Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha by
Hermann Hesse (18771962) is loosely based
on the spiritual journey
taken by Siddhartha
Gotoma and deals with
the complications,
anxieties, and ultimate
rewards of shaping
one’s beliefs.
•Siddhartha has sometimes been called a work
of reverse missionary and colonial activity,
bringing to the West the lessons of a typically
Eastern story of spiritual searching and
fulfillment.
•Being the story of one man’s religious
journey, readers should leave the novel aware
of their own beliefs and where it is they are
going in their own paths.
Brahmanism
(Ancient
Hinduism)
•Ancient Hinduism, or
Brahmanism, is based on the
Vedas, an ancient group of
prayers and hymns brought
to India by the Indo-Aryans
around 1500BC.
•Hinduism is characterized
by a strict caste system based
on heredity. People are born
into a caste and remain in
that caste throughout their
lives.
There are five castes
•Brahmins: priests who guard the traditions and rites
of Hinduism
•Kshatriyas: the nobility or ruling class, military
•Vaishyas: those who engage in commerce, such as
farmers and merchants
•Shudras: servant class established to meet the needs
of the higher castes
•The Untouchables: the lowest caste; homeless,
criminals, sick
•The Upanishads is a collection of philosophical
texts that explains the Vedas and Hinduism.
•These texts give insight into the following
Hindu beliefs:
There is a universal soul called Brahman that
constitutes the eternal, or the essence of everything.
Hindus spend their lives trying to become one
with Brahman. This goal will be accomplished
when one’s Atman, or individual soul, merges with
the universal spirit.
Through prayer, sacrifice, and pilgrimage
one can get farther away from Atman and
closer to Brahman.
Until one becomes part of the universal
essence, he or she will experience a cycle of
rebirth, or reincarnation, based on the life he
or she has lived. This cycle is called samsara.
The caste one is born into is based upon
the karma, or actions & works, undertaken in
a previous life.
Jainism
•Jainism is an ascetic faith that encourages fasting,
meditation, and extreme abstinence.
•According to Jains, one's highest goal should be
moksha, the liberation from samsara.
•To break ones earthly cycle, a soul has to be without
attachment or self-indulgence.
•This can be achieved only by ascetics who vow to
uphold: non-violence, honesty, chastity, wealth, and
attachment.
Buddhism
•For many adherents, the caste system and
constant struggle inherent in Hinduism made
Buddhism more appealing.
•Buddhism first appeared in the 5th century BC
when a wealthy Brahmin’s son, Siddhartha
Gotoma, left his family in search for a way to
end human suffering, in part reinforced by the
strict tenants of Hinduism.
•Gotoma was a sheltered prince and one day
left the safety of his palace compound to see
the world. What he found was sickness, death,
and poverty.
•In an effort to find enlightenment and
understand the world around him, he left the
palace and found many teachers to help him
understand and approach this world of
inequality.
•Through meditation,
Gotoma learned that the path
to Nirvana, the state of being
free from the cycle of endless
rebirth, could be found if one
was to break ties with earthly
love and desire.
•Once Gotoma had achieved
nirvana through his own
prayer and meditation, he
decided to spread his
philosophy. His followers
called him Buddha, or the
enlightened one.
•Buddha believed that if you lived
your life a certain way, based on
certain codes, nirvana could be
achieved.
•That code emerges from what
Buddha called the Four Noble
Truths:
1. Existence is suffering
2. Suffering is a result of desire
3. Suffering ends when desire ends
4. The way to end desire is to
follow the Eightfold Path
(guidelines for belief, conduct,
occupation, effort, etc.)
•Born in Germany, Hesse grew up as the son of Lutheran
missionaries who spent time in India.
•Hesse’s childhood was spent immersed in Eastern cultures
and that affected his work. He was raised in a strictly religious
household and could not participate in various social activites
(including dancing and sports).
•Hesse broke away from his parents at a young age after they
expressed a desire for him to become a minister. Instead, he
began his career as a scholar and writer by working in
bookshops.
•In 1916, Hesse’s wife was placed in a mental institution and
his son became very sick. As a result of these pressures, Hesse
was admitted to a sanitarium and underwent therapy.
•A combination of his
childhood and later adult
experiences prompted him
to write this novel about the
shaping of beliefs and
finding happiness.
•Originally published in
1922, the novel didn’t
become popular in the
United States until the
1960’s.
•Scholars have since studied this philosophical
narrative of spiritual exploration as an allegory for
Hesse’s experiences.
•An allegory is a genre in which the text can be
interpreted through a lens that reveals a hidden
meaning.
•Siddhartha is often seen as an allegory of
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Psychoanalysis.
•During the Vietnam War, the novel was
embraced by young readers who found in his
protagonist a reflection of their own search for
meaning in a troubled world.
•Hesse's focus on Eastern culture, as well as his
persistent theme of the individual striving for
integrity in opposition to mass culture,
appealed to a generation in upheaval and in
search of renewed values. That journey is still
prevalent in youth today.
Atman/Self/Soul
Brahman
Om/Meditation/Perfection
Driving force in humans is that of
achieving dominance over forces that try to
control us: ambition, the striving to reach
the highest possible position in life,
independence, autonomy, etc.
Driving force in humans is that of fulfilling
our urges: from basic motivations like thirst
and hunger, to more abstract needs such as
desire and gratification.
Driving force in humans is that of finding
meaning and purpose: this meaning is
discovered through creating something
lasting, and/or finding something to believe
in through which one’s life becomes
manifest.
Power
Pleasure
Meaning
Yellow: color of
Earth/falling leaves,
renunciation
Lotus: flower that
begins its life in the
mud
Ear lobes: elongated
because of heavy
earrings that were
given up (wealth)
Mudra: hand
gestures, (banning
negativity)
Halo: inner peace,
enlightenment.
Kisa and the
mustard seed.
Buddhists must think about the kind of life that they lead, in
order to live a caring and unselfish life.
Buddhists must train their minds to be calm and positive and to
be able to concentrate without getting distracted.
Buddhists must do a job to the best of their ability, that does
not harm others and is helpful.
Buddhists must understand that life involves suffering and
change. This must be overcome.
Buddhists should behave and act in ways that respect living
things, other people’s property, other people’s feelings and
themselves.
Buddhists should be able to control their minds to see things
clearly.
They should try to avoid and prevent evil and make an effort to
do good to others as well as to encourage others to be good.
They must never tell lies, or hurt others or themselves by the
things that they say.
“O Illustrious One, in one thing above all I have admired
your teachings. Everything is completely clear and
proved. You show the world as a complete, unbroken
chain, an eternal chain linked together by cause and
effect…the unity of the world, the coherence of all events,
the embracing of the big and small from the same
stream, from the same law of cause, of becoming and
dying: this shines clearly from your teachings.” p 32
Interconnectedness: Four Noble Truths
Living is suffering
Live in a way that
eliminates suffering
Suffering is result
of desire
Desire ends when
suffering ends
SELF
SELF
He knew how to recognize Atman
within the depth of his being,
indestructible, at one with the
universe. p.4
Where was Atman to be found, where
did He dwell, where did his eternal
heart beat if not within the Self? p.6
Your soul is the whole world. p.7
SELF
Om is the bow, the arrow is the soul,
Brahman is the arrow’s goal at which
one aims unflinchingly. p.8
Siddhartha had one single goal– to let the
Self die…when the self was conquered, ….the
last must awaken, the innermost of Being
that is no longer Self– the great secret! p.14
[The world] was not worth a passing glance,
everything lied, everything stank of lies, they
were all illusions of sense, happiness and
beauty. The world tasted bitter. p.14
What is fasting?...the holding of the breath?
It is a flight from the Self. It is a temporary
palliative against the pain and folly of life.
p.17
I wished to destroy myself, to get away from
myself, in order to find the unknown
innermost, the nucleus of all things...but by
doing so I lost myself on the way. p.38
SELF
The Awakened
“Yes
he thought breathing deeply,
I will no longer try to escape from
Siddhartha. I will no longer
devote my thoughts to
Atman…mutilate and destroy
myself in order to find a secret
behind the ruins…He looked
around him as if seeing the world
for the first time…beautiful,
strange, and
mysterious…Meaning and reality
were not hidden somewhere
behind tings, they were in them,
all of them.” p.39-40
Fig: sweet, perishable.
Christianity- Garden of Eden
Islam- Mohammed to followers
Buddhism- Bodhi tree
“I have learned from the river…everything comes back.” 49
“He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet
it was always there; it was always the same and yet every
moment it was new.” 102
“The river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and
at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in
the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the
present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the
shadow of the future.” 107
[The voices of the river] were all interwoven and interlocked,
entwined in a thousand ways. All the voices, all the goals, all
the yearnings, al l the sorrows, all the pleasures, all of the
good and evil, all of them together was the world.” 135
“You are clever , O Samana…You know how to speak cleverly,
my friend. Be on your guard against too much cleverness.” 35
“Be clever brown Samana!...I don’t want you to be his
servant, but his equal.” 59
“How I hated myself, thwarted, poisoned, and tortured
myself…Never again, as I once fondly imagined, will I
consider that Siddhartha is clever.” 97
“He now regarded people in a different light than he had
previously: not very clever, not very proud and therefore all
the more warm, curious and sympathetic.” 129
“He had never seen a man look, smile and sit like that he
thought. I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like
that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike
and mysterious…A man only looks like that when he has
conquered his Self.” 35
“As time went on his smile began to resemble the ferryman’s,
was almost equally radiant, almost equally full of happiness,
equally lighting up through thousands of little wrinkles,
equally childish, equally senile.” 108
“And Govinda saw this mask-like smile, this smile of unity
over the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness over
thousands of births and deaths—this smile of Siddhartha—
was exactly the same as the calm, delicate, impenetrable,
perhaps gracious, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold
smile of Gotama.” 151
“When you throw a stone into the water, it finds its quickest
way to the bottom…goes through the world like a stone
through water, without doing anything…drawn by a goal.” 60
“This is a stone…I see value and meaning in each of its fine
markings…” 145
“Then the father realized that Siddhartha could no longer
remain with him at home—that he had already left him.” 12
“His face resembled that of another person, whom he had
once known, loved, and even feared. It resembled the face of
his father…Was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid ting,
this repetition, this course of events in a fateful circle?” 132
“The love of his father and mother, the love of Govinda,
would not always make him happy…” 5
“You cannot love either…Perhaps people like us cannot love.
Ordinary people can, that is their secret.” 73
“He envied them the one thing he lacked…the sweet
happiness of their continual power to love.” 77
“I think it is only important to love the world…to regard the
world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration, and
respect.” 147
“Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf that drifts and
turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few
others are like stars which travel a defined path: no wind
reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and
path.” 72
“At the same moment he was horrified and his heart ached as
if he had thrown away with the dead bird all that was good
and of value in himself.” 82
“He realized something had left him, like the skin an old
snake sheds..” 37
“In that moment he stood still, as if a snake lay in his path…”
40
“It is not good to sleep in such places where there are often
snakes…” 91
“From under her clothes, a small black snake crawled
away…” 111
Jenny, I don't know if mama was right or if it's
Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if we each have a destiny,
or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a
breeze. But I...I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is
happening at the same time. But I miss you, Jenny. If
there's anything you need, I won't be far away.