Reflections - Siddhartha

The novel Siddhartha is inspirational especially depicting ones attempt at self-discovery during the time of the Buddha, a spiritual leader, referenced in the book as Gotama.

Here’s a brief summary: The story occurs in ancient India.  Siddhartha, the protagonist, leaves his Brahmin home and his father who was no longer able to satisfy Siddhartha’s quest for enlightenment. Along with his friend and follower Govinda, Siddhartha joined the Samanas, who taught Siddhartha that deprivation and giving up of all possessions lead to enlightenment.  Govinda soon joins Gotama to learn his teachings, but Siddhartha rejected Gotama’s teachings.  However, Siddhartha praised Gotama of his power of self-wisdom and self-experience and ventures anew to find himself, to know himself, to find Siddhartha.  Siddhartha makes acquaintance with Kamala who becomes Siddhartha’s teacher of sensuality and of love.  Through Kamala, Siddhartha also learns business from Kamaswami, the merchant who teaches Siddhartha.  He soon finds himself indulging in what he called “childlike” people’s behavior, womanizing and gambling until one day he plunges to self-destruction.  He ultimately gathers enough inner strength to find the early teachings he had grown up with as Brahmin as well as an ascetic Samana and finds another chance meeting with the enlightened ferryman Vasudeva.  Siddhartha decides to live with Vasudeva in the presence of the river that inspires him spiritually.  Some years later, Siddhartha meets Kamala, born again Buddhist, and his son on their way to see Gotama on his deathbed.  Tragically, Kamala dies from a venomous snakebite and Siddhartha attempts to raise his son but realizes much as how he himself was as a young boy, his son ran away to find his own path.  Siddhartha while listening to the river with Vasudeva realizes that time is but an illusion and that all of his feelings, experiences, and even the suffering and deprivation are part of something bigger which ultimately is connected in a cycle of unity surrounded by nature.  Vasudeva stated it’s his time, and that his work is done then departed into the forest.  Towards the end of his life, Govinda travels to Siddhartha upon hearing about a wise perhaps enlightened ferryman.  Govinda initially did not recognize for the 2^nd time his childhood friend Siddhartha.  Govinda then asks the now elderly Siddhartha to relate his wisdom. 

The passage I’d like to discuss is actually the last chapter titled Govinda where Siddhartha replies that every true statement has an opposite one that also may be true; that language and the concept of time people adhere to as fixed belief does not account for the wholeness of truth.  He continues to further state the oneness and how all things are connected through cyclic unity of nature. 

Govinda said: "Still, oh Siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as it seems to me. I believe in you and know that you haven't followed a teacher. But haven't you found something by yourself, though you've found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you to live? If you would like to tell me some of these, you would delight my heart."

Quoth Siddhartha: "I've had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and again. Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one's heart. There have been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness."

"Are you kidding?" asked Govinda.

"I'm not kidding. I'm telling you what I've found. Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often again. And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception."

  I agree with Siddhartha’s enlightenment and wisdom he related to simply identify and love the world in its completeness – murderer can be categorized as evil incarnate, yet the murderer may yet love, cherish, and a benefactor to his or her children.  Priests in the news, a holy man commits adultery or child molestation – a good man at the same time a sinful man; nothing is entirely good or bad, “entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana”.

"This too," spoke Siddhartha, "I do not care very much about. Let the things be illusions or not, after all I would then also be an illusion, and thus they are always like me. This is what makes them so dear and worthy of veneration for me: they are like me. Therefore, I can love them. And this is now a teaching you will laugh about: love, oh Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. To thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the thing great thinkers do. But I'm only interested in being able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great respect."

"This I understand," spoke Govinda. "But this very thing was discovered by the exalted one to be a deception. He commands benevolence, clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our heart in love to earthly things."

"I know it," said Siddhartha; his smile shone golden. "I know it, Govinda. And behold, with this we are right in the middle of the thicket of opinions, in the dispute about words. For I cannot deny, my words of love are in a contradiction, a seeming contradiction with Gotama's words. For this very reason, I distrust in words so much, for I know, this contradiction is a deception. I know that I am in agreement with Gotama. How should he not know love, he, who has discovered all elements of human existence in their transitoriness, in their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much, to use a long, laborious life only to help them, to teach them! Even with him, even with your great teacher, I prefer the thing over the words, place more importance on his acts and life than on his speeches, more on the gestures of his hand than his opinions. Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life."

Food for your thoughts; Govinda stated that the exalted one “commands benevolence, clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our heart in love to earthly things.”  Permit me to be a bit subjective; despite his acclaimed status Gotama, Buddha was born and raised as royalty, a prince until he witnessed few deaths and questioned the cycle of birth life and death at the age of 29.  I can’t begin to ponder what deprivation and suffrage he knew growing up as a prince.  Further, in search for answers to his question about life and death as well as to attain his enlightenment, he abandoned his family and his children but preached as one of his first commandments to respect and love your parents and elders.  I cannot comprehend to accept that if you want to achieve something monumental, you cannot show or believe in empathy – as long as you don’t preach empathy, I assume it is easy to abandon and move on with your goals whether your goals are selfish or selfless.  One more thing I want to add is that I agree with language and words losing its meaning or its wholesomeness in translation; there are not enough words to express certain emotions and instincts, you can only convey.