Skip to main content

Siddhartha



Every spiritual quest is ultimately a quest for meaning. Most people are contented with readymade meanings provided by religions because personal quests are arduous and even hazardous. Religions and other readymade meanings fail to make sense to some people and such people have to undertake the torturous path themselves. Herman Hesse’s novel, Siddhartha, tells the story of one such quest.

Siddhartha is a young Brahmin of ancient India who is not contented with the truths and meanings given by his religion. He happens to listen to the Samanas (wandering ascetics) and chooses to join them. His friend Govinda too joins him. From the ascetics he learns to liberate the self from its traditional trappings like family, property and sensuality. But Siddhartha is still discontented. Self-denial is not enlightenment, he learns.

Both Siddhartha and his friend Govinda leave the ascetics after they listen to Gotama Buddha’s teachings about the Eightfold Path for enlightenment. The Buddha too fails to satisfy Siddhartha. There are no formulas for enlightenment, he understands. The Buddha’s enlightenment is his. Siddhartha has to find his own. Govind, however, is happy with the Buddha and sticks while Siddhartha goes away on his quest.

He crosses a river and walks into a beautiful woman called Kamala who is a courtesan. He decides to try a new path to enlightenment. Kamala laughs at him. He is an impecunious monk who has nothing to offer her while her lovers are all wealthy people who come with a lot of precious gifts. He decides to create the wealth required to learn love from Kamala and she helps him get a job with a wealthy trader. Eventually Kamala teaches him the world’s pleasures. He gambles and drinks apart from having a lot of exquisite sex with Kamala.

Disillusionment strikes him again sooner than later and he is back at the river which he had crossed a few years ago. The ferryman tells him to learn lessons from the river. While he is doing that over the next many years, one day Kamala arrives there with a boy who is actually Siddhartha’s son with her. She is on the way to visit the dying Gotama. But she is bitten by a snake and just before her death she entrusts the eleven-year-old boy to Siddhartha. The boy soon abandons Siddhartha and runs away to the city. He has to learn life in his own way just as Siddhartha has been doing, the ferryman says.

The river enlightens Siddhartha on how life and death, joy and pain, good and evil are all parts of a complex whole. Nobody can teach you wisdom; it has to be found. Don’t seek, but find. Seeking implies a goal and you will see that goal. Finding is a discovery of what there is, not what you create with your imagination, fancy or anything else. “Wisdom cannot be imparted,” as the novel says. “Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else… Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.”

Siddhartha’s life has been a painful quest all along until in his old age he learnt the essential oneness of everything: the earth and the stars, light and darkness, man and beast… It is not a theoretical knowledge, however; it is an experience. The only enlightenment worth its name is an experience.

Unless your religion becomes your experience it is meaningless. Rules and Rubrics are not religion. Prayers are not. Scriptures are not. Then what is religion? Your experience of the profundity of life. An experience of a joy and peace that tranquilises your being by connecting it with the entire cosmos. You feel that like a creature in an ocean, an ocean of grace, swimming in eternal bliss, surrounded by love, light and lightness.



PS. This is part of a series being written for the #BlogchatterA2Z Challenge. The previous parts are:
14. No Exit
17. Quixote
18. The Rebel
Tomorrow: To Kill a Mockingbird

Comments

  1. Have heard a lot about this book and it's insights about the spiritual journey of self-discovery! I have it on my Kindle, will read it one of these days. Thanks for the nudge!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My pleasure, Shilpa. You'll definitely enjoy this book.

      Delete
    2. All this while, I used to think that this book was about the Buddha Himself. ��

      Thank you for the summary. :)

      Delete
    3. The title can mislead. Siddhartha in the novel is also a buddha in the end, an enlightened person.

      Delete
  2. Revisiting the story of Siddhartha and his enlightenment was very pleasant and inspirational. Didn't know about the book. Would definitely include in my wish-list. Thank you for this post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hesse is a Nobel laureate. Most of his novels excite.

      Delete
  3. Such an insightful piece of writing !! Brings to mind many questions that one seeks answers for !!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Ektaa. The book is highly inspirational. A movie was made by Hollywood on this novel with Sasi Kapoor playing the lead role.

      Delete
  4. This book is already on my bookshelf but I am surprised it never came down from there. Definitely will be interested in knowing more about his journey to spiritual enlightenment.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Once you begin reading it, you won't put it down, I think.

      Delete
  5. Each person's journey of self-discovery is their own. Nobody can help them with it. This book has some inspiring thoughts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Books and experienced people may help in the process. But ultimately the discovery is personal.

      Delete
  6. Truly the series put out by you gives us the thirst for reading and what better time than the lockdown. Thanks a million sir.

    ReplyDelete
  7. When I first read this book, I found it blasphemous because I am a Buddhist. However much later when I re-read it, I enjoyed it a lot more.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We should not let religion interpret literature. Anyway, Hesse never wrote anything against Buddhism, as you realises eventually.

      Delete
  8. I love the way you simplify these profound texts for your readers. Siddhartha is beautiful but not everyone's cup of tea. Once we took it up as a project for a new edition and it was one of the most difficult texts for me. I also find your concluding words leaving a subtle lesson very inspiring. But as you said, we each seek...No find our own wisdom.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My intention is to create a general interest in these classics. I feel as long as people don't read the classics, they remain shallow in thinking.

      Delete
  9. To each their own. Paths can be many so would be the experiences and so would be wisdom gathered, towards enlightenment. The book appears to me very philosophical, profound. Going by the narrative, I think I am not ready yet to absorb the depths of insights from the book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hesse was immensely interested in Indian philosophy. The book is thoroughly influenced by Indian philosophy.

      Delete
  10. Loved the part where it says you need to find wisdom and not seek it. It's like a personal quest and allowing that quest to be the destination. I also feel it requires a certain sense of surrender that you may never find the answer you're looking for.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, surrender is vital. Hesse wouldn't ask you to look for the answer, the answer reveals itself. But maybe - as you imply - there is no such answer: the quest is the end.

      Delete
  11. Have heard of this book.... I love the message of this book. Wisdom when imparted does sound foolish to another person. Wisdom cannot be imparted indeed. One has to learn life on his own. But yes, I thought wisdom is something you need to seek... But if that means it's like seeing it as a goal... Then well, I am not sure wisdom can be found ever. I feel it just grows and there is no end to it. It's a life long process!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wisdom is about keeping our heart and mind open. The moment we let a religion or scripture or convention or anything fixed take over, we lose the way to wisdom. These things can be guidelines. In the end, the light is always personal. We see it. It reveals itself.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Kejriwal’s Arrest in Modi’s Kurukshetra

For some mysterious reason, Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest reminded me of Haren Pandya. Maybe, because Pandya’s 21 st death anniversary is approaching (26 March). Have you forgotten Haren Pandya? He was the Home Minister of Gujarat before Narendra Modi assumed dictatorial powers in that state. Modi chose to teach humility to Pandya by making him the Minister of State for revenue. Pandya chose not to learn humility from Modi and resigned from that post in Aug 2002. Remember Gujarat of 2002? You should. A fire engulfed a train on 27 Feb 2002 killing 58 Hindu pilgrims who were returning from Ayodhya where they had gone to discover their god, not very unlike Christopher Columbus undertaking a voyage to discover India and messing it all up. What caused the fire in the train? Lord Ram knows probably. The upshot was that there was a riot in Gujarat by Hindus against Muslims. Haren Pandya is one of the BJP leaders who gave statements in many places indicting Modi for the riots. He asser