Siddhartha (Modern Library Classics)

by Hermann Hesse

Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf as it twists and turns its way through the air, lurches and tumbles to the ground. Others, though—a very few—are like stars set on a fixed course; no wind can reach them, and they carry their law and their path within them.

Distant and faint was the sound of the holy fountainhead that had once been near, that had once murmured inside him.

Much of this had remained with him, but one thing after another had settled to the bottom and been covered with dust.

Slowly, as moisture seeps into the dying tree trunk, slowly filling it up and making it rot, worldliness and lethargy had crept into Siddhartha’s soul, filling it slowly, making it heavy, making it weary, putting it to sleep.

Like a veil or a thin fog, weariness descended upon Siddhartha, slowly, a bit thicker each day, a bit hazier each month, a bit heavier each year.

Never before had it seemed so strangely clear to Siddhartha how closely sensuality was linked to death.

Just as someone who has eaten or drunk too much vomits it up again in agony and yet is glad for the relief, sleepless Siddhartha yearned for a monstrous wave of nausea that would rid him of these pleasures, these habits, this whole meaningless existence and himself along with it.

He had felt then, in his heart, “A path lies before you to which you are called; the gods are waiting for you.”

then too he had felt it, amid all the thirst, amid all the pain: “Strive on! Strive on! You have a calling!”

This game was called Sansara, a game for children, a game to be played sweetly perhaps, once, twice, ten times—but again and again?

The life he had been living these many years was now over and done with; he had drunk it to the lees, sucked the last drops, filled himself with nausea.

Was there any sort of filth with which he had not yet defiled himself, any sin or folly he had not committed, any barrenness of soul he had not brought upon himself? Was it still possible to live?

What reason did he have to continue walking—walking where, and with what goal?

The world of shapes is transitory, and transitory—highly transitory—are our clothes, the way we wear our hair, and our hair and bodies themselves.

He loved everything and was filled with joyous love for all he saw, and he realized that what had so ailed him before was that he had been able to love nothing and no one.

Now that I am no longer young, now that my hair is already half gray and my strength is beginning to wane, I am starting over again from the beginning, from childhood!

I have had to pass through so much foolishness, so much vice, so much error, so much nausea and disillusionment and wretchedness, merely in order to become a child again and be able to start over.

How stupid it is, this path of mine; it goes in loops. For all I know it’s going in a circle. Let it lead where it will, I shall follow it.

After all these years of idiocy, you for once had a good idea; you did something; you heard the bird singing in your breast and followed it!

Already as a child I learned that worldly desires and wealth were not good things. I have known this for a long time but have only now experienced it.

Had this bird not died within him, had he not felt its death? No, something else had died within him, something that had desired death for a long time.

His Self had crept into this priesthood, this pride, this spirituality, and made itself at home there, growing plump, all the while he thought he was killing it off with his fasting and penitence.

He had died, and a new Siddhartha had awoken from sleep. He too would grow old; he too would have to die someday. Siddhartha was transitory, every shape was transitory.

He saw that this water flowed and flowed, it was constantly flowing, and yet it was always there; it was always eternally the same and yet new at every moment! Oh, to be able to grasp this, to understand it!

Vasudeva attached neither praise nor blame to what he heard but merely listened. Siddhartha felt what a joy it was to be able to confide in such a listener, to entrust his life, his searching, his sorrow, to this welcoming heart.

“Have you too,” he asked him once, “have you too learned this secret from the river: that time does not exist?”

Siddhartha’s previous lives were also not the past, and his death and his return to Brahman not the future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has being and presence.”

The years passed without anyone counting them.

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

But Siddhartha went out and sat before the hut, listening to the river, with the past eddying around him, touched and enfolded by all the ages of his life at once.

But he loved him and preferred the sorrow and worry of love to the happiness and peace he had known without the boy.

You do not force him, do not strike him, do not command him because you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than violence.

Or do you really believe that you committed your own follies so as to spare your son from committing them? And will you be able to save your son from Sansara?

What father, what teacher, was able to protect him from living life himself, soiling himself with life, accumulating guilt, drinking the bitter drink, finding his own path?

But even if you died ten times for him, you would not succeed in relieving him of even the smallest fraction of his destiny.”

Now he too felt for once in his life, late as it was, this strongest and strangest of passions, was suffering because of it, suffering terribly, and yet he was blissful; he felt somehow renewed, somehow richer.

He is doing what you yourself failed to do. He is providing for himself, choosing his own path.

For hours he squatted there listening, no longer seeing any images, sinking into the emptiness, letting himself sink with no path before his eyes.

He now saw people differently than he had before, less cleverly, less proudly, but more warmly, with more curiosity and empathy.

It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, a capacity, the secret art of being able at every moment, without ceasing to live, to think the thought of Oneness, to feel Oneness and breathe it in.

Was not this repetition a comedy, a strange and foolish thing, this constant circulation in a preordained course?

The river laughed. Yes, it was true, everything returned again that had not been fully suffered and resolved; it was always the same sorrows being suffered over and over.

He could sense how his pain and his anxieties were flowing away from him, felt his secret hopes flow away and then come back toward him from the other side.

And all of this together—all the voices, all the goals, all the longing, all the suffering, all the pleasure, everything good and everything bad—all of it together was the world. All of it together was the river of occurrences, the music of life.

Upon his face blossomed the gaiety of knowledge that is no longer opposed by any will, that knows perfection, that is in agreement with the river of occurrences, with the current of life, full of empathy, full of fellow feeling, given over to the current, part of the Oneness.

Siddhartha said, “What could I have to say to you, Venerable One? Perhaps this, that you are seeking all too much? That all your seeking is making you unable to find?”

Seeking means having a goal. Finding means being free, being open, having no goal.

You see, my Govinda, here is one of the thoughts I have found: Wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to pass on always sounds like foolishness.”

One can pass on knowledge but not wisdom. One can find wisdom, one can live it, one can be supported by it, one can work wonders with it, but one cannot speak it or teach it.

Everything is one-sided that can be thought in thoughts and said with words, everything one-sided, everything half, everything is lacking wholeness, roundness, oneness.