Siddhartha is the book of the mind of the German Nobel laureate Hesse, which inspires people to find themselves.
Transcending the boundaries of time and space, it has become a classic by hippies, downstrokes, rockers and Chinese readers.
The novel's protagonist, Siddhartha, is a fictional seeker whose story is similar to that of Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism.
He explored the path of knowledge in his own way, going through three stages of transformation.
In the first stage, he gave up his worldly life and practiced asceticism;
In the second stage, he indulges in the joy of red dust, and eventually gets tired of everything and even wants to commit suicide;
In the third stage, he worked as a boatman by the river, found inner peace, and finally realized the truth.
Siddhartha reveals two issues of knowledge and life, the realm and the self.
Siddhartha's life is a process from "self" to "self", from the small self to the greater self, from the opposition between man and nature to the harmony between man and nature.
It is a path full of hardships and challenges, but also a path to wisdom and happiness.
This article has a total of 7945 words
The reading time is about 9min
Mind mapping
Siddhartha
Siddhartha was written by Hermann Hesse and was written 100 years ago in 1921.
In the past 100 years, the world has changed dramatically, and wars have been repeated repeatedly.
After each war, there is "Hesse fever" around the world, and young people read his works in search of answers to life.
Siddhartha is Hesse's shortest novel, just over 70,000 words, but it has left a deep mark on a century of spiritual history.
Its influence transcends time and space, and it has been loved by hippies, Beat Beaters, rock musicians, and Chinese readers, and has become a "book of the heart" that inspires people to find themselves.
The protagonist of Siddhartha is a fictional seeker whose name is associated with Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism.
Shakyamuni's real name is Siddhartha Gautama, Gautama is the surname, and Siddhartha is the first name.
The legend about Shakyamuni is probably like this:
He was a prince of India, who lived a privileged life, but he did not know that there was suffering in the world, until he walked out of the city gate and saw the truth about birth, old age, sickness and death, he was shocked, so he gave up everything and embarked on the path of asceticism, and finally became a Buddha.
However, this Siddhartha is not a story about Shakyamuni, but a novel.
Hesse created a seeker named Siddhartha and told the story of how he sought enlightenment and became a Buddha in his own way.
In this book, Siddhartha's path is different from Shakyamuni's path, a path full of hardships and challenges.
In reality, Buddhism provides a set of explanations for the world, hoping to liberate sentient beings from samsara.
In the novel, Siddhartha's thought eventually transcends Buddhism and moves towards the integration of the world spirit.
Today, we will take a look at the story of Siddhartha from three aspects, and see how this independent thinker and seeker spent his life in three stages.
In the first stage, he chooses to be born as a young man, abandons everything, and abstinence;
In the second stage, he is a middle-aged man who chooses to enter the WTO, who is lustful and drunk, and abandons everything again, and even wants to commit suicide;
In the third stage, he is an old man with nothing, working as a boatman by the river, finally finding inner peace and finally realizing the truth.
Okay, let's follow in the footsteps of Siddhartha and see how he was born, entered the world, found himself, became himself.
promotion
Siddhartha, a young man born into a noble Brahmin family in ancient India, possessed remarkable appearance, strong physique, elegant manners, profound wisdom and strong will.
Siddhartha
His life was focused on studying, debating, meditating, and meditating, immersed in the exploration of life's ultimate questions.
In the eyes of family and friends, Siddhartha was an impeccable model who was destined to become a great Brahmin magi and monk.
However, deep down, Siddhartha did not feel happy.
Although he was well versed in the teachings of his fathers and other brahmin wise men, he felt spiritual emptiness and spiritual restlessness.
The main intellectual dilemma he faced was the understanding of the "Atman" (meaning "self" and "the nature of the universe").
Siddhartha's challenge is to achieve the ideological integration of the "self" and the "essence of the universe", to achieve the unity of heaven and man.
Siddhartha meditated on the problems of the Atman every day, gradually becoming dissatisfied with the traditional sacrificial life, and he longed to find his own way and become a "rebel".
The day has finally come.
When the three pilgrim samuns passed through Siddhartha's city, Siddhartha decided to go with them and pursue an ascetic life.
Siddhartha's best friend Jovinda, who is also a Brahmin, has been inseparable since childhood and is a very good friend.
Siddhartha and Giovinda
Giovinda was convinced that Siddhartha was destined to become a god, and that he was his friend, bodyguard, and shadow.
When Giovinda learned of Siddhartha's decision, he was shocked, but Giovinda chose to go with him and pursue the ascetic life together.
After becoming a samun, Siddhartha lived an extremely ascetic life in the bamboo forest, eating raw food only once a day and wearing the simplest clothes.
While begging, he witnessed various life situations:
Birth, death, aging, sickness, love, and betrayal, thus realizing the nothingness of desire, happiness, and beauty, and the suffering of all beings.
Siddhartha's practice is centered on self-denial, which aims to renounce the self and suppress desires, and its practice includes meditation and self-asceticism.
In meditation, he attains a state of separation from himself by slowing down his breathing and heartbeat, for example, he experiences the life and death of a vulture or the decay of a jackal.
Self-asceticism is the practice of learning to overcome pain, hunger, thirst, and fatigue through voluntary suffering, and through these practices, Siddhartha underwent a profound spiritual exploration and transformation.
Through both meditation and asceticism, Siddhartha realized the importance of self-restraint.
However, he gradually realizes that this is not the way to the ultimate truth.
He found that even though he repeatedly abandoned himself, he could never get rid of the troubles of individual existence, and he was still struggling in the sea of reincarnation.
He expressed this opinion to his companion Jovinda:
Shaman's teachings are only an escape from the self, and do not really relieve people from the emptiness and pain of life, but only a temporary forgetting.
This made Siddhartha slowly feel suspicious and bored.
After the third year of practice, a piece of news spread throughout the country:
A sage named Gautama appeared, and he was the Buddha, an enlightened being who had attained nirvana, who was teaching the Dharma in the Acropolis and had many disciples.
Attracted by the news, Giovinda suggested that Siddhartha go with him to see the Buddha's teachings, and they left their lives in Shamen and embarked on a new journey.
After arriving at the Acropolis, they met Buddha Gautama.
He is described very vividly in the novel:
He (Gautama) was expressionless, but he seemed to have a gentle smile hidden in his heart. His every movement reveals peace and perfection. ”
Gotama
It is particularly important to note that the Buddha has been described as "not imitating others" and that he has realized himself, reaching the realm that all seekers can only dream of.
After listening to the Buddha's teachings, many pilgrims took refuge in him, including Giovinda, but Siddhartha did not.
Confused, Giovinda asks Siddhartha if he is still hesitating, and Siddhartha tells him that he has decided to leave alone and continue his quest.
Although Siddhartha did not question the Buddha's teachings, Siddhartha himself felt that he did not want to take refuge in Gautama yet, so he still followed his inner thoughts and decided to leave alone.
While walking alone in the woods, Siddhartha met Gautama by chance and expressed his thoughts to him:
Although the Buddha's teachings were almost perfect, Siddhartha believed that true enlightenment should not come from teachings alone, and the Buddha responded that he should be careful not to be too conceited.
Siddhartha was deeply touched by the Buddha's deep gaze and smile, and wished he could do the same.
But at the same time, Siddhartha realized that despite his quest to give up his ego, he had rediscovered himself when confronted by Gautama.
However, Siddhartha believed that the true Atman (universal truth) was in the self, and so he decided to continue to explore the self and live out his true self.
This is the end of the first half of the novel.
The first half depicts Siddhartha's journey from thinking about himself, giving up himself, and finally returning and exploring himself.
It's a challenging path, but it's a must-go for seekers.
Siddhartha sought many mentors, and when he met Gautama, a seeker at the pinnacle, he was inspired but chose to continue his quest.
He realized that true wisdom could not be taught, but could only be experienced and explored.
Siddhartha's journey reminds us that the quest for wisdom was difficult, but it was this quest that shaped his growth and enlightenment.
Entry
Siddhartha, after abandoning his faith and mentor, seemed to have undergone a rebirth.
Once, he was indifferent to the real world and pursued the philosophy of "seeing mountains instead of mountains, and looking at water instead of water".
But now, he has stepped into a new realm of "seeing mountains as mountains, and watching water as water".
He looked at the world like a newborn baby, and he was curious about the beauty and mystery of all things in the world.
Of course, he also decided to experience for himself the temptations of worldly life, such as lust, beauty, money, and power.
Siddhartha crossed a river and entered the city, and when he first tasted the worldly life, he was first attracted by beauty.
At first sight, he fell in love with the famous courtesan Gamora, and decided to learn the art of love from this peerless beauty.
However, his courtship was met with ridicule from Gamorra.
Gamora told him that in order to become his lover, he had to dress in fine clothes and hold a generous gift.
She introduced Siddhartha to Gamashhwami, the richest merchant in the city, and Siddhartha began to learn the way of doing business from the wealthy merchants.
Siddhartha was known to be intelligent and knowledgeable, and this was also true in worldly life.
For him, all this was just a game, just a matter of mastering the rules, so he quickly amassed wealth, but it was only for the sake of pleasing Gamora, and he did not have much enthusiasm for wealth itself.
Gamora taught him everything about love, but he never really understood the nature of love.
During this phase, Siddhartha indulged in the mundane world and learned about lust and money.
His life was full of work and pleasure, but he still had the soul of a monk in him, observing life as a spectator.
He always remembered the teachings of Buddha Gautama, and he told Gamora that he had known such a perfect awakened being, and that was the world-honored Buddha Gautama.
Most people are like fallen leaves in the wind, which will eventually return to dust, while a very small number of people are like the stars in the sky, running according to the laws and trajectories of the heart, not being shaken by the outside world, and Gautama is such a perfect awakener.
Siddhartha himself, even if he was so sober, was still a mortal after all.
Over time, he became extremely wealthy but also almost degenerate, indulging in nighttime revelries, drinking, and gambling.
Siddhartha and Gamorrah
Although Gamora had fallen in love with him, he spent his days having fun with the dancers, and Siddhartha lived out the self he had ever hated the most:
A wealthy prodigal son.
As time passed, Siddhartha's face was filled with excessive lust and deep weariness.
He was saddened to find that over the years he had tried to be a "man of the world," but that he had always had in his heart the noble goal of a seeker, which made him even more impoverished and unfortunate than those of the poor and unfortunate world.
He realized that this secular game had to be ended.
That night he left Gamora and went out of the city.
Soon after, Gamora found out that she was pregnant with Siddhartha's child, and the pain of abandonment reminded her of the sage Gautama that Siddhartha had spoken of, and she took refuge in Buddhism.
Siddhartha, who was so disgusted with his sins that he came to the river and attempted suicide.
Just as he was about to jump into the river, a sacred "Om" sounded, the most fundamental syllable in Sanskrit, representing the first sound of the universe.
He realizes that his mission is not yet complete, and his soul is awakened.
In the ancient Indian tradition, practitioners recited the Vedas in order to comprehend the Atman, the concept of the unity of man and nature, the essence of the self.
Siddhartha, who reawakened to a deep sleep on the riverside, woke up to find his old friend Giovinda sitting across from him.
But the funny thing is that Giovinda was only afraid that he would be hurt by the beast and stayed to protect him, only thinking that this man was dressed in gorgeous clothes and had the face of a rich man who was always healed and tired, but he did not recognize him as Siddhartha.
Chauvin achieved Siddhartha's mirror of self-reflection.
Faced with the mirror of Giovinda, Siddhartha began to reflect on his life choices and gain new realizations.
He pondered his strange and tortuous journey in life.
Although he knew from an early age that indulgence and wealth were not good things, he also realized that he could only truly understand this by experiencing it himself.
Siddhartha began to understand that only after a complete depravity could he completely abandon his ego as a rich man and a prodigal son and rediscover his inner "Atman".
At this time, he was no longer self-loathing, but his heart was full of joy.
It was in this way that he embarked on a new stage of his practice.
His experience on the riverside is not only a reflection on the past, but also a reorientation of the road ahead.
Siddhartha, the once rich man and prodigal son, has now become deeper and more mature, and his concept of life has been sublimated.
He began to realize that every journey of life is unique, and that each step is a necessary path to ultimate self-understanding, whether it is the pursuit of material abundance or spiritual enlightenment.
At this moment, the conversation between Siddhartha and Giovinda not only rekindled their friendship, but also gave Siddhartha a new spiritual enlightenment.
He finally understands that life is not just about gaining or losing, but about a process of constant exploration and experience.
True wisdom and inner peace come from a deep understanding and acceptance of life.
Siddhartha's story is not only a journey of finding and discovering oneself, but also a story of how to find inner peace and wisdom in the various experiences of life.
No matter how tortuous the journey of life is, as long as we maintain a deep understanding and exploration of ourselves and the world, we will eventually find the destination of our soul and the true meaning of life.
Tōtojin
Siddhartha developed a deep affection for the river and decided to settle down and live on the riverside.
Back then, it was from this river that he left the Buddha and stepped into a worldly life.
At that time, the boatman who crossed the river told him that by listening to the sound of the river, he had learned many things, especially the principle that "everything comes in cycles".
Ferryman "Boatman"
So, when Siddhartha had no money to pay for the river crossing, the boatman prophesied that he would return again and suggested paying again next time.
"Crossing the river" here becomes a symbol, representing the process of leading to the other side of wisdom.
Sure enough, Siddhartha met the boatman again, more than twenty years after they had last seen each other.
This time, Siddhartha was still penniless, so he took off his ornate robe and gave it to the boatman.
At this moment, the boatman recognized Siddhartha, and they were like old friends who had been reunited after a long absence.
Siddhartha recounted the experience of more than twenty years to the boatman, who listened intently and without judgment until late at night.
Eventually, Siddhartha praised the boatman as the best listener he had ever met, and said he wanted to learn from him.
The boatman, however, humbly stated that he had learned to listen to the river and suggested that Siddhartha should do the same.
About this boatman, Vasudiva, he is quite a meaningful character.
He learned the truth by listening to the sound of the river for decades, but he was not good at expressing it in words.
In tradition, we often say "teach by example", and if Buddha Gautama is seen as a teacher who is good at words, then the boatman Vasudiva is a teacher who is good at teaching.
For decades, he has been enlightening sentient beings, helping countless people to cross the river, that is, guiding them to the other side of wisdom, which complements the teachings of the Buddha.
In fact, the boatman's way is quite similar to the Chinese Zen method of teaching.
Later, Siddhartha followed the boatman, became a ferryman, and began a down-to-earth life.
He learned to listen to the river, to the world, and thought he had mastered the art of listening.
However, he was once again put to the test.
He met Gamora, who was on his way to the pilgrimage to the Buddha, and unfortunately, Gamora died after being bitten by a poisonous snake.
Later, he learned that he also had a son.
In the past, when he was with Gamorrah, Siddhartha didn't know true love, and he didn't care about anyone.
Now he knows love and is full of deep love for his son, but his son does not love him and is even full of hatred for him.
This is because Siddhartha wanted his son to follow the right path, to practice with him, to listen to the river, but he insisted on pursuing worldly pleasures.
The son became Siddhartha's greatest weakness.
He intellectually understands that his son needs to go his own way in order to truly understand good and evil, but he can't stand watching his son make mistakes and can't let go.
Eventually, the son escaped, and Siddhartha fell into deep pain, and his love became a wound that would not heal.
In this mortal suffering, Siddhartha gained new realizations.
He listened to the river again, and this time, he heard the pain of others in it.
He recalls the disappointment and loneliness he brought to his father after he became a monk, and his son's struggle in the face of worldly temptations.
He understands that everyone is going their own way, that the mistakes of those who came before will still be repeated by future generations, and that everyone will inevitably bring pain to others.
This time, he truly understood from the bottom of his heart that "all living beings are suffering".
Therefore, he stopped focusing only on his own wounds and began to have compassion for all living beings.
Siddhartha felt a wholeness and unity in the river.
He understood that there is no duality of opposites, and that everything is unified in a river-like blend.
He hears the eternal calm in the river and realizes that for the river, "time does not exist", only the eternal present.
The same is true of life, which is like a river, eternal and always new.
Therefore, reincarnation is not a repetition of suffering, as Buddhism says, but a rebirth and rebirth.
At this moment, Siddhartha's self merges into the harmony of the whole, reaching the realm of unity and harmony between heaven and man.
It was then that his mentor, Vasudiva, told him that he had been waiting for this moment to come.
Now, Vasudiva said he could leave and blessed Siddhartha.
With that, Vasudiva walked into the forest and retired from the world.
The last stanza of the novel returns to Giovinda.
He was old, he followed the rules of doctrine all his life, and was respected, but he was not enlightened.
He heard that a boatman who was crossing the river was a sage, so he went to visit him, and the old boatman was Siddhartha.
Ferryman "Siddhartha the Boatman"
This time, Giovinda did not recognize his friend:
The last time we met, Siddhartha was a rich man sleeping by the river, but this time, he became a ragged boatman.
Giovinda listened to Siddhartha's lecture on the adventures of his life, and asked a question, saying, "After all these years, do you have your own doctrine?"
Is there a faith or knowledge that guides you?
Siddhartha replied:
When I was young, I was skeptical and deviated from all kinds of doctrines and teachers, but since then, I have had many teachers.
For example, a beautiful prostitute, a wealthy businessman, a few gamblers, such as you who used to guard me by the river, but what I learned the most was this river and my predecessor boatman Vasudiva, who was a simple man, but he understood life as deeply as the Buddha Gautama.
He is a perfect man, a saint.
And the Buddha Gautama, Siddhartha believed that his greatness was not in his teachings and thoughts, but in his life.
What Siddhartha said, Govinda did not understand, but he knew that his old friend had attained enlightenment, and he was still suffering.
At parting, Giovinda hoped that Siddhartha would say a few more words to help him attain enlightenment.
At this time, Siddhartha asked Giovinda to kiss his forehead, and Giovinda was surprised, but did so.
At that moment, a miracle happened.
In an instant, Giovinda saw everything that Siddhartha had seen when he attained enlightenment.
He saw the river of living beings, all things, reincarnation, the gods, all love and hatred, death and rebirth.
All of this is contained in Siddhartha's face, "it is the face of the becoming, the existent and the passing", and Siddhartha's smile is the smile of the Buddha Gautama, a smile of the rounded.
At this point, Giovinda had an epiphany.
The path taken by Giovinda had already proved the uselessness of words, and it was naturally impossible for him to ask Siddhartha to use words to help him achieve enlightenment.
So, Siddhartha used the method of teaching by example to help Giovinda achieve an epiphany, and the magic that made Giovinda have an epiphany is actually Siddhartha's love, this kind of love between people is not taught by the Buddha, but Siddhartha said that the Buddha knows how to love.
That's the end of the story.
In this book, Hesse cleverly splits the name of Shakyamuni into two people, one named Siddhartha and the other named Gautama.
Siddhartha was a seeker and an unattained one, and Gautama was an enlightened and attained one.
Siddhartha's life was a life towards Gautama, and in the end, he became himself.
Siddhartha awakened a total of five times.
For the first time, he left the Brahmin family and went to work as a shaman.
The second time, he left Shamen to follow the Buddha.
The third time, he left the Buddha to find himself.
The fourth time, he left the prodigal son and the rich Siddhartha and wanted to kill himself.
The fifth time, he learned to listen to the river with the boatman, and finally came to the highest realm of the sages, which is a philosophy of knowledge and truth, but not a philosophy full of ideas and logic, but a philosophy of life.
In fact, Hesse's Siddhartha is himself.
Hermann Hesse
Hesse's grandfather and father were both Christian missionaries who had been missionaries in India for many years, and Hesse also attended a church school when he was a child, and he was supposed to be a priest, but he threatened to commit suicide and left the path arranged by his father and embarked on his own path.
He has read a wide range of books, fusing the philosophies of Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Lao Zhuang, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, etc., and presents a unique aspect of what can be called "world spirit" in his creations.
This road is destined to be very lonely.
When writing this book, the first part was written smoothly, but when it came to the final enlightenment, he was exhausted and suffered a nervous breakdown.
Luckily, he met a soul that was very similar to him:
Psychologist Carl Jung.
荣格跟黑塞年龄相仿，经历也极为相似。
He turned his back on his master Freud and embarked on a path of his own, and he also smelted the hundred schools of thought and the spirit of the world together, and he once had a nervous breakdown on the road of exploration.
Later, he became an achiever, healing wounded souls and crossing thousands of people to the other side.
Jung is like Hesse's two enlightened sages:
Buddha Gautama and boatman Vasudiva.
His order healed Hesse's soul and helped him to enlightenment, allowing him to complete this book and all his later works, and finally won the Nobel Prize, becoming an achiever and enlightener in the field of literature.
As mentioned earlier, Hesse's Siddhartha's thinking and searching Atman is actually very close to a concept of Jungian psychology:
Self-naturedness.
In Jung's doctrine, the "self" is divided into ego and self.
In layman's terms, ego is the "small self", and self is the "big self" of the unity of nature and man, that is, "self-nature".
Self-nature is the integrated state of the personality, which means the ultimate perfection of the personality.
In this book, Siddhartha initially wanted to understand the mystery of "self-nature", and what he perceived from the Buddha's smile was the self-nature of oneness.
But in order to move towards self-nature, one must first understand oneself, ego.
Therefore, it is the ego that he learns to abandon with the samun, and when he indulges in the world, the prodigal son and the rich man he lives out are his ego, and it is also his ego who wants his son to follow his own path.
Eventually, he rejected this ego and followed the boatman to listen to the river, realizing that he fused the past, present, and future, bridging the concept of binary opposition, and canceling the distinction between time and me.
Final words
Siddhartha is a work that deeply explores two central themes:
The process of knowledge quest and self-realization.
First, with regard to the search for knowledge, Siddhartha finally realized that wisdom cannot be conveyed in words alone.
The words of the sages may be empty words without substance to those who seek the truth.
What you think you understand may not actually really understand.
True wisdom can only be attained through personal experience and experience.
As the old saying goes, "The ancients left no stone unturned, and the young and the strong began to grow." On paper, it is shallow in the end, and you must do it", emphasizing the importance of practical experience in the pursuit of knowledge.
Second, the work explores the question of self-realization, or the state of life, in which Hermann Hesse's ideas echo those of Carl Jung.
The process of "knowing yourself and becoming yourself" is difficult and complex.
One must move from the ego to the self, that is, to achieve self-nature and the perfection of personality.
Whether it is the quest for knowledge or personal growth, the same path full of challenges and difficulties is depicted in this book.
However, there is no substitute for anyone else on this path, and everyone must embark on this journey themselves.
In conclusion, Siddhartha is not only a narrative of spiritual exploration, but also a profound reflection on the universal human experience.
Through Siddhartha's story, Hesse sends a clear message to his readers:
The path of life is full of twists and turns, but it is these twists and turns that have shaped our personal journey and spiritual growth.