Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse|Review and Analysis
Hello friends. I can’t believe I didn’t read this book years and years ago. It has much the kind of Alan Watts feel that colored a large part of my college investigations into philosophy, the nature of existence and such. But I have read it now, and...wow.
I’ve actually read/listened to it about five times through now. By the way if you’re into audiobooks there’s a free version through LibriVox, I’ll link to it in the description, that is actually quite good.
I will be revealing a fair amount of details in the novel. Consider this your spoiler warning. If you haven’t read or listened to it yet, I recommend you do that if you have intention to before you watch this further. And then, well, you’ll know.
The writing style of Siddhartha makes it really enjoyable to read. I’m not sure if it’s due to the author himself or the specific translation I read, but nothing was too complicated, too convoluted as certain other philosophical writers can be. I should actually try to tackle the original German writing, that would be a nice test of my language skills. Vielleicht ich mache...oder mache ich? Vielleicht mache ich mache eine Fortsetzung in der Zukunft?
If you read the book as I did with little to no foreknowledge of the events transpiring within, you may have assumed that Siddhartha, the title character, referred to Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha in Buddhist religion and philosophy. And you, as was I, would have been wrong. Siddhartha the character was a fiction created by Mr. Hesse. However, a slightly confusing part is that Siddhartha the character actually meets Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, in his travels. We’ll get to that. First things first, Siddhartha must set out on his journey from home.
Siddhartha was raised as the son of a Brahman, which in the culture is a sort of religious/priestly caste. I’m not an expert on the subject, but caste systems at least are fairly standard knowledge. He was privileged, and basically spoon-fed wisdom, old teachings of the Brahmans and such, from birth.
But as he grew older, he was not satisfied with what he had. He was not convinced that the world of the gods and men written on parchment is all there is. On one reading, this part isn’t all that profound. It’s the common trope of the hero’s journey, the hero must leave home and seek out the novel and the unknown in order to improve their own lives and the lives of those they care about.
But thinking about it another way, there are already signs of Siddhartha’s later conclusion that teachings are all essentially useless for the purpose of attaining enlightenment. The Brahmans were constantly searching for truth and wisdom, but what evidence was there that such things could be read about in the holy scriptures? How could one connect with the self by reading what others have written?
A brief moment if you will on this concept of ‘self’. There are different meanings of the word - they can refer to vastly different things depending on context. The self in the way I believe Siddhartha is referring to is this innate sense we have of being...something. We experience the world. There is something it’s like to be us, living our lives in the bodies we inhabit.
Additionally, the concept of enlightenment is a bit tricky to pin down. Postmodernism aside, I think everyone has some idea of what truth is. Ultimately, enlightenment would mean something like an axiomatic and perfect conception of everything. It is the endgame.
And so Siddhartha left his priestly father’s house, against his father’s wishes, with his childhood friend Govinda as the two boys entered young adulthood. They sought out an aesthetic life, a monkish life, among the Samanas of the forest, in order to find enlightenment for themselves.
This is where the concepts go up a level. I dunno, it’s hard to describe, and it only gets harder to describe.
The samanas of the forest teach the young men how to bear ridiculous amounts of suffering. We’re talking cold, rain, thorny bushes, willful starvation. I can’t imagine fasting for a single day, let alone 28.
Brings into perspective the privileged lives many of us have in the twenty-first century. Though, again, Siddhartha wasn’t starving out of necessity. He could’ve returned at any point to his father’s house, and was welcomed to do so by his father before he set out.
But Siddhartha did not return to his father. He practiced constant self-denial. He wished to “not be a self anymore”, to rid himself of experience of himself.
It makes me think of the classic problem of desire in eastern philosophy, or rather wishing to not desire. It was brought to my attention by the philosopher Alan Watts, though it is a much older idea: if you desire not to desire, you yet are still desiring something; namely, to not desire anything.
In Siddhartha’s case, it perhaps can be put another way. Siddhartha the samana wished to destroy his self, his ego. But, you see, he wished to destroy his ego...with his ego. Because, no matter how much he denied his own desires, no matter how much pain he inflicted on his body, or how much meditation he practiced to become one with nature...he always came back to his ego in the end. It is that which cannot be escaped.
Siddhartha came to realize that the path of the samana, the world of the aesthetic and the monk, is simply another manifestation of the world, of sansara, which is the sanskrit word for world, of the cycle of life and death.
Upon gaining this new perspective, Siddhartha relayed his newfound enlightenment to his friend Govinda. Naturally, Govinda was upset at hearing Siddhartha’s thoughts about the so-called wise men of the forest. They had commited to the lifestyle of the samana together, and that fact in combination with being told that your work and training for the past few years was essentially pointless, made Siddhartha’s statements almost into a betrayal.
But ultimately, the two friends came to an understanding. They would leave the samanas together in search of new enlightenment.
Of particular note they found was a traveler of some renown - a wandering wise man named Gotama - or the Buddha - the enlightened one. Siddhartha and Govinda left the samanas on ultimately amicable terms in search of this Buddha.
It should not surprise you to know that Siddhartha also found the Buddha’s teachings to be lacking in…something. When Siddhartha found himself in a one-on-one conversation with the Buddha, he stated perfectly clearly and reasonably that there was not a fault he could find with the Buddha’s teachings. But something...indescribable was missing, something that could not be taught.
Put another way, what the Buddha taught is a way of living that will free you from the maximal amount of suffering and desire. The Buddha learned the truths of suffering and desire when he attained enlightenment. But...the Buddha’s teachings, do not teach the feeling of enlightenment. The Buddha’s teachings cannot give you the experience of becoming the Buddha.
Siddhartha said as much to the Buddha, as politely as he could, and carried on his way. His friend Govinda on the other hand was completely taken with the teachings of the Buddha, and so here is where the two friends parted ways. For the time being.
Siddhartha now wished to explore that part of himself he had been trying to get rid of-his ego.
The idea being that there is something necessary in the experience of desire for women, wine, gambling and things of a worldly nature. Which are widely considered sins in world religions, but which give you perspective and insight.
In order, Siddhartha meets a girl, named Kamala, becomes a merchant, gets rather rich from it, basically settles down, and years pass with Siddhartha growing older and complacent. There is one passage of note in this section - when Siddhartha is talking with Kamala farther along in their relationship, they discuss the concept of self - that there is an inner part of being one can turn to, one can reflect upon. And that not many people make use of this fact, though essentially everyone is capable of it.
I took this discussion to mean that, instead of self-reflection, most people instead choose other-reflection. The world of the childlike people as Siddhartha calls them does not require inward reflection - it is only concerned with what is or what appears to be. To lose yourself in this world is to love it - to accept it and embrace it fully. Rather unsurprisingly, Kamala accuses Siddhartha of being incapable of love in this full sense. But she doesn’t mean it as an insult, only an observation.
And perhaps then it was true that Siddhartha was incapable of love in the fullest sense. Siddhartha in his heart remained a Samana. There was a part of him that would never sacrifice itself to sansara, to the world.
In any case, as the years passed it was clear that Siddhartha would never be content where he was.
He quickly spiraled into a compulsive gambling problem and could be characterized as generally unhappy. Naturally, then, one day, Siddhartha just up and left. Left Kamala, left his work as a merchant.
Herself being wise to the world and to the person Siddhartha was, Kamala was not surprised by this turn of events.
Siddhartha wandered as a newly-minted traveler. But, he was… I suppose you could call him depressed, though I think a more accurate term would be tired. He was world-weary, sansara-weary. He had betrayed the principles of the Samanas, and now he had abandoned everything he gained in that betrayal, knowing only that nothing had satisfied his quest for enlightenment. Surely a devastating failure. And one that led him again to the idea of annihilating his ego, his self. In despair Siddhartha wished to become nothingness, and by the banks of a river made up his mind to drown.
But, as Siddartha “slipped towards death”, a strange sensation overcame him: that of the Ohm, which faced him back towards life. As described by the author, Ohm means roughly “the completion, or that which is perfect”. Again, it’s something like the concept of enlightenment: it’s the perfect conception of existence. There’s something involved in this idea, like that experience and life are immutable. They cannot be created nor destroyed. Take that as you will. Rebirth, reincarnation, even Judeo-Christian beliefs about the soul have some relation to the Ohm. If your life and your experience in this body end; well, what does that even mean? Are you just annihilated, assuming there is no afterlife? What would that experience even be like?
Clearly, it wouldn’t be like anything. As Alan Watts put it, you can’t have an experience of nothing. You’re not going to be locked up in a dark room forever and undergo the experience of that. In fact, the only thing that can happen to you after you are dead is the same sort of experience as when you were born.
Perhaps this is something like Siddhartha’s thoughts next to the river. After his brush with death and salvation by...the universe?...he happened to wake up with his childhood friend Govinda by his side. Long story short, the two catch up a bit, and then part ways again.
Siddhartha had now gone through attachment and desire and the world of sansara. What could possibly be next, if he had not already become enlightened?
By the same river in which he almost drowned himself, Siddhartha chanced upon a man he had met once before in his travels. A ferryman for the river, living a simple life alongside it.
But an ordinary ferryman, he was not. This ferryman listened to the river when it would talk to him.
And you can take that to mean that the ferryman literally heard voices in his head from the river, but I like to think of it as pure focus on the present state of nature. It’s like, when you really start to pay attention to the moment, sometimes profound realizations can manifest. And all you have to do is watch, and wait, and listen.
Siddhartha learned from the ferryman these arts, learned how to focus and also how to let go. Years passed again, and the next event of note is the chance encounter between Siddhartha, Kamala, and their son. Oh yeah, before Siddhartha left Kamala, their last night together apparently ended in a pregnancy. Even more tragic are the circumstances surrounding their reunion: Kamala was bitten by a snake and is rapidly approaching death. Kamala had become a disciple of the Buddha in passing years, and the entire reason for her travel by the river was to visit the Buddha on his own deathbed. Interestingly, as Kamala lay dying, she said to Siddhartha that she saw the same spark, the same...something - that was in the Buddha himself. And then Kamala dies, and Siddhartha is left to care for their son. Which he does rather badly.
Turns out that Siddhartha is capable of love, and loves his son so much that he cannot bring himself to punish him, nor let him go live his own life. Siddhartha at last gives in to the world, sansara, and desire, and love. Siddhartha desired to protect his son from the world and from the suffering of living life.
Naturally, his son eventually runs away, thus completing the generational cycle as Siddhartha himself ran away from his father.
Siddhartha’s ferryman companion for the past years looked on the situation with compassion, but also a deep sense of knowing. The ferryman knows. You could say that the ferryman attained enlightenment. And indeed, after conversing with Siddhartha for the final time, the ferryman enters the forest, not as the ferryman anymore, but as part of the oneness.
This will be the last “deep” topic I cover here. The final scene in the book takes place between Siddhartha and Govinda, his childhood friend from long ago. Govinda chances upon Siddhartha performing his duties by the river. Having been searching for wisdom and a wise man from whom to learn it, Govinda asks Siddhartha to impart his knowledge. But Siddhartha in so many words, refuses. Because Siddhartha’s knowledge is not knowledge that can be taught. It must be lived, it must be experienced. I personally have felt this way. Not just about like teaching work skills or whatnot, it’s more like...a feeling I get, pretty rarely, when I think about life and existence and the purpose of everything.
And I can’t, I truly can’t, put it into words. I just sometimes think, that...this is what there is. This...is what there is. This is life.
If that doesn’t make any sense, don’t worry, I don’t understand it either.
But I do think that, whatever this hauntingly indescribable feeling is, it has something to do with the oneness.
In their discussion, Siddhartha relates to Govinda the idea of suffering being necessary to enlightenment, to true understanding, by describing the teachings of the Buddha as one side of a coin, with worldly experience being the other side. But it’s all one, all part of the same oneness. The concept of heaven is necessary for the concept of hell, and vice versa. Heaven can not exist without hell, as there would be no concept of heaven as such. We know heaven in relation to hell. Thus, to have true understanding one must understand the oneness in opposites, and also understand that trying to explain this to someone is madness. Because, as Siddhartha explains, “Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness."
Yeah, so, in a way I really don’t believe I’ve taught you anything by making this video. Or perhaps, I haven’t enlightened you. But if you know, you know.
The book ends with Siddhartha demonstrating his oneness with everything, which I suppose is possible once you’ve realized the secret truth of the universe. I’m going to end my analysis there. I’m still very lost in my own thoughts. If I made any sense at all in the past twenty minutes I’m glad I was able to.
In any case, thanks for giving me this platform to talk to you. Topics of this nature are always on my mind, I’d love to hear your own thoughts on the subject. And again, these are by far the hardest things I’ve ever had to put into words. I just find them...indescribable. So I won’t judge if you come across similar struggles. But please, enlighten us!
And if you enjoy content like this, go ahead and subscribe! I’ll also be posting this audio to my podcast, so wherever you’re listening, give the show a follow. Take it easy, everyone.