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\title{ \hfill\break \hfill\break South Asia}
\author{Introduction to Asian Religions - WC108RE\\ Martha H. Greenberg}
\date{ March 10, 1995}
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{\em Siddhartha}, by Hermann Hesse, is the story of a man named
Siddhartha, raised in he Hindu tradition, who spends his life in the
search for enlightenment, wisdom and release from {\em Samsara}.
Siddhartha is living during the life of the Buddha, and he explores and
rejects both the traditional Hindu and the newly forming Buddhist paths
for his own path.  He pursues {\em kama}, {\em artha}, and, of course,
{\em  moksha}.  He goes via two of the three acceptable paths ({\em Jnana
Marga} and {\em Bhakti Marga}), and in the end, finds {\em nirvana} in his own
way.  

Siddhartha begins his life as a ``handsome Brahmin's son'' who is the
delight of his mother and the young girls of his town for his beauty,
and of his father and the learned men in the town for his intelligence.
Govinda, his devoted friend, loves him above all else.  He studies with
the wise men, learns how to pronounce the holy {\em Om}, to recognize Atman
within himself and studies the {\em Vedas}.  He participates in the daily
ablutions, and offers sacrifices and prayers to the gods.  He seems to
be the epitome of one who is following the {\em bhakti marga}.  However, he
is discontent.  ``The ablutions were good, but they were water; they did
not wash sins away'', he thinks.  He rejects sacrifices to the gods,
since the gods are mortal and part of {\em Atman} as well.  He feels that he
has learned all of what the wise Brahmins can teach him, but that:
\begin{quotation}
``The Brahmins and their holy books knew everything, everything; they
had gone into everything---the creation of the world, the origin of
speech, food, inhalation, exhalation, the arrangement of the senses, the
acts of the gods.  They knew a tremendous number of things---but was it
worthwhile knowing all these things if they did not know the one important
thing, the only important thing?''
\end{quotation}
The ``important thing'' to which Siddhartha refers is the way to the
Self, to {\em Atman}.  When three {\em Samanas}, three ascetics, pass
through his town, he decides to join them and become one of them, and
his friend Govinda joins him.  At this point, he begins on the {\em
Jnana Marga}. 

With the {\em Samanas}, Siddhartha learns meditation and exercises in
self-denial.  He tries to let the Self die, for
\begin{quotation}
``What is meditation?  What is abandonment of the body?  What is
fasting?  What is the holding of the breath?  It is a flight from the
Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self.  It is a
temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life.''
\end{quotation}

He learns over and over to lose his Self for periods of time, but
``although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they 
always led back to it.''  As with the Brahmins, he excels in his chosen
path, but he feels even the one best at each path has not found {\em nirvana}.
When word spreads of the Buddha, and Govinda wishes to see him, the two
of them leave the {\em Samanas}, and go to hear the Buddha speak.

When they do, they see that he is truly a holy man, and listen to him
teach the four main points, and the eight-fold path.  Govinda swears
allegiance to the Buddha, and becomes one of his monks.  Siddhartha,
however, rejects this path, too, feeling that ``nobody finds salvation
from teaching.''  He also feels that the Buddhist path does not find
release from the Self, but instead transforms that Self into love for
the Buddha, and into his teachings.  So, here, the two part ways.

As Siddhartha leaves the grove of the Buddha, he experiences a sense of
awakening.  He decides that to try to gain knowledge of the Self by
fleeing from it is foolish, that one should, instead, study it.  He
rejects anyone else's teachings or doctrines, and chooses to study from
himself, from Siddhartha.  


He wanders a bit, trying to learn from himself and from the world around
him, and to listen to his internal voice.  He crosses a river with the
help of a friendly ferryman, and eventually comes to a large town.  At
the edge of that town, he catches his first glimpse of Kamala, the
courtesan.  He wants to learn of the arts of love from Kamala, but she
requires that he have money.  In order to acquire money, he goes to work
for Kamaswami, the merchant. 

It is most likely no accident that the word {\em Kama} appears at the
beginning of both Kamala and Kamaswami's name, for they are both
dedicated to the pleasure of this world.  Kamala purses the sexual arts,
and Kamaswami pursues wealth and possessions.  At this point in his
life, Siddhartha too pursues {\em Kama} and {\em Artha}. 

In this, as before, he is successful.  He becomes a wealthy man as a
merchant, and studies physical love with Kamala.  He also studied the
people around him, and viewed them as child-like beings, who were moved,
both to joy and to pain by things he viewed as being trivial.  As time
passes, however, Siddhartha becomes more and more like the people around
him. 
\begin{quotation}
``Slowly, like moisture entering the dying tree trunk, slowly filling
and rotting it, so did the world and inertia creep into Siddhartha's
soul; it slowly filled his soul, made it heavy, made it tired, sent it
to sleep.  But on the other hand his senses became more awakened, they
learned a great deal, experienced a great deal.''
\end{quotation}
The voice which had spoken to him since his awakening became silent, and
he acquired the vices of those around him, ``pleasure, covetousness,
idleness, and finally also the vice that he had always despised and
scorned as the most foolish---acquisitiveness.''  He gambled, and he lost
patience with the people around him.  He remained this way until he was
awakened by a dream.  Siddhartha then realized that he had thrown away
all the good parts of himself, and became filled with a sense of
nausea.   He realized that the only times in his life that he had
experienced a sense of joy were the times in which he had been seeking
and striving to find the correct path, and that he had not been doing
so for many years.   

Siddhartha left his life in the large town, and wandered until he
reached the river that he had crossed when he came from the Buddha.  He
was filled with pain, and wished for death.  He leaned toward the river,
in order to fall in and die, and then he heard a sound, {\em Om}, and ``at
that moment, when the sound of {\em Om} reached Siddhartha's ears, his
slumbering soul suddenly awakened and he recognized the folly of his
action.''  He became cognizant of the indestructibleness of life, and
remembered all that he had forgotten.  Then, he fell into a deep sleep,
and awoke feeling reborn.

When he awoke, he decided to stay by and learn from the river.  He found
and joined the ferryman who had previously taken him across this river.
He listened to the river, and gained peace and wisdom.  He learned from
the river how to listen, and how there was no such thing as time, and
how the river had ten thousand voices, which, if heard together,
pronounced the word {\em Om}.


\begin{quotation}
``When he now took the usual kind of travellers across, businessmen,
soldiers and women, they no longer seemed as alien to him as they once
had.  He did not understand or share their thoughts and views, but he
shared with them life's urges and desires.  Although he had reached a
high stage of self-discipline and bore his last wound well, he now felt
as if these ordinary people were his brothers.  Their vanities, desires
and trivialities no longer seemed absurd to him; they had become
understandable, lovable, and even worthy of respect.''
\end{quotation}

In the end of the book, Govinda returns to the river, and asks
Siddhartha for the truth that he has found.  Siddhartha attempts to
explain, but replies that:
\begin{quotation}
``Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.  One can find it,
live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot
communicate and teach it.  I suspected this was I was still a youth, and
it was this that drove me away from teachers. [...] Everything that is
thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it
lacks completeness, unity.''
\end{quotation}
At the close of the book, Govinda kisses Siddhartha, thereby seeing
the message of the river from Siddhartha, and he is filled with a sense of
love for everything.


Over the course of the book, Siddhartha tries out the paths and ways
that he has been taught are the ways to release from the cycle of {\em
Samara}.  Constantly, however, his inner voice tells him that such is
not the way.  Instead, it maintains that it is not possible to learn
salvation from another person.  While he thinks that these paths are
ways to live a good life, they will not lead to {\em moshka}.
\begin{quotation}
``No, a true seeker could not accept any teachings, not if he sincerely
wished to find something.  But he who had found, could give his approval
to every path, every goal; nothing separated him from all the other
thousands who lived in eternity, who breathed the Divine.''
\end{quotation}

Hinduism teaches that the way to {\em moksha} is to destroy the Self via
self-denial.  For Siddharta, it requires being so submerged in the world
that he is filled with nausea from it, in order to destroy his Self and
be reborn.  Buddhism teaches that the words of a man (the Buddha) lead
to {\em nirvana}, and that the physical world is an illusion.  But,
Siddhartha learns from the river, from nature.  He learns how to love
the world, and everything in it, and thereby finds self-peace.
Siddhartha finds the ulitmate truths by unrelenting search, and by alway
listening to the voice within himself, to his inner guide, not by the 
teachings or doctrines of any other man.

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