Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse, 1922
The son of a Brahmin leaves home to seek peace and himself. He lives with ascetics, meets the Buddha, grows rich in the city, loses himself and finds his teacher in an old ferryman. Hesse's parable is about why wisdom cannot be received from other people's hands, and how it is found in your own life.
Who it is for
For people searching for themselves, tired of ready-made answers, who want to know whether the most important thing can be learned from another person.
Knowledge can be passed on, but wisdom never can.
The Son Who Stood All Night
A young Brahmin asks his father for permission to leave and join the samanas, the wandering ascetics who live in the forest without a home or possessions. The father is silent for a long time, then refuses: he does not want to hear this request again. The son does not argue. He folds his arms and stays where he is. At night the father gets up several times and sees him in the same place. To every question the son answers briefly: he will stand and wait, he will not sleep, he would rather die.
By dawn the father understands that the son has already gone and only his body is left here. He lets him go and asks one thing: if you find bliss in the forest, come back and teach me bliss. And out of the shadows by the gate comes Govinda, a childhood friend, and sets off with him.
So begins Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, a parable-novella published in 1922. Its hero, a young man in ancient India, wants to find what matters most: peace, unity with the world and with himself. He will live several lives in one. He will be an ascetic, meet the Buddha, grow rich in a great city, sink into despair and become a ferryman on a river.
The book's main question concerns you too. Can the most important thing be received from other people's hands: from a teacher, from a wise book, from a ready rule? Siddhartha several times thinks he has found the answer, and each time life turns him over. Let's follow him from the very beginning.
Three Years of Learning to Escape Yourself
Everyone loved Siddhartha: his father, his mother, the girls of the town, and Govinda was ready to follow him anywhere. Yet he himself felt no joy. He had already learned everything the wise Brahmins knew, and he saw that the teachers had given him all they had, and still the vessel was never filled. The rites of purification remained just water. They did not wash away sin, and they did not quench the thirst of the spirit.
Among the samanas he gives away his clothes, eats once a day and fasts for long stretches. He endures the heat, the cold rain and the thorns. He learns to slow his breathing and the beating of his heart. Meditation, long focused contemplation, takes him far from himself: in his mind he becomes a heron or a dead jackal. The aim of these exercises is one: to become empty, without desires, without dreams, without a self of his own.
So about three years pass. And each time, having stepped out of someone else's image, he returns to the same self. Once he says to Govinda: everything we learn here is only an escape from ourselves. The same escape, and the same short numbness, is found by the ox driver at the inn after he has drunk several bowls of rice wine.
Govinda objects, and Siddhartha asks how old the oldest of the samanas is. About sixty, his friend answers. Sixty years, says Siddhartha, and nirvana, the complete fading of suffering, has still not come to him. It will not come to us either.
When the friends announce that they are leaving, the senior samana becomes angry and curses them. Siddhartha silently looks him in the eye and, by sheer will, makes the old man bow and bless their journey. Govinda is astonished: a little more and you would have learned to walk on water. Siddhartha replies that such miracles are of no use to him.
Does this sound familiar? Weariness with yourself is often treated by switching yourself off: a series until night, an endless feed, an exhausting schedule. For a while it goes quiet, but in the morning the same person wakes up with the same question. Siddhartha understood this earlier than most: numbing yourself is not the same as finding yourself. If a habit only helps you not to feel, it is worth asking honestly what you are running from.
About the author
Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) was a German writer who became a Swiss citizen in 1923. He wrote Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game. In 1946 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
All books by this author: Hermann Hesse
Terms from the book
- meditation
- Nirvana
- Buddha
- Samsara
- Brahmin: A member of the highest caste of ancient India, a priest and expert in the sacred texts. Brahmins performed sacrifices and taught others.
- Samana: A wandering ascetic of ancient India: a person who gave up home, property and pleasures for the sake of spiritual search.
- Govinda: Siddhartha's childhood friend, also a Brahmin's son. He leaves with him to the samanas and later becomes a monk of the Buddha.
- Gotama: The Buddha's name in the novel, from his family name Gautama. In the book this is not the main hero but another man, whom Siddhartha meets in the grove.
- Atman: In Indian philosophy, the highest, true Self of a person, their deepest essence.
- Kamala: A famous courtesan from the city, from whom Siddhartha learns the art of love. Later she becomes the mother of his son.
- Courtesan: A woman who lives on her relationships with wealthy patrons. In the novel Kamala also teaches Siddhartha the art of love.
- Kamaswami: A rich merchant. Siddhartha learns trade from him and grows rich himself.
- Om: The sacred syllable of the Indian tradition, spoken in prayers and in meditation. In the novel it stands for perfection and the unity of everything.
- Vasudeva: The ferryman on the river, with whom Siddhartha lives for many years and learns to listen.
All terms
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