Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse
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Book Summary Information
Author: Hermann HesseEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Published: 2008-11-23
ISBN: 1440471045
Number of pages: 76
Publisher: CreateSpace
Book Reviews of Siddhartha
Book Review: Siddhartha
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I read Siddhartha, the classic by Hermann Hesse about a Sixth Century Brahmin's search for Enlightenment, I was a typical brain-dead hippy--a teenaged Romantic with murky ideas about the way the world actually works, to put it mildly. I liked the book then and I still like it decades later, but I see it differently now. Siddhartha's a great book and well worth reading, but I think you have to be a certain mental age to take it seriously. Romanticism appeals to the young and inexperienced. When you get older, writers like Hesse start to lose their appeal.
The book tells the story of Siddhartha, the son of a wealthy Brahmin, who forsakes the world in a quest for Illumination--the annihilation of the illusory Self and union with the One. He joins a band of forest ascetics who practice a masochistic form of self-denial similar to that of the Medieval Christian Flagellants: fasting, exposing themselves to extremes of weather and meditating in an attempt to kill sensation and rise above the attachments of the flesh. Later, Siddhartha experiments with the profane world, giving himself over to the pleasures of the senses only to grow jaded after a few years of high living. He heads back to the forest and meets Guatama, the Buddha, but decides to follow his own path, eventually discovering the secret of the Holy OM as a simple ferryman living on the bank of a river.
This is a good story told in a clear, simple style, but searching for enlightenment doesn't really grab me anymore. If you gave me the choice between enlightenment and a million dollars, I wouldn't even have to think about it. Just give me the cash. These days, it's hard not to see a character like Siddhartha as a kind of Medieval Flower Child and eastern mysticism in general seems tame and naive compared to the organic mysticism of writers like Goethe, Spengler and Schopenhauer--all Germans like Hesse, but miles above him in intellect.
Having said all that, I've got to admit that I've always liked Hinduism, an ancient religion with roots in the Vedic traditions of the Indo-Aryans who migrated into northern India sometime during the Iron Age or Bronze Age, depending on which source you read. Schopenhauer was heavily influenced by Indian philosophy, particularly the Vedas, and his masterpiece The World As Will And Representation could be called Hinduism translated via Kant into Western metaphysics. If Schopenhauer took Hinduism seriously, that's good enough for me, so I've got mixed feelings when it comes to Hesse. On the one hand, he was tapping into a profound, ancient and sophisticated tradition. On the other hand, his stuff mostly appeals to college freshmen who still think there's something "spiritual" about poverty.
Personally, I can't shake this image of Siddhartha as a kind of upper-class hippy. The son of a wealthy aristocrat, he never had to work for a living--except as a kind of game--and he had the nobility's disdain for the lower orders. He voluntarily adopted a life of poverty and self-denial in his quest to find Nirvana and the key word here is "voluntary." In a way, he was a typical product of the Brahman elite, a rich kid indulging the very ego he was trying to destroy.
It's hard not to see all this in terms of economics. The culture of wandering mystics, beggar monks and forest ascetics described in the book formed a leisure class which could only exist in an affluent society with enough disposable income to keep them alive. Siddhartha would have starved to death in a few weeks if not for the farmers, merchants and all the rest of the ordinary people lost in Samsara, the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth driven by karma and avidya, the ignorance of one's true self that leads to what the rest of us call ordinary consciousness.
Siddhartha was a business man at one point, but for most of his life, he was a professional beggar who pitied the very people who kept him alive with their charity. Seen from this perspective, he was an arrogant social parasite and his detachment from ordinary human life was almost sociopathic. For example, after his experiment with material pleasures, he simply walked away from his friends, business partner and lover (leaving her pregnant, though he didn't know that at the time) without saying a word to anyone. This wasn't exactly the picture of compassion, but compassion had very little to do with Siddhartha's program of Self-Realization. These people had served their purpose. It was time to discard them and head back to the forest.
Ironically, Siddhartha's quest to annihilate the Self was itself a form of self-absorption. If I understand the philosophy described here, our sense of individual consciousness is an illusion born out of our ignorance of our true nature. This veil of illusion--the Hindus called it Maya--keeps us from seeing that we are all one in the finite, impersonal reality called Brahman, locking us into the cycle of karma, reincarnation and endless suffering. Siddhartha was following the traditional path of meditation and self-denial in an attempt to "forget himself," so to speak, but it's hard to forget yourself when all your attention is focused on yourself.
None of this is fair to the book, of course. I'm seeing it from a 21st Century American perspective muddled by my own experience and Hesse was describing a way of life that existed over a thousand years ago. Siddhartha is both profound and hopelessly Romantic, but it's still a great novel by a great German writer, a real classic. If you're interested in Hinduism, you should check it out.
Ancient World Review
Summary of Siddhartha
This is a beautiful, large format (6"x9") new edition of Hermann Hesse's classic novel of pilgrimage and spiritual awakening, Siddhartha.Classics Books
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