This book review is
based on the book Siddhartha, written by German writer Hermann Hesse in 1922.
The book is about a man named Siddhartha in India, trying like the Buddha, to
find enlightenment through a spiritual quest.
Hermann Hesse’s main
character Siddhartha is following a spiritual path much like Siddhartha
Gautama, the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. Hesse’s Siddhartha finds his life
is empty of meaning; things that once made him feel happy and whole no longer
do. He knows there is more out there than just the physical, which is now empty
in his eyes. He what’s to find spiritual enlightenment; to shed the bonds of
the physical world. To reach a point that he no longer needs attachment in the
world to exist, to be apart from it. Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha is a son of a
Brahmin. He has a life that most would envy. He has loving parents, good
friends (especially Govinda, who idolizes him), health and wealth. But he still
feels that something is missing in his life and the world around him. He has a
restless soul and his dreams are haunting him, pushing him to look beyond his
comfortable life and to seek what is amiss. So Siddhartha gets his father’s
blessing, which is not an easy task, and begins his long journey. Govinda joins
him in this journey both becoming Samanas, ascetics who are a group that follow
deep meditation and severe discipline as their practices. Siddhartha gives up
all things of his former life, giving away his clothes, shelter and eating one
meal a day, when not fasting. From all this he decides that, “Life is pain”
(Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse page 14). In their travels they come upon, the Holy
One, the Buddha. Listening to his teachings Govinda decides he wants to become
a monk. But Siddhartha believes even that the Buddha, himself does not have the
answers he seeks. Saying to the Buddha, “You have learned nothing through
teachings, and so I think, O Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation
through teachings” (Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse page 34).
Siddhartha went on
his path alone, still seeking the truth. He was no longer a boy, but a man. He
no longer needed teachers or lessons; the quest was his teacher and all that
was needed all that mattered. But throughout the story Siddhartha has many
teachers from the ordinary people he comes in contact with. Like the ferryman
who spoke of the river “I love it above everything. I often listened to it,
gazed at it, and I have always learned something from it. One can learn much
from a river” (Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse page 49). Siddhartha’s eyes and being
were now open to everything; learning was experiencing and listening. Learning
new things in every turn and twist of his journey; but he knew it had always
been there in the first place. “All this, colored and in a thousand different
forms, had always been there” (Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse page 46).
Years passed and
Siddhartha now again lived in the world, but still felt like he was not truly a
part of it. He still thought like a Samana, though he was back in the world of
the ordinary, a world of attachment. He had a home now, with a garden he could
walk in, like in his youth. He had wealth. Kamala the courtesan had taught him
about love. But he still wasn’t happy. He was tired of this life he had made
for himself, he felt so entangled in Samsara, the world of attachment.
Siddhartha felt suicidal, he wished for death to come. He had to escape back to
the simple life of non-attachment again. So he wonders to the river and falls
asleep under a cocoanut tree, to the sound of OM, the universal sound. When he
awakes he feels like he is a whole new person (born again), not feeling like
himself at all. And he finds his good friend Govinda, who in his monkly robes,
is watching over him. At first Govinda does not recognize him, but is truly
happy to find out his old friend Siddhartha is in front of him. They talk, and
then part again, like before. Alone again Siddhartha feels anew, he had learned
that to find what you are seeking, sometimes, means going backwards. He feels
regret for all he has wasted in such spiritual sacrifices and self-torture and
not gaining anything for it. He makes a promise to himself to never go back to
that misery. Siddhartha was no longer unhappily seeking. Somehow he had been
awaken to the truth. Siddhartha comes upon the ferryman Vasudeva again, who
takes him in and listens to his story. Vasudeva believed the river would teach
Siddhartha everything he needed. He learned to be a ferryman and also he
learned from the river, “that there was no such thing as time” (Siddhartha,
Hermann Hesse page 106), that it spoke in many voices and was wise in its
teachings. Time passed for both Siddhartha and Vasudeva, but life was happy and
full.
One day the news
came that the Buddha was on his deathbed, which saddened Siddhartha. Many
followers of the Buddha were making their way to say good-bye to the Holy One.
Kamala the courtesan, who had once taught him in the ways of love, was now a
follower of the Buddha, and was among the others with her son, little
Siddhartha. The boy was spoiled and did not like to be on this trip. Kamala
somehow gets bit by a black snake. Siddhartha comes to her aid, and recognizes
that the boy is his son, and Kamala tells him this is true. Kamala dies of the
snake’s bite. Siddhartha now has to raise this eleven-year-old child he does
not know. Little Siddhartha is spoiled and is use to the lifestyle of the rich.
He hates his new life and he hates Siddhartha. This cannot be overcome in a
little while, Siddhartha knows, and remains patient. But as the days go by
little Siddhartha, gives him more sorrow. Vasudeva, the ferryman, tells him
that his son will never be happy living as a ferryman’s son, away from the
riches he is used to. He needs to go home to his mother’s home and the
servants, the lifestyle he is used to. But Siddhartha does not want to see it.
He had never really loved anyone like he loved little Siddhartha, who he could
not bear to set free. So his son kept hurting him every day, showing no love
back. Finally one day the son runs away, Siddhartha hunts for him but does not
find him.
The pain of his son
leaving remained with Siddhartha for a very long time. When he seen others with
children, he envied them for their happiness. But he also seen that everyone on
earth has a purpose, and the world of attachment was as real and important as
anything that he had wanted to find. He also realized that he had put his
father through the same thing when he had left home in his youth that his father
probably missed him and worried about him, just like he was doing over little
Siddhartha. Siddhartha had found the thing he had seeked, the meaning to life
and this world, though it wasn’t the same thing that he had always wanted,
detachment. And he didn’t find it through torturing himself with extremes, but
with loving someone and seeing life as something that is needed for learning.
He shares this new truth with his old friend Govinda, who he is reunited with
for a little while at the end of the story. Govinda believed that his old from
Siddhartha, had become wise like the Buddha, and had entered Nirvana.
The author of
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse, was born in the town of Calw, Wurttemberg, Germany.
His parents Marie Gundert-Hesse and Johannes Hesse were both Christian
missionaries in India at the Basel Mission. Herman Hesse started studying at
the Evangelical Theological Seminary back in Germany, but had a rebellious side
and left the school before finishing.
Throughout his life
he dealt with bipolar depression, attempted suicide and was institutionalized
in a mental hospital. He took on a few career changes along the way and became
a writer. He married Maria Bernoulli in 1904, which later was diagnosis with
schizophrenia, which destroyed their marriage. He had three sons with Maria,
one son was sick with a difficult illness. Hesse spoke out against the Nazis
and he was deeply interested in Eastern philosophy.
The fictional
Siddhartha in Hesse’s story is having a spiritual quest like the real
Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of the religion of Buddhism, who is also
mentioned in his story. Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was born around 566 B.C.E.,
in Lumbini, in part of the area, which we now call Nepal. He was born to a very
wealthy family, who were afraid of losing him because of a prediction, so they
protected him from the outside world and its many sorrows. One day he sneaks
out of his safe place, into the outside world. “He sees four sights: a sick
man, a poor man, a beggar and a corpse” (Story of Buddha). His eyes are opened,
and his whole being is filled with an awesome sorrow for the suffering in the
world. He leaves his wife, his family and his wealth, to dedicate his life to
humanity and ending suffering. He goes though many spiritual quests, much like
Hesse’s Siddhartha, until he finds truth in what Buddhists call the “Middle
Way”, which teaches to not go to extremes in either way.
There are different
forms of Buddhism, with different views on what the Buddha really taught but
they all follow two important teachings:
“The Four Noble
Truths:
That suffering is an
inherent part of existence
That suffering is
caused by attachment (craving)
That craving can be
ceased
That following the
Eightfold Path will lead to the cessation of craving and suffering”
and
“The Eightfold Path:
Right Understanding
Right Thought
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration”
Buddhism has ties to
Hinduism, whose followers believe the Buddha a god or avatar. In Islam some
Muslims believe that Siddhartha Gautama may be the same person in the Koran
that is called Dhul-Kifl, and may be a prophet. “Dhul-Kifl means "the man
from Kifi” which means Kapilavastu, an area where the Buddha spent thirty years
of his life"(Wikipedia). Many Jews, because of the fact you do not have to
convert or let go of Judaism, have also adopted the teachings and meditation of
Buddhism.“Jews who follow Buddhist customs are called BuJew” (Wikipedia).
I would say
Siddhartha is a very good book. It speaks of the human experience we all go
through in life, whether it is career, education, or spirituality. You get to a
point of your life’s quest or journey, whatever it may be, and you feel it’s
the wrong path or is not enough and you want a change, you want more. To shed
the old skin for a new one, to be (born again), you could say. To try something
new, to follow another bliss, (though the whole torturing one’s self is a bit
extreme), and sometimes the searching takes you right back to the same place
you started from.
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