- "سدهارتا" انسان متعطش للمعرفة، يبحث عن الحقيقة المطلقة، او الحقيقة التي تجعله متناغماً مع الكون من اجل الوصول الى السكينة التامة او النيرفانا.

- تبدأ الرحلة مع "سدهارتا" الشاب البرهمي (والبراهمة هم طبقة الكهنوت عند الهندوس، وهذه اطبقة من الطبقات العليا) الذي يحس ان الجواب والحقيقة في مكان آخر، بعيداً عن التراتيل والأضحية والمعتقدات الهندوسية، فيتجه الى "السامانية" ويعيش مرتحلاً معهم ويكتسب خبراتهم لكنه لا يلبث ان يتركهم ويتجه نحو "جوتاما" والتعاليم البوذية، الا ان هذه لم تقنعه ايضاً فيعود لسبيله وبحثه من جديد. تنتهي المرحلة الروحية هنا ومع التقائه ب "كامله" (كان يجب ان تترجم كاميلا لعدم الخلط اللفظي) يبدأ الخط المادي من البحث، حيث تذيقه "كامله" الحب الجسدي بأنواعه (وعلى ما يبدو فهي خبيرة كاماسوترا) وتعرفه الى التاجر الذي يأخذه معه ليعلمه تجارته. المرحلة المادية تنقسم الى قسمين: المرحلة الأولى آثار الروحانية تتحكم بالمادي (لا يعنيه مال وجاه ونساء وخسارة وربح وتجارة) ثم المادة تسيطر وتخنق الروحانية (فيتحول الى سكير لئيم مادي..) تنتهي هذه المرحلة بإستيقاظه اثر رؤية تنبع من ذاته التي بقيت صافية في كمونها. ينتهي الخط المادي ههنا ويعود الى الطبيعة بشكل انطباعي ثم يتعرف الى الملّاح الذي يرشده (ولا يعلّمه) الى الطريق الصحيح للتنوير والوصول الى النيرفانا.

- هذه الرحلة من البحث تعجّ بالمتناقضات لكنها تشكل وحدة تامة بمجملها، فكان لا بد من التدرّج في كل هذه التجارب للوصول الى النيرفانا وبذلك يضع "هيسة" المفهوم الإيجابي للتدين بالبحث الشخصي عن الحقيقة ( ص167:"الحكمة لا تقبل التوصيل، والحكمة التي يحاول الرجل العظيم توصيلها الى الآخرين، تبدو دائماً حمقاء!")، بينما يعطي المثل الآخر - اي التدين السلبي او التلقيني - من خلال "جوفيندا" صديق ومرافق "سيدهاترا".

- القصة الفلسفية تحمل رمزيات عديدة، اهمها "النهر" الذي يرمز الى الحياة ذاتها او الصوت الكوني بتعبير آخر، وحيث ان ماءه هم البشر الذين يتعاقبون والصور المتغيرة (الماء ذاته وليس نفسه الذي يجري مراراً وتكراراً) ( ص56:"ان المعنى والحقيقة لا يحتجبان في مكان ما وراء الأشياء... وانما هما في الأشياء، فيها جميعاً")، الملّاح الذي يتراوح دوره بين المعلم والمتنور فهو لا ينقل الحكمة بل يدعو اليها فقط (بدعوه للإستماع الى النهر).

- استطراداً فإن القصة ذكرتني بالرحلة التي قام بها سلمان الفارسي من بلاد فارس الى العراق والشام ثم الى الجزيرة العربية واعتقد انها افضل واعمق بكثير من هذه القصة المتخيلة.

- الترجمة كانت جافة جداً واغلب الظن انها سيئة ولم تستطع نقل لغة "هيرمان هيسة" (لأن هناك فرق هائل بين هذه الرواية ونرسيس على سبيل المثال) ويا ليت يقوم اسامة منزلجي بترجمة هذه القصة!

Old pre-read review

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future..... But why would one need to do that anymore when one has found enlightenment.

[ Adapted from here.]

Έχοντας διαβάσει τόσες διθυραμβικές κριτικές, ακολούθησα τον Σιντάρτα στο πνευματικό του ταξίδι που δεν είναι μία ευθεία γραμμή, τουναντίον έχει λοξοδρομήματα. Διδάσκει την ορμητικότητα των φόβων, την φλογερή τροχιά του έρωτα (η ιστορία με την Καμαλα με άγγιξε βαθύτατα) καθώς προσπαθεί να βρει τη χαμένη ενότητα του Είναι του. Δεν προσπαθεί να μεταδώσει σοφία γιατί η σοφία του ηχεί πάντα σαν τρέλα. Μόνο γνώση μεταδίδει για να ταξιδεύουμε σαν αστέρια σε σταθερή τροχιά, ανεξάρτητα από την πνοή του ανέμου. Ο Σιντάρτα μου επιβεβαίωσε αυτό που υπέθετα, πως οι άνθρωποι-παιδιά έχουν την ικανότητα ν' αγαπήσουν. Αυτό είναι το μυστικό μας, η δύναμη και η αδυναμία μας.

For years, and when I say years it is actually more like decades, I have seen this classic book from time to time but I have never read it. It's not a very long book, but I just never took the time to try it out. One of my Goodreads groups is reading it this month, so I figured that now is as good a time as any to give it a go.

I decided to listen to it and it kind of felt like I was listening to a story around the campfire. The biggest thing it reminded me of was when I was a kid at the museum in Cincinnati hearing Native American legends about how the constellations got in the sky. I am not sure how close to any actual lore Hesse's version is, but it was interesting to listen to.

I saw some comments out there about this book being slow. It certainly isn't action packed and there are many philosophical digressions that move away from the story into a spiritual realm. These parts of the narrative can be slow, but they do add to the atmosphere of Siddartha's journey.

Do I recommend it? If you are really into stories about philosophy and spirituality, yes. If you are into reading all the classics, yes. Otherwise, maybe or maybe not - I can't say for sure.

In life we all look for meaning, we all look for something to give us a purpose and, in essence, a reason to actually be alive. Nobody wants to get to the end of their journey and realise it was all for nothing, and that their days were utterly wasted. So how do we find this meaning?

n  “One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.”n

We must find our own peace. Siddhartha followed the teachings of others and it granted him very little happiness. He meets Buddha, or a Buddha, and he realises that the only way he can achieve the same degree of serenity is to find it himself. The words of the man, as wise as they may be, are just air; they are not experience: they are not one’s own wisdom granted through trial. So he takes his own path, albeit an indirect one, and finally awakens his mind into a sense of enlightenment.

But, in order to do so, he must first realise the true state of emptiness. And, of course, to understand emptiness one must first experience temporary fullness; thus, he walks into the world of the everyday man. He indulges in their pleasure, gains possessions and takes a lover. He forms attachments and begets a household of servants and wealth. Through experiencimg such things, he learns that they are shallow and transitory; they will never create the feeling of lasting happiness within his soul, so he walks out once more with the full realisation that peace can only come from one place: himself.

“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.”

He experiences oneness with his own thoughts, with everyone else and anything that resides in nature: he becomes enlightened, though only through returning from the darkest of times. Suffering exists, suffering will always exist, and it is how we deal with this suffering that defines us: it is how we pick ourselves up afterwards not letting it ruin our lives, and those around us, that makes us stronger. In this Hesse capture something extremely difficult to put into words, which is something the novel frequently recognises.



How does one accurately define these vague concepts of belief? He doesn’t. So we rely on allegories to teach us these ideals, to make us understand that happiness is not equitable with materialism, and to make us realise that seeking something too ardently may mean we miss it altogether. Seeking the meaning of life is not the answer, living life, the life of peace and compassion, is. Siddhartha follows the vibrations of his soul, the sound of the river, and it takes him exactly where he needs to go.

As a student of Buddhism, as a struggling practitioner, I found this book extremely helpful. It cuts through all the rhetoric, the arguments and debates, and gets to the very heart of the matter itself. This is a book I will carry with me through life; this is a book that has so much wisdom to impart, and now the third book to truly impact me individually.

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This classic novella by Herman Hesse tells the story of a man's self discovery.  The eponymous Siddhartha (not to be confused with Lord Buddha, whose name was also Siddhartha) leaves home searching for meaning of life and a true teacher, and goes through different phases from long days of meditation to a life of lust and material indulgences, understands love and liberation before finally finding peace. It's primary influence is the Buddhist philosophies. It can be a brilliant influence to someone more philosophically inclined than me, and it is so to thousands of readers all over the world. For me personally it did not strike any special chord. May be because growing up in India, I was always indirectly exposed to the Buddhist philosophies of liberation and peace, therefore this did not provide me a lot of new fodder for thought. Or may be because I am just too materialistic to be truly moved by it. Either way, it wasn't for me.

Mythical and poetic, lyrical and rhythmic.

Siddhartha lives as the jewel of his Bramin family. A promising scholar, a curious and reflective young man.

Once, Samanas had travelled through Siddhartha’s town, ascetics on a pilgrimage, three skinny, withered men, neither old nor young, with dusty and bloody shoulders, almost naked, scorched by the sun, surrounded by loneliness, strangers and enemies to the world, strangers and lank jackals in the realm of humans. Behind them blew a hot scent of quiet passion, of destructive service, of merciless self-denial.

A visit from wandering Samanas transforms him and sets his lifepath. Siddhartha begins his journey, turning through many cycles of existence. He lives several different lives, floating through and absorbing the waters of experience. He realizes this path of experience, along with his resume-listed core strengths: Thinking, fasting, patience, leads him closer to enlightenment. Siddhartha understands other people cannot teach anything of real value - You are your only teacher and you must be receptive and willing to learn.

This novel is a story about a man named Siddhartha who spends a lifetime seeking ultimate enlightenment. The story occurs during the time when the Buddha is still alive, so one would think there’s no need to seek further enlightenment after meeting him. Siddhartha is satisfied that the Buddha has reached ultimate enlightenment, but it’s impossible for his experience to be satisfactorily communicated to others by way of his teachings.

Thus Siddhartha decides to move on to a life filled with a variety of experiences all the while seeking the meaning of truth—ascetic beggar, sex with a woman, luxurious life of wealth, simple life as a ferryman, love and care of a son, and the experience of his son leaving. So finally Siddhartha is on his death bed, he has finally achieved enlightenment, and his friend asks him what insight he has learned from life. Siddhartha replies with the following:

“… this is now a teaching … the most important thing of all. To thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. But I’m only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect.”

His friend responds to this by saying that this is pretty much the same as what the Buddha taught; Why not simply be his follower? To this Siddhartha replies the following:

"I know that I am in agreement with Gotama (a.k.a. the Buddha). How should he not know love, he, who has discovered all elements of human existence in their transitoriness, in their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much, to use a long, laborious life only to help them, to teach them! Even with him, even with your great teacher, I prefer the thing over the words, place more importance on his acts and life than on his speeches, more on the gestures of his hand than his opinions. Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.”

So there you have it—enlightenment!

Hermann Hesse’s 1922 book feels absolutely timeless and ageless – almost like a religious or spiritual text, not a work of fiction.

It’s about the lifelong journey of Siddhartha, a Brahmin’s son who leaves the comfort and intellectual stimulation of his home life to become a wandering ascetic, renouncing all possessions. After meeting the famous Buddha, Gautama, he realizes he wants or needs more, and so crosses a river with the help of a ferryman (who lets him ride for free - saying he’ll be back and will pay him in another way) and goes to take part in city life. There, he embarks on an extended affair with a beautiful courtesan and works for a ruthless businessman. He has mind-blowing sex, amasses wealth and drapes himself in fine clothes, but he’s unfulfilled. In fact, he’s in despair. Then, revisiting the river he was at years earlier, and meeting the same wise but uneducated ferryman who helped him cross, he has a sort of epiphany. People from his earlier life eventually find him at the river, and he comes to a fuller and richer understanding of the nature of time, life, suffering. And he reconnects with a childhood friend, now a Buddhist monk, who recognizes in Siddhartha true enlightenment.

What an unusual but powerful book: quiet but full of profound things to say about what’s ultimately important in life. I can see how the book would have resonated with generations of young people in the 1960s seeking meaning in a society clamouring after wealth and power.

It makes you think about essential things: How important are possessions? What’s the purpose of pain and hardship? Does learning only happen in the classroom?

It’s a slim volume, but it’s written in a clear, timeless prose, and it’s packed with wisdom. I’ll definitely be making repeat journeys to it in the years to come.

Eh.

When I edited my high school newspaper, we produced a popular feature called “Phot-O-pinion” where we asked a question about a (sometimes) pressing topic, quoted the student or teacher and snapped their pic. For one issue, at the suggestion of my journalism teacher, I asked teachers to name a book that changed their lives. I can’t remember all the responses, but without hesitation, one teacher told me, “Siddhartha, because it showed me a completely different perspective on life.”

A few months later, one of my favorite teachers passed out a few books for everyone on the last day of English class. “You should read these books at least once in your life,” she said. She passed out Confessions of An English Opium-Eater by Thomas DeQuincey, The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, Civil War Poetry and Prose by Walt Whitman, Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read all of them just yet, but I finally got around to picking up Siddhartha and, well, it ended up changing my life. I think if I read this after my high school graduation I would have stopped after a certain page. I think if I read this on some breaks from college I would have tired of some of its overwrought philosophical pretenses. But for various reasons, now was the right time for me to read it. I don’t want to go into detail why it changed my life because the beauty of the book is that you can take what you want from it. I wouldn’t have learned anything from the book if I tell you exactly why it changed my life. I won’t be giving up every single material possession I own after reading this book, but I will be thinking differently about what really matters in life and how to deal with (and ultimately transcend/learn from) disappointment, rejection, and anything else that makes life suck sometimes.

A quote from one of my favorite passages:

“At times he heard within him a soft, gentle voice, which reminded him quietly, complained quietly, so that he could hardly hear it. Then he suddenly saw clearly that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past him and did not touch him.”

Siddartha is an allegory; a story wrapped around the ultimate premise 'Happiness for Dummies'. Okay, maybe not so simplistic, but it deals with the attainment and nature of happiness nonetheless.

Premise

Like its eponymous protagonist, the novel breaks down in several milestones or turning points that signal the development of the story and the growth of the character, marking the changes that have been wrought at each stage by happenstance or when the central character experiences, what they generally call, 'awakening.'

Now, I have generally never been fond of that word; I look upon it with slightly cynical eyes that have been tainted long ago with the endless and ubiquitous New Age slogans and advertising jingles and other such byproducts of a spiritually-hungry-but-commercially-eager-to-cash-on-in-that-hunger culture that is so pervasive. For that reason, any word (especially buzzwords like awakening, purpose, destiny, soul - to name just a few, which must surely count as eternal favourites of those who specialise in Spiritual Quests) - any word bearing resemblance or connection to this New Age school of thought immediately props up red flags in my mind and, in response to that, my mind reciprocates my sentiments with a certain two-syllable word, namely, 'bullshit'.

However, being as wary of this as I am, I am compelled to acknowledge that Siddhartha does not bear resemblance to those works proffering liberation and claiming to offer answers to your spiritual questions, at least, not in the typical sense. Hesse is not trying to sell you happiness in a How-To-Guide book form wrapped with a ribbon on top. Hesse isn't trying to sell you anything. What he is doing, though, is telling a story that puts this search, this spiritual hunger in an allegory form and examines the ways it comes about and the way it is resolved.

A historical perspective

We must put Siddhartha in its historical context to achieve a full perspective towards understanding this work. Herman Hesse was a German writer who, aside from being a pretty depressive kid and showing signs of serious depression even in childhood, was also the winner of Nobel Prize in literature. Bam. His parents had served as Christian missionaries in India. His exposure to the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, renewed his interest in Indian culture. Hesse's work is informed with tenets of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy and, in the case of Siddartha, forms the setting of the story itself.

Siddhartha is important because, published in 1922, way before the Beat movement and the hippiedom of the 60s, it was the first major work dealing in Eastern philosophy and thought written in the West. What many of the world now knows or may appreciate as Buddhist/Zen philosophy as a school of thought, Siddhartha put forward first. Hesse influenced the work of Jack Kerouac, and many others of the Beat Generation ahead of its time. It witnessed a resurgence in the counter-culture movements of the sixties.

Underlying themes and meaning

Hesse examines the search for spiritual fulfillment by having his characters embody aspects of personality and living that are unified, at various stages, by the protagonist Siddhartha himself. Govinda, like Siddhartha, is a seeker and then a Samana, or an ascetic who has renounced all wordly possesions. Kamala, the woman who instructs Siddhartha in the art of physical love and later, the mother of his child, embodies hedonism and sensuality. Kamaswami, the merchant, signifies the chief example of the 'child people', the materialist. The ferryman, Vasudeva, exemplifies quiet understanding and wisdom, just like the Gautama Buddha, the Sublime One.

At various stages of his life, Siddhartha experiences the different aspects of these different personalities himself; he changes and grows as a person by becoming and unbecoming these traits. He is first and foremost, a seeker, who leaves his home to become a Samana, an ascetic giving up the ways of 'the child people'. He is then the lover, basking in the pleasures of love and sex. Then he is the trader, the materialist, consumed by worldly woes. He is the gambler, giver and taker of riches, losing sight of what he was before. Then he is the suicidal depressive who has reached a breaking point, a crises in life, realised that the journey he traced out until this point left him empty, hollow, broken. Then he is the awakened, the conscious, the curious. He is the child, born-again, who laughs to himself realising that he has been given a blank slate to begin anew.

Siddhartha's journey is one of trial and error. He sets of with the one goal of escaping the 'ego', the vanquishing of the Self to achieve oneness with the universe, the Brahman. Yes, that sounds a bunch of wish-washy terms strung together to sound fancy. Admittedly, they wouldn't look that great on a resume, or seem out of place in daily conversation. 'What do you want to do with your life?' 'Oh, you know, just vanquish the Ego and stuff...and become one with the Universe. Can you pass the ice-cream, please?' Yup. However, let's give the Brahmin kid a break.

To that end, he traces out a path that wavers between two extremes - two opposite paths that might lead to one destination that is his goal. The first path, of course, is the one of renouncing of the worldly wealth, the path of the Samanas, the path of hermits, one of patience and fasting and suffering and simple living to overcome material wants and excesses. The second path, which he embarks upon after meeting Kamala, is directly opposite to his former one: instead of giving up pleasures and possessions, it encourages him to pursue them with active desire. When it turns out that this was not working either, Siddhartha runs away from it too and reaches that dreaded dead-end, suicide. This breakdown is the culmination of another lesson, heralding a new beginning, a clean start.

Siddhartha's mistakes are numerous and his teachers many; from his Samanas, the Buddha, Kamala, Kamaswami, the ferryman, and ultimately the river. His loves, much like his paths and means to the journey of fullfilment, know many faces and forms. At one point in the novel, Siddhartha asserts to Kamala: 'Maybe people like us cannot love,' and yet in time he himself comes to experience the many aspects of love. He knows platonic love, in relation to his best friend Govinda, brotherly love suffused with profound respect to Vasudeva, romantic love to Kamala, and familial, fatherly but unrequited love to his son.

Conclusion

Compared to other books tackling existential angst such as the likes of The Stranger by Albert Camus, or Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Siddhartha is different in that it is uplifting and somberly optimistic in tone. Hesse's prose is languid and well-written, with a tendency to become simple at times, but not simplistic. The central message of the novel is exemplified in the final meeting of Siddhartha and Govinda, fraught with the difficulty of Govinda seeking to glean understanding from the learning of Siddhartha, and Siddhartha asserting its impossibility: Wisdom cannot be taught. Knowledge can be passed on, but wisdom cannot. That Siddhartha spent his entire life trying to learn it himself, and made many mistakes along the way, but fumbling and falling, made it through, underlies this claim.

Different people will interpret novel differently. Some might think it is trite, some might think it changed their life. It didn't change mine. But it gave me some nice things to think about.