Conclusion

Note: This is the last post! Since I posted these in order, please start at the bottom-most post and work your way up!

              Siddhartha is a wonderful book in that it is so short, yet so meaninful. Hesse wastes no words and relates a simple plot. The thoughts and feelings of Siddhartha are communicated directly to the audience. Perhaps this is because the intended audience is not intimately familiar with Eastern religion and spirituality. Perhaps there were more subtleties, but they were lost in translation from German to English.

At any rate, the various themes of the text interweave just as Siddhartha’s journey progresses towards unity. Each stage of his life builds on the experience of the previous. When he joins the Samanas, he determines to leave behind the teachings of his youth and put aside physical possessions. This allows him to think for himself, and hone his mind. As a side effect, his psyche suffers – he develops arrogance. He meets the Buddha, who he admires for being childlike, and becomes determined to make himself like that. Each time he discovers a new goal, he orients himself like a laser towards it. At this point, he enters the town of Kamala and learns about love, business, and hedonism.

Here he stays for many years, undergoing the bulk of his physically and mental suffering as his outlook becomes fatalistic. This time degrades his mind enough that he loses his former arrogance, and only has his material possessions to hang on to. When he stumbles out of the down, rejecting his possessions in a haze of sorrow and ennui, he is reborn. With nothing, he can hear the voice of the universe coming through the river.

After seeking to destroy his Self, then to be the same as other people, he realizes that he is part of a collective soul. He becomes a part of a whole, all things become one, and all binaries exist together. His journey ends.

Thanks for reading my blog on themes in the middle half of Siddhartha. I hope you enjoyed it as much I as I enjoyed writing it, and gleaned a bit of my feelings.

What is Suffering? Is It Necessary?

Roman Emperor Decius, expressing anxiety and worry
 (My most common source of suffering)

Suffering is one of a few universal experiences. Everybody suffers. In that sense, it’s definitely a necessary part of life. But what exactly is it, and is it necessary to gain enlightenment?

          My conception of suffering is an ongoing process of pain or discomfort – any negative feeling – that is unique to each person. Suffering is caused by the obstacles we face throughout the narrative of our lives. We all suffer from physical pain, of course, but we don’t all suffer the same emotionally. I know that identical words mean different things to different people. But does this pain bring learning with it?

          Siddhartha is about suffering; the protagonist suffers a series of failed ventures, and just when he loses everything, he realizes he has finally attained the elusive peace he was after in the first place. When he is a Samana, he tries to numb himself by experiencing physical deprivation, but his arrogance increases and his body suffers. When he is a rich man, he tries to evade physical suffering for more than twenty years by enjoying the wealthy lifestyle, but his disgust with the world grows and his mind stagnates. He takes multiple decades to finally cast off his attachments and understand his own path. 
          Finding peace doesn't imply a lack of suffering. It seems painfully affirming of the omnipresence of suffering when Siddhartha hurts after Kamala perishes:“You have suffered, Siddhartha, yet I see that sadness has not entered your heart” (114). By contrast, his life of indulgence made him desire to “rid himself with one terrific heave of these pleasures, of these habits of this entirely senseless life” (82). But notice that Siddhartha doesn't let pain "get to him" in the former example. In the second, his pain was self-perpetuating; he didn't learn or improve from it. According to Siddhartha, suffering is necessary to escape the cycle of folly and pain, Samsara, and become enlightened. 
          Suffering is hard to deal with. For the last four years or so, maybe even my entire life, I tried to get away from suffering. I thought that by improving myself emotionally and physically, I would become "happier" and not suffer; I would reach some sort of Nirvana (fitting, isn't it?) where I would never have to feel bad again. But, of course, each time I think I'm there, emotional pain comes back at some point and throws me off balance. I think Siddhartha and its message of universal suffering - even in one who has reached ultimate peace - adds to my knowledge of the life experience and informs my future plans. Never shall I try to escape suffering altogether; only to avoid needless suffering. 

What Do Possessions Add to a Person's Identity?

Possessions are only valuable insofar as a person can add value to them. Possessions for their own sake are meaningless; they are attachments that can hinder us from seeing our real path. They can certainly be distracting and exciting, but in the end they don’t solve anything. Never have I understood that better than right now. My power’s been out for about four hours, and will probably stay out for another day or two. Normally, I’d be surfing the internet, chatting with friends, etc. at this time. But I can’t do those things right now, and I feel happier than I have in a while. Those are all meaningless activities that are great distractions but don’t add anything to me. After indulging in them for a long time, like I’m wont to do, I feel disappointed and tired. Without electricity, I can read books I’ve been meaning to finish, play music without distractions, and just think.

Here enters a distinction between meaningless possessions and important possessions. Would I have my guitar just to have it, just to look at it? No. I have it because I can play it – I can add meaning to it. And I can use it to express myself, which is a very meaningful activity.

Siddhartha starts to take pride out of just knowing as much as he does – he is arrogant and superior, even though he is not actually deriving meaning from this. He tries to laugh in the face of normal needs – food, sleep, comfort. He is attached to his erudition and self-denial. When he becomes a rich merchant, he acclimatizes himself to privileged person’s lifestyle – beautiful clothes, scented baths, and bounteous meals – but none of these things have any point. He is attached to these material objects. It’s extremely easy for him to fall into this self-perpetuating game. “This game was called Samsara, a game for children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable played once, twice, ten times,” Siddhartha realizes (84). Then he realizes the “game” is over with. 


At right is a wonderful video I've watched many times about the game Monopoly and its relation to life. 
That’s why he is so peaceful when he throws away everything and then hears the Om coming from the river. He’s finally gotten rid of his mental and physical attachments and actually found something he can add meaning to – the universe. He realizes the oneness of everything and sees his place there. The river becomes his only possession besides the bare necessities, and he takes on the persona of the river internally. Externally, he is seen only as a sage, eccentric ferryman. 

How Do We Mature? Children?

          Children are important in Siddhartha. They represent the enlightened and the misguided, the best and the worst of humanity. This binary has the effect of othering. When Siddhartha first meets the Buddha, he remarks on how much he is like a child. He approaches life with no needs or anxieties, only curiosity and peace. Siddhartha feels he is “at last free again and [standing] like a child beneath the sky” after he has his epiphany (97). Siddhartha also thinks his materialism was “childish.” He also describes his face as “equally childish, equally senile” as Vasudeva’s face. This shows the symmetry of binaries; everything exists together with its opposite.

Does life really have such symmetry? It seems like we can work and work, only to regress to an earlier state. We start out with nothing, begin to acquire more and more, and then gradually lose it as we age. I’ve grown more and more jaded with the world, and sometimes I wish I could summon my child self and be satisfied for a whole day by a toy, a book, or a video game. But there’s a societal normal that people should constantly pursue the next goal, whether it’s friends, grades, college, a job, or a promotion. This discourages experimentation and locks us into one mode.

          I believe that growing up involves making certain mistakes and losing certain things. And if one thinks about life, it really has symmetry. We start out with nothing, begin to acquire more and more, and then gradually lose it as we age. Possessions start to degrade or mean less as we get older and older. Maybe growing up is just the process of learning how to deal with loss and degradation so we can accept our fates. Siddhartha certainly has to lose everything to become a peaceful child again.

Reading this book, I was envious of Siddhartha and the Buddha for attaining such a state. I think that even for scientific exploration, my field of choice at this point, a childlike viewpoint is critical. Einstein or Copernicus wouldn’t have proposed their radically new theories if it weren’t for their fresh, childlike approach to problems that were considered solved for thousands of years. Here’s a video of one of my favorite thinkers and scientists, Richard Feynman, on looking at things in a childlike way.

Self-Knowledge: Is it everything?

Siddhartha is obviously a unique individual. Although he was born into a priestly class, he leaves to pursue the wandering life of an ascetic. Then, he leaves to see the Buddha, rejects his teachings, and moves on to find the town where he meets Kamala and learns about business and suffering. He’s always seeking his Self, capitalized because it’s associated with Atman – the unified, collective soul of the universe in Hinduism.

Still, it’s interesting to see how Siddhartha’s views on the Self evolve during his journey. Early in his asceticism, 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” (47). Here, he has already realized his discontent with erudition, but he clearly still hangs on to the Brahmin studies of his youth. He views the journey to self-realization through the lens of the Hindu scripture. After his revelation he realizes he sought “Brahman and revered the eternal in Atman” (96). I think Siddhartha means that his singular goal of Atman knowledge hindered him because it didn’t let him learn from what was going on around him. He was so focused on reaching his goal that he forgot to pay attention to the vileness of his actions and the arrogance of his thoughts. And yet, perhaps Siddhartha also teaches us that this foolish suffering is necessary to find peace – but that’s a topic for another post!

To me, it seems Siddhartha actually destroys his Self to finally feel at one with the world. A part of him that is arrogant, selfish and acquisitive perished after his years of suffering and epiphany by the river.

He asks, “Was it not his Self, his small, fearful and proud Self, with which he had wrestled for so many years, but which had always conquered him, which appeared each time again and again, which robbed him of happiness and filled him with fear?” (99).

This is reminiscent of the concept of ego death, which has been variously attributed to psychedelic and emotional experiences throughout the years. It’s pretty likely that Siddhartha experiences something like this. He goes through so many attachments, so much suffering, and finally loses it all, but somehow finds himself. To go back to the original question of this post, it seems that knowing the self is all that is necessary to lead a meaningful life. Through the river, Siddhartha learns about himself and the universe simultaneously. Here’s a fascinating video narrated by Jeff Foster on ego death. It also touches on the nature of seeking and the nature of children – it’s hard to keep each post about one theme when they’re all so interrelated! 

While learning about himself, Siddhartha seems to lose his identity. Every form of him is “transitory” and all previous forms have died (100). So what is Siddhartha’s identity, anyway? By the end of his journey, he seems to exist only in his name and in his thoughts. His epistemology has totally changed through the transition from knowing only about himself as a separate person to knowing about the whole of which he is part. He listens to the river only and finds himself among the infinitude of voices in the universe. In a sense, he has learned his place, and in doing so, realized that he doesn’t have an independent identity. 

Is Schooling Really Worthwhile?

Is conventional education really worthwhile? Let's put aside the traditional normal of success, and the institutions that enforce it. Place yourself in seventh century BC Nepal. We're not talking about the "get a job, make a good life" success, but personal, individual enlightenment. Can education really help us find a meaningful path?

 It's clear that Siddhartha comes to reject the hegemony of outside teaching:

I will no longer try to escape from Siddhartha... I will no longer study Yoga-Veda, Atharva-Veda, or asceticism, or any other teachings. I will learn from myself, be my own pupil; I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha (39).

          Siddhartha’s main qualm with education is that he thinks that teachers, no matter how skilled, cannot impart their actual experience. Siddhartha thinks about only spiritual teaching. In his time, education usually meant learning and interpreting the religious texts. Nowadays, education teaches us about all kinds of topics. Most of the topics we learn in school aren’t spiritual and don’t really tell us how to live our lives, and that’s a key distinction. Siddhartha wants to find his own method to live, while we want to gain knowledge. In his case, he has a valid point. No one else’s philosophy can exactly match a unique, dynamic person.

          Even so, there are big parallels. No teacher can really make a student care about a subject; that excitement and commitment has to come at least partially from within the student. That said, teachers can certainly open the door for a student’s interest. Since teachers have the power to disseminate knowledge, they can greatly influence the identity of students. I know I wouldn’t have become interested in mathematics if it weren’t for my pre-calculus teacher, who allowed me to realize that math can be interesting. Likewise, my English teacher can recommend me Siddhartha, but my own experiences let me derive meaning out of it. (It really was a great book, and I’m grateful it was on the list!)