om–Perfection.

In the last chapter, Govinda, now an old and venerable Buddhist monk, seeks out a ferryman that is rumored to be a sage. Unbeknownst to him, this sage is his old friend Siddhartha.

… perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find… When someone is seeking… It happens quite easily that he only sees that thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything…because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking… Finding means to be free.

Siddhartha reaffirms his belief that wisdom cannot be taught. That all things contain their opposite, and that this is impossible to teach, but must be experienced.

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, between good and evil, is also an illusion.” “How is that?” asked Govinda, puzzled. “Listen my friend! I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahman again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become a Buddha. Now this ‘someday’ is illusion; it is only a comparison. The sinner is not on the way to a Buddha-like state; he is not evolving, although our thinking cannot conceive things otherwise. No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; his future is already there…it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it…all sucklings have death within them, all dying people–eternal life.

…"This," he said, handling it, "is a stone, and within a certain length of time it will perhaps be soil and from the soil it will become plant, animal or man. Previously I should have said: This stone is just a stone; it has no value, it belongs to the world of Maya, but perhaps because within the cycle of change it can also become man and spirit, it is also of importance… but now I think: This stone is stone; it is also animal, God and Buddha. I do not respect and love it because it was one thing and will become something else, but because it has already long been everything and always is everything.

…But one cannot love words. If they are illusions, then I also am an illusion, and so they are always of the same nature as myself. It is that which makes them so lovable and venerable. That is why I can love them.

…love is the most important thing in the world. … The gesture of his hand is more important to me than his opinions.

Thoughts and Takeaways

It's easy for me to find parallels between Siddhartha’s journey as a seeker and my painting practice–a practice that no doubt reflects my own journey to understand the world. I love geometric abstraction, but have found a need to move past the sort of absolute condition suggested by the geometric/symmetric paintings that occupied me for years towards something with a greater degree of multiplicities and messy subjectivity.

The austere paintings of Agnes Martin, which I’ve venerated for some time, and their seeming distrust of the world around us share something with Siddhartha’s idea, or rather the Hindu idea, of Atman. I believe Agnes Martin was interested in Zen Buddhism. I’m certain the following statement is reductive as it clumps similar but distinctly different concepts together that I haven’t extensively studied, but from the philosophy of Plato, to the Soul, Tao, Atman, Brahman, or Buddha nature, there seems to be a persistent idea between cultures and across time that there is an essence behind reality or within reality, within ourselves, that is somehow more true than the world of physical phenomena. This idea of the essential is foregrounded in a lot of modernist abstraction, Rothko, Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, Mondrian, and certainly many more.

In Siddhartha, the final revelation seems to be the unity of all things, Om, that everything is in flux, and that everything has been and will be everything else (I can’t help but to wonder if Hesse was inspired by Heraclitus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”)

In the beginning of the book, during his time with the Samas, Siddhartha thinks he needs to be empty to experience this unity. By the end of his journey, he realizes that all aspects of reality, himself, a tree, a river, etc., reflect this unity, and he therefore loves them. In both cases, he believes in a sort of absolute condition, Om, but rather than believing it is hidden somewhere deep within himself, he discovers that it is interwoven everywhere. He goes from thinking the world is bitter to loving the world. A painting of say, a tree is not maya, or any less a reflection of reality than the Agnes Martin painting of a grid. “If they are illusions, then I also am an illusion, and so they are always of the same nature as myself. It is that which makes them so lovable and venerable. That is why I can love them.” It is perhaps a turn from a dualistic point of view to something non-dualistic, or from transcendence to immanence.

Of course, another important element of the book is that it's not enough to be told these things. When communicated, they seem rather strange (or perhaps clichéd in our spiritual but not religious 2023), but they must be experienced and felt. Again, in this sentiment, I return to painting, or art in general. In speaking on the Buddha, Hesse writes “The gesture of his hand is more important to me than his opinions.” Such an opinion could be an artist's statement for nearly every painter! But I don't turn my back on the maze of words. I think words, experiences, nature, art, etc., are all important in shaping our understanding of the world, and perhaps differently important to different people at different times of their life. While there are certainly those who suggest it is meaningless to talk about paintings, and at times I agree, it seems to me that while difficult, a careful language to talk about these things only adds clarity to their meaning. Hesse must have felt something similar or he wouldn’t have written this book. Perhaps the novel format and the wisdom of an experienced life are two types of wisdom, different in kind, but with some sort of relationship that informs one another?

One of the most profound moments for me reading the book, follows from Siddhartha's revelation that time is an illusion.

There is no such thing as time?" …the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?"

"That is it," said Siddhartha, "and when I learned that, I reviewed my life and it was also a river, and Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man and Siddhartha the old man, were only separated by shadows, not through reality. Siddhartha's previous lives were also not in the past, and his death and his return to Brahma are not in the future. Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence."

This revelation is especially poignant as it shortly precedes the death of Siddhartha’s lover, Kamala. It's a world view that is so contrary to contemporary American culture that it is hard for me to wrap my head around it, but again, it is a point illustrated in painting–by the non-linearity of time in the painting space.

The book isn’t perfect. I stll question Hesse's authenticity when he is to writing from the perspective of an Indian boy, when Hesse himself is not Indian. Having read some of Hesse’s biography now it's clear that elements of the book are autobiographical, or at least, are inspired by elements of his own life. I am reminded of Zadie Smith’s essay, Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction which takes a very thorough dive into this topic. On the one hand, I feel like I learned a good bit about Indian philosophy through the book, not that it was comprehensive in this regard, but it encouraged me to do further research on my own, especially on Hinduism. I recognize that Hesse was inspired by Eastern philosophy, Buddhism and Hinduism, and that these philosophies were a catalyst for very real spiritual revelations that Hesse was able to share with the world. Still, against a backdrop of European colonization in India. Why should India be the backdrop for the projections and fantasies of Hesse?

Despite the mistakes Hesse’s character Siddhartha makes, he is by all accounts an exceptional person, the sort of person who only really exists in literature. Siddhartha's shortcomings are tidily calculated within the confines of the story to convey the wisdom that Hesse intends to put forth. But to write a character who has lived a rich life and found enlightenment at the end, doesn't one need to presume they themselves have the wisdom they are putting forth? The book is a fantasy, even with its complications, notably Siddhartha's relationship to his son, his life is much squeaker than most of ours. Where are the dead ends? The book never mentions a toilet. Consistently Siddhartha views himself as separate from others in the world, to an extent he accepts this as a flaw, a sort of shortcoming, “The men of the world were equal to the thinkers in every other respect and were often superior to them, just as animals in their tenacious undeviating actions in case of necessity may often seem superior to human beings.” But I can’t help but to shake a sense of condescension on the part of Siddhartha, who views most men as children, and by extension Hesse. Is the world really divided between men and thinkers? Is having found peace truly a binary?