Book Review
Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse
R. Rakwana
Life is a timeless river, whose secrets can be learned but not taught. In this classic story, Herman Hesse offers a parable of one man's journey through life; a journey in search of "the one important thing".
In an age of great wealth and prosperity in many countries around the globe and insolvency and suffering in others, where the world has recently borne witness to unprecedented death and destruction and is just beginning to understand the divided world views which makes one person's search for liberty perceived as an attack on another person's ideological and political sovereignty, this book offers a brilliant [and much needed] glimpse into the essences of leading a beautiful life.
This search takes the protagonist, Siddhartha, from an early childhood, caught in the rapture of formal education and religious enlightenment, through a circuitous path of self-imposed poverty to self inflicted richness, and then on to old age where he comes to terms with the concept that "knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom."
Having searched his entire life for a prescription that would lead to a complete understanding of "self", Siddhartha ultimately achieves his enlightenment, not from proscribing to a specific set of dogmatic rules, but because he had lead a supraliminal and explorative life. And in doing so, he concludes that time is an abstraction that detracts from understanding the non-linear relationship between birth and death, and realizes the importance of being one's own teacher through a process of cultivated trial and error.
The irony of his long journey, is that just as he reaches these conclusions, his unconditional love for his son keeps him from dealing with him with the equanimity with which he has dealt with his own life's escapades. It is here that Hesse's character Vasudeva makes painfully obvious the cyclical process of life, and the need for each individual to forge their own path of enlightenment:
Do you really think that you have committed your follies in order to spare your son them? Who protected Siddhartha the Samana from Samasara, from sin, greed and folly? Could his father's piety, his teacher's exhortations, his own knowledge, his own seeking protect him? Which father, which teacher, could prevent him from living his own life, from soiling himself with life, from loading himself with sin, from swallowing the bitter drink himself, from finding his own path? Do you think, my dear friend, that anybody is spared this path? Perhaps your little son, because you would like to see him spared sorrow and pain and disillusionment? But if you were to die ten times for him, you would not alter his destiny in the slightest. (98)
The application of this book to 21st century American life is as poignant as it is depressing. Caught in a world where earthly possessions are the benchmark of success, the bigger questions beckoned by Hesse's beautifully crafted story are all to often mistakenly dismissed as heresy by a culture where personal enlightenment is only a paycheck away.
Every American should read this book at least twice. It offers insight into the difficulties inherent in the necessary search for happiness and love. The positive message behind Herman Hesse's masterpiece is resounding during these uncertain times.
Hesse, Herman, Siddhartha. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1951. 122 pages.