Thoughts on Siddhartha

I finished Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse and wanted to jot down a few thoughts. Ma.tt sent this to me after I asked him for a sabbatical recommendation and I nearly gasped out loud when I got to the part where Siddhartha says, “I can think. I can fast. I can wait.” Suddenly, Matt’s X profile description came into focus. For many years, I carried poems by Hermann Hesse in my car. I’d grab it randomly usually to watch a sunset or have a date with myself at a local spot. Poems work wonders to bring you into a different headspace and I was drawn to the worn out copy I found at a second hand bookstore in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood. Hesse brings that same melodic, poetic, powerful way of writing to Siddhartha. It felt meditative to read and I found myself re-reading passages I had just read, like listening to a song on repeat.

As someone who travels around a lot, I took special note of the part of the book where Siddhartha learns the ways of the river by staying put near it. There are pros and cons to moving around vs staying put and I’ve often wondered what I’d be like if I could no longer travel.

The dynamic with Govinda, his long time trusted friend, was incredibly beautiful to me. The ways they met and parted. The instances where Govinda didn’t recognize his friend and the way they returned to each other touched me. I wonder sometimes when friendships start to fray how, when, or if a return will ever be possible.

Siddhartha’s gifts of thinking, waiting, fasting, listening underscore the unshakable core in each of us. I’ve been thinking about this on sabbatical as I ponder doing things 20 years from now I’ll be happy and thankful I did. So much of the longevity of life comes down to those intangible things no one can take from you. Some of that for me comes down to my curiosity, my determination, my compassion.

I didn’t use a pen to underline passages that struck me, opting to absorb rather than obsess. These are passages from all but one page I earmarked.

Like a veil, like a thin mist, tiredness came over Siddhartha, slowly, getting denser every day, a bit murkier every month, a bit heavier every year. As a new dress becomes old over time, loses its beautiful colour in time, gets stains, gets wrinkles, gets worn off at the seams, and starts to show threadbare spots here and thee, thus Siddhartha’s new life, which he had started after his separation from Govinda, had grown old, lost colour and splendour as the years passed by, was gathering wrinkles and stains, and hidden at bottom, already showing its ugliness here and there, disappointment and disgust were waiting. Siddhartha did not notice it. He only noticed that this bright and reliable voice inside of him, which had awoken in him at that time had had ever guided him in his best times, had become silent.

The two weeks with my computer and phone off quickly dropped me back into this voice that I let get drowned out by other people’s voices–podcasts and tv shows and phone calls and articles. Since doing that break, I’ve increasingly turned my phone off and have found myself seeking out silence to spend time with my own voice. If this is the main thing I get back in touch with during my sabbatical, I’ll be forever grateful.

Would you think, my dear, anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path? That perhaps your little son would be spared, because you love him, because you would like to keep him from suffering and pain and disappointment? But even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself.

Whew, this is a hard lesson to learn, especially when it comes to so many loved ones having kids right now in ways that don’t prioritize the experience of the kid in it all, opting for anonymous sperm donors and cutting them off from their genetic family. I want to spare those kids and them from that path but I cannot.

The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life… Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy being a part of it.

In the last few years, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the ask is to be with life as it is and how hard that ask is. How much we do to try to distract, deny, and change life as it is. How much at work we are rewarded for changing outcomes and how hard that is to turn off. Reading this book helped put me back in touch with the oneness of everything and the power in being present with life.

At the end of the book, Siddhartha struggles with longing for finding his son who has left him, just as he left his father. In that ache, he sees the ache of many. I’m a person with a lot of longings, not for possessions but for connections with people, and I felt this part of the book deeply. The vision of him running through the forest after his son and waiting for days for him to appear nearly brought me to tears. It’s often how I’ve felt navigating being born through surrogacy and the great sensitivity I have to the loss of connection to others.

I shall be paying the gift of this book forward and sending Siddhartha to a pal in California, even as a part of me wants to keep it to re-read. I’m sure it’ll come back to me when I need it.