Siddhartha

by Hermann Hesse

And it was this very thing, so it seemed to him now, which had been his sickness before, that he was not able to love anybody or anything.

“Things are going downhill with you!” he said to himself, and laughed about it, and as he was saying it, he happened to glance at the river, and he also saw the river going downhill,

always moving on downhill, and singing and being happy through it all.

But what a path has this been! I had to pass through so much stupidity, through so much vices, through so many errors, through so much disgust and disappointments and woe, just to become a child again and to be able to start over.

No, never again I will, as I used to like doing so much, delude myself into thinking that Siddhartha was wise!

That he had felt this despair, this deep disgust, and that he had not succumbed to it, that the bird, the joyful source and voice in him was still alive after all, this was why he felt joy,

“It is good,” he thought, “to get a taste of everything for oneself, which one needs to know.

No, something else from within him had died,

Was this not his self,

his small, frightened, and proud self,

Was it not this, which today had finally come to its death,

Now Siddhartha also got some idea of why he had fought this self in vain as a Brahman, as a penitent. Too much knowledge had held him back, too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rules, to much self-castigation, so much doing and striving for that goal! Full of arrogance, he had been, always the smartest, always working the most, always one step ahead of all others, always the knowing and spiritual one, always the priest or wise one.

Into being a priest, into this arrogance, into this spirituality, his self had retreated, there it sat firmly and grew, while he thought he would kill it by fasting and penance.

Now he saw it and saw that the secret voice had been right, that no teacher would ever have been able to bring about his salvation. Therefore, he had to go out into the world, lose himself to lust and power, to woman and money, had to become a merchant, a dice-gambler, a d...

It seemed to him, as if the river had something special to tell him, something he did not know yet, which was still awaiting him.

How did he love this water, how did it delight him, how grateful was he to it! In his heart he heard the voice talking, which was newly awaking, and it told him: Love this water! Stay near it! Learn from it!

But out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand this! He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it stirring, a distant memory, divine voices.

distress. This was among the ferryman’s virtues one of the greatest: like only a few, he knew how to listen.

Without him having spoken a word, the speaker sensed how Vasudeva let his words enter his mind, quiet, open, waiting, how he did not lose a single one, awaited not a single one with impatience, did not add his praise or rebuke, was just listening.

These people are rare who know how to listen.

See, I’m no learned man, I have no special skill in speaking, I also have no special skill in thinking. All I’m able to do is to listen and to be godly, I have learned nothing else.

Most of all, he learned from it to listen, to pay close attention with a quiet heart, with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without a wish, without judgement, without an opinion.

Vasudeva was no friend of words; rarely, Siddhartha succeeded in persuading him to speak.

“did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?”

“Yes,

“It is this what you mean, isn’t it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?”

Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.”

Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one’s thoughts?

“And do you know,” Siddhartha continued, “what word it speaks, when you succeed in hearing all of its ten thousand voices at once?”

Vasudeva’s face was smiling, he bent over to Siddhartha and spoke the holy Om into his ear.

Often, they sat in the evening together by the bank on the log, said nothing and both listened to the water, which was no water to them, but the voice of life,

There was something about this ferry and the two ferrymen which was transmitted to others, which many of the travellers felt. It happened occasionally that a traveller, after having looked at the face of one of the ferrymen, started to tell the story of his life, told about pains, confessed evil things, asked for comfort and advice. It happened occasionally that someone asked for permission to stay for a night with them to listen to the river.

No, there was no teaching a truly searching person,

Kamala

Siddhartha the boy, her son,

little Siddhartha

“Now I see that your eyes have changed as well. They’ve become completely different.

She thought about her pilgrimage to Gotama, which wanted to take, in order to see the face of the perfected one, to breathe his peace, and she thought that she had now found him in his place, and that it was good, just as good, as if she had seen the other one.

the feeling of eternity, completely filled every aspect of his being.

Deeply he felt, more deeply than ever before, in this hour, the indestructibility of every life, the eternity of every moment.

“Oh yes, he too is called upon, he too is of the eternal life. But do we, you and me, know what he is called upon to do, what path to take, what actions to perform, what pain to endure? Not a small one, his pain will be; after all, his heart is proud and hard, people like this have to suffer a lot, err a lot, do much injustice, burden themselves with much sin.

Don’t you shackle him with your love?

But look, how shall I put him, who had no tender heart anyhow, into this world? Won’t he become exuberant, won’t he lose himself to pleasure and power, won’t he repeat all of his father’s mistakes, won’t he perhaps get entirely lost in Sansara?”

And could you in any way protect your son from Sansara? How could you?

Were his father’s religious devotion, his teachers warnings, his own knowledge, his own search able to keep him safe? Which father, which teacher had been able to protect him from living his life for himself, from soiling himself with life, from burdening himself with guilt, from drinking the bitter drink for himself, from finding his path for himself? Would you think, my dear, anybody might perhaps be spared from taking this path?

Never before, Vasudeva had spoken so many words.

But now, since his son was here, now he, Siddhartha, had also become completely a childlike person, suffering for the sake of another person, loving another person, lost to a love, having become a fool on account of love. Now he too felt, late, once in his lifetime, this strongest and strangest of all passions, suffered from it, suffered miserably, and was nevertheless in bliss, was nevertheless renewed in one respect, enriched by one thing.

He did sense very well that this love, this blind love for his son, was a passion, something very human, that it was Sansara, a murky source, dark waters.

Much more the boy would have liked it if he had been threatened by him, if he had been abused by him.

After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son,