Chapters 3-4:
Gotama + Awakening
Feraco
Search for Human Potential
11 October 2011
Evaluate Your Teachers!
 What are some qualities of excellent
teaching and teachers?
 Pay attention
 Make connections
 Make content interesting
 Make an effort
 Now compare teaching with parenting
 The same qualities – both positive and
negative – are present in both
 Both offer guidance and experience, but
neither can offer wisdom
 That doesn’t make their information
irrelevant
 In fact, their information is necessary in
order to place experiences in meaningful
contexts
The Best of the Best
 The best teachers in Siddhartha
aren’t the ones who try to force
others to change or follow
 They’re the ones who provide
Siddhartha with room to gain
experience and learn from it, for
better or worse
 Gotama
 Vasudeva
 Kamala
Bodhisattva vs. Bodhisattva
 As we mentioned earlier, Gotama
and Vasudeva are bodhisattvas, but
the latter has a more profoundly
positive impact on Siddhartha’s life
 Gotama’s natural instinct is to
teach, and the people most drawn to
him are the ones who crave
teachers
 This craving is something
Siddhartha would argue will
prevent them from ever achieving
their goal
One Can Learn Much
 Vasudeva, whom we meet in “Kamala,”
takes on a larger role near the story’s
end
 Yes…it is a very beautiful river. I love
it above everything. I have often
listened to it, gazed at it, and I have
always learned something from it. One
can learn much from a river.
 Rather than try to guide Siddhartha
through explicit instructions or
commandments, he merely provides
Siddhartha with a space to explore
and experience life in all its forms
The Man by the River
 As a ferryman, he gets to see people
from all walks of life
 Contrast that with Siddhartha’s views of
the world and its people at the beginning
of Chapter 2 – scornful, ignorant rejection
vs. curiosity
 During the time that Siddhartha
spends living with him, he occasionally
offers up some advice, but doesn’t
mind that his younger companion
won’t follow it
 He knows Siddhartha will mess up
badly, and he’s OK with that for two
reasons
Flashlights
 Firstly, experience makes things
“realer” – more meaningful to the
person
 Remember the flashlight…
 Secondly, one has to have a range of
experiences – good, bad, and
everything in between – in order to
truly live
 At some point, teaching becomes a
way of sheltering others – of
preventing mistakes that would occur
otherwise
 Sheltering doesn’t work; it only serves
to fight against the Universal Truths
 The Brahmin tried sheltering Siddhartha
 Govinda does it to himself!
Inevitable Epiphany
 It’s therefore necessary for
Siddhartha to strike off on his own
 The epiphany in “Awakening” is, in one
sense, inevitable
 In “Gotama,” the chapter’s first
encounter immediately sets the tone
for what follows
 Govinda wants to hear the woman talk
more about Gotama
 As though he could gain something by
listening to someone else talk!
 Siddhartha just wants to move along
The Catalyst
 Both discover that the path to Gotama
is being walked by many others
 When they reach the spiritual leader,
it’s not too surprising that Siddhartha
finds a way to resist continuing with
him, nor that Govinda proves to be an
eager follower
 After all, Gotama provides both men
with the ideal catalyst for further
action
 The nature of his presence requires each
man to make a decision that reflects his
personality
The First
 Still, Siddhartha is impressed by
Gotama
 After all, it’s the first time he’s met a
man who’s achieved what he aims to
achieve
 It’s not that he doesn’t believe in what
Gotama says (although he does point
out the loophole) – he does, at least to
an extent
 But he protests that Gotama cannot
possibly transfer the understanding
he reached under the bo tree – the
“secret of what the Illustrious One
himself experienced – he alone among
hundreds of thousands”
Insufficiency
 Siddhartha believes that no
doctrine can exceed Gotama’s
 Since Gotama’s teachings proved
insufficient for him, it stands to
reason that no teachings will
suffice
 No other teachings will attract me,
since this man’s teachings have not
done so.
 Siddhartha and Govinda are two
sides of the same coin, but their
opposite approaches to life and
discovery drive them apart here
Renounce Connection
 When Govinda chooses to follow the
Buddha, he renounces human
connections
 This is something Gotama preaches, but
something Siddhartha insists at the end of
the book is inconsistent with how the
Buddha lives his life
 Notably, he doesn’t realize that he’s
doing so, that his decision will cost
him his companion
 But that’s partly a reflection of
Govinda’s approach: follow others in
search of understanding without
bothering to check for understanding
first
Thirsty for Knowledge
 In fact, Govinda prefers to follow
others until someone/something else
convinces him to follow it instead
 Had he considered his decision more
carefully, not only would he have
realized the cost of his choice, but he’d
have heard Gotama say something
significant
 The teaching which you have heard,
however, is not my opinion, and its
goal is not to explain the world to
those who are thirsty for knowledge.
The Point of Portrayal
 There’s nothing remarkable about
Govinda’s approach
 Indeed, it’s how most people approach
their lives – which was the point of his
portrayal
 However, such an approach ultimately
won’t work for him, nor does it for
Siddhartha
 Notice that Govinda does make
decisions; it’s just that his decisions
make him more passive rather than
active
 He is, as Siddhartha describes him, an
excellent shadow for greater men
Cleverness
 Cleverness implies intelligence for gain,
particularly immediate gain
 You’re clever when you can trick someone
into doing your bidding, for example, or
puzzle your way out of a difficult situation
 Connotatively, wisdom is more placid,
peaceful, and unfocused on gain – it’s meant
to be shared (if not transferred…if that
makes any sense)
 It requires a wide, long-term, all-encompassing
perspective here
 The Buddha warns Siddhartha to “be
on…guard against too much cleverness,” but
Siddhartha doesn’t heed his advice
 His view of the people is the town bears the mark of
a man who considers himself cleverer, if not wiser,
than all others
 Thus Siddhartha leaves the grove, ready for
his awakening
Out of the Grove
 “Awakening” finds Siddhartha leaving the
Jetavana grove (a special sort of mini-forest, a
cultivated wilderness) and initially intending to
head back to the forest, only to realize midchapter that he cannot go home
 He is no longer the person he was when he left, and
nothing waits for him at the other end of that path
 Indeed, Siddhartha realizes that “he [is] no
longer a youth; he [is] a man. He realize[s] that
something ha[s] left him, like the old skin that a
snake sheds. Something [is] no longer in him,
something that had accompanied him right
through his youth and was part of him: this was
the desire to have teachers and to listen to their
teachings.”
 Next, he decides, “I am no longer what I was, I am
no longer an ascetic, no longer a priest, no longer
a Brahmin. What then shall I do at home with my
father? Study? Offer sacrifices? Practice
meditation? All this is over for me now.”
To Study the Self
 He realizes that his attempts to
destroy the Self stemmed from his
fear and misunderstanding of it, and
that said attempts had left him
further from enlightenment rather
than closer
 He decides that he is separate and
different from everyone else, and that
he must no longer try to escape from
himself
 Intending to learn how to understand
himself better, he decides to leave the
natural/semi-cultivated world behind
in favor of something new – which, as
it so happens, is the town across the
river…
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 The first forty years of life give us the
text; the last thirty supply the
commentary. – Arthur Schopenhauer
 My mother said to me, “If you are a
soldier, you will become a general. If
you are a monk, you will become
Pope.” Instead I became a painter, and
became Picasso. – Pablo Picasso
 Until I saw Chardin’s painting, I never
realized how much beauty lay around
me in my parents’ house, in the halfcleared table, in the corner of a
tablecloth left awry, in the knife
beside the empty oyster shell. – Marcel
Proust
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