Siddharta:
The Journey to Himself
I. Summary
Siddhartha was a Brahmin’s son and was well-loved by everyone in the village. Although he brought joy into everyone’s life, Siddhartha felt little joy himself. He suspected that he had learned all that his father and the other Brahmins could teach him, and his search for a new path lead him to leave his father and join the ascetic Samanas with his childhood friend Govinda. Three years after joining the Samanas, Siddhartha and Govinda heard rumors of a great man, Gotama, who wanders the country preaching the way to enlightenment. After hearing his sermon, Govinda stayed behind to become a follower of the Buddha.
After he said goodbye to his friend, Siddhartha crossed a river to a large town where he would spend the next twenty years of his life. He learned the art of love (but not love itself) through a beautiful courtesan named Kamala, and business from the powerful merchant, Kamaswami. He grew attached to the materialistic world of Samsara and his life as an ordinary person, but he realized that he does not possess the sense of importance with which ordinary people live their lives, and for this he envied them. Sickened and disgusted by the life he was living, Siddhartha decided to leave everything behind after he had a dream about a rare bird Kamala keeps in a golden cage.
He wandered to the river he had crossed many years ago and fell into a deep, refreshing sleep that restored his spirit and reawakened him to a new beginning. Siddhartha decided to stay by the river where he became an apprentice of the ferryman Vasudeva. The two grew together, and Siddharta learned the river’s wisdom and began to emulate Vasudeva’s contented peace. Eleven years later, Kamala crossed the river with the son she had by Siddartha while she was on a pilgrimage to see the dying Gotama. She got bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Her son was left in his care but he was spoiled and unhappy by the simple lives of the two ferrymen. He ran away, and although the heartbroken father’s chase for him was in vain, he finally learned what it is to love.
After Siddhartha achieved enlightenment by listening to the river, Vasudeva blissfully declared that he would go to the woods and join “the unity of all things”, leaving Siddhartha to be the ferryman alone. Many years later, Govinda came in search of the legendary Buddha of the river. Although he initially failed to recognize his friend, he had a vision of an infinite number of faces when he kissed Siddharta on the forehead. Overwhelmed by his love and admiration for the Budhha, Govinda fell to ground, weeping uncontrollably.
II. Critique
A.Characters
1. Siddhartha
He is the protagonist of the story and in the novel we follow him through three major parts of his life: the time of the mind, the time of the senses, and the time of enlightenment. The name “Siddhartha” means “he who attains his goal”. Like the historical Buddha, the fictional Buddha is a young Brahmin who is surrounded by love, luxury, and intelligent mentors who left his family in order to achieve enlightenment. His certainty that no teacher, not even the illustrious Gotama, could communicate wisdom to him shows that he is strong-willed and has an independent mind.
Siddhartha has many good qualities, among which are self-discipline, intelligence, and self-possession. However, he has one character flaw that is evident during the early part of his quest. Because his father and the teachers praised him so much, he had a tendency to be arrogant and proud. He doubted and judged the wisdom of the Brahmins, was bold enough to argue about the logic of Gotama’s teachings to Gotama himself, and he felt superior to the ordinary people around him. Later on, he realized that he is not at all superior to ordinary people in at least one respect. They had something he did not have, something which he envied them for: the ability to love. He eventually experienced love many years later when he met his son, and it was when he overcame the pain of loving that he achieved wisdom.
2. Govinda
He is Siddhartha’s “shadow” and childhood friend. The name “Govinda” means “the keeper of cows”, and since cows are sacred in Hinduism this suggests a religious calling of some sort. Gotama is a perpetual seeker who never seems to notice what is right in front of him; he failed to recognize his own best friend twice. His greatest goal is to follow Siddhartha and gain wisdom through teachings, rather than being independent and finding his own destiny. But Govinda does not develop as a character because all throughout the story, he tried to find enlightenment through the teachings of others instead of trying to experience it himself. As a result, he was unable to find peace.
3. Kamala
Kamala’s name is derived from Kama, the Hindu god of desire. She is a beautiful courtesan who introduced Siddhartha into the world of Samsara by exposing him to greed, lust, and love. On the surface it seems as though she is a sophisticated woman who would only receive Siddhartha if he comes to her in fine clothes and with enough money to buy her expensive trinkets. But deep down inside, she too is a seeker. She felt that she could not feel love because she practices it as an art, and when she became aware of her swiftly passing youth, she turned to the Buddha’s teachings for solace and gave her pleasure garden to him and his monks. A poisonous snakebite killed her while she was on a pilgrimage to Gotama’s deathbed, but she died in peace in Siddhartha’s presence because she realized that she had loved him all along.
4. Gotama
He is the illustrious Buddha whose most distinguishing feature is his radiant and peaceful smile. He became a beacon of hope to the people in India who were restless after years of poverty and sickness. The number of his followers increased rapidly and people gave generous donations to support their mission of spreading the word. Although Gotama looked like an ordinary monk, Siddhartha immediately recognized him for he exuded knowledge and holiness with every single gesture he made. Siddhartha admired him greatly but he did not trust his teachings because they do not really explain how to achieve enlightenment. It seems as though Gotama is a perfect example of “blissful detachment”, but perhaps he is not as detached from the world as he seems to be. Although he listened politely to Siddhartha’s argument about the crack in his logic, he might have been offended by it nonetheless because he warned the young man about being too clever.
5. Kamaswami
He is the powerful merchant who takes Siddhartha in to be his apprentice. His name means master (swami) of the material world (kama). But if you look at it closely, you will see that Kamaswami is not the master of his business, but is in fact its slave. Unlike Siddhartha, who treats business as though it were a game, he is driven by the need to earn as much profit as he can and is afraid of losses and failure. When Siddhartha left the world of Samsara, Kamaswami assumed that he was taken by bandits because he cannot comprehend why one would want to leave such a wealthy lifestyle.
6. Vasudeva
His name means “one who abides in all things and in whom all things abide” and that definition suggests that he might not be a mortal, but a god. When they first met, Siddhartha judged him to be a simpleton, but Vasudeva turned out to be the teacher who would help him point the way to wisdom. He took Siddhartha in as his apprentice and taught him to listen and hear the voices of the river. A man of few words, he only speaks when he counsels Siddhartha. Upon Siddhartha’s enlightenment, Vasudeva simply disappeared in the woods to die and become part of “the unity of all things”, since death is part of the world’s cycle.
7. Little Siddhartha
He was brought up in luxury at Kamala’s house and is a spoiled, angry and rebellious child. Siddhartha loves him very much and hoped that he would reciprocate this love, but Little Siddhartha despised his father and his boring, quiet life by the river. He eventually runs back into the world of Samsara, never to return. This is a striking similarity between father and son; Siddhartha too left home in spite of his father’s wishes and never returned. Perhaps someday Little Siddhartha will get tired of the world of Samsara, just like his father, and achieve enlightenment afterwards.
B. Setting
The forest (where he spent his Samana years), the town (where he was trapped in Samsara), and the riverside (where he eventually achieved enlightenment) are the three major settings in the story that have unique characteristics which help Siddhartha find ultimate wisdom.
In the forest, Siddhartha learned how to fast, think, and wait—three skills that were essential in his quest for Nirvana—and its harsh environment conditioned him to be without the luxuries of life. It became a barrier between him and the rest of the world because it was in the forest where he shut himself off from society, hoping that he would conquer his Self through deadening his senses and destroying his attachments to anything.
The town greatly influenced the change in his character because it was here that he learned about lust and greed. At first, he enjoyed himself in the town and treated everything like a game, but no matter how wealthy he became or how many people he met, he still felt separated from their world.
Siddhartha reached the end of his journey at the river because it was here that he eventually found peace and wisdom. With time he learned to listen to the river and heard “All the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.” Thus, the river itself was instrumental in helping him attain Nirvana.
C. Symbolism
1. potter’s wheel
A potter’s wheel is a pertinent symbolism for Siddhartha’s journey. In the end, a potter’s wheel can help create a beautiful ceramic from a cold, gray lump of clay. Similarly, Siddhartha’s experiences—which were not always pleasant—helped mold him into a peaceful and contented human being. And in the process of making a piece of art or becoming a respected person, there is a lot of shaping and reshaping that needs to be done.
2. the caged songbird
The rare songbird that Kamala owns represents Siddhartha, and the golden cage where it is kept represents the Samsara life Siddhartha was living in. Like the bird in its cage, Siddhartha was unable to free himself from this world of material wealth. The dream in which Siddhartha sees the dead bird meant that he would die spiritually if he remains in that corporeal world, and that provoked him to escape from it. When Kamala learned of his departure, she set the songbird free, which symbolized that she too was letting Siddhartha go.
3. the river
A river traditionally symbolizes rebirth, baptism and purification, and this is the purpose that it serves for Siddhartha. It was here that he began his life anew, where he heard the holy word “Om”, and where he gained wisdom. Since water is a source of life and communities are often located near bodies of water, the river also represents the flow and continuity of life, and its ability to sustain all forms of life symbolizes oneness and unity. It also stands for Siddhartha’s understanding of his life as a flowing of many faces, changing but unchanging. The river has the transitory appearances that he explained to Govinda, transitory like himself.
D. Theme: The universal desire to know oneself.
The objective of Siddhartha’s quest is to find understanding with Atman, the creator and the center of the universe that is located inside of him. However, he was only able to attain this goal in steps. The first step was when he discovered that it is the world of creation–nature — that he must understand and embrace. The next step is the realization that it is he, himself, whom he has been trying to escape, that he must learn to know. And when at last he follows the teaching of the river, he realizes that the path to wisdom and unity with the world that lies through the patient exploration of the self. I believe that the river was really trying to tell him that after he experiences everything in life, the only thing left to explore is his own inner world.
