Have you ever felt a sense of belonging? Sometimes it’s a place, a person, or even a pet that makes you feel that there’s purpose, there’s meaning to life. This is especially true if you have at times or even most times felt out of place, a misfit in this world, yet a seeker of one’s own truth.
Sidhhartha the Seeker
When the stories told haven’t been enough, you outgrew your culture, so you hopped around discovering others, learnt the lessons, and moved on for greater wisdom. You crossed many paths, you were lost on some, and yet on others, you lost yourself. But in the end, everything seemed to come together in this symphony that created joyous highs and shattering lows.
All the lessons, all the learning, all the stories carried you higher up the mountain, and the higher you got, the smaller the crowd, till only a handful of people seemed to keep up with your pace. The peace of solitude was blissful, but the question, What is this place and why am I here. Perhaps the questions are different for each one of us, but if you feel connected to any part of what was said above, I would like to introduce you to Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.
“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.” ~ Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Siddhartha, a Gem on the Journey
Like a madman who raves about a beautiful sunset or a flower, who doesn’t realize that the beauty truly is in the eyes of the beholder. I recommended Siddhartha to every, tom, dick and harry after I read it. So the above paragraphs are to filter out who would gain from this book. This book was a delightful surprise, I did not expect to find these divine moments of truth or a space that beckoned belonging.
Imagine putting everything in your mind and pausing for a while and assuming the roles of the characters in the book. If you notice, I said characters, strangely, in this book, I would not just find myself in only a single character, but I found parts of me across the characters in Siddhartha. From Govinda, the ferryman, and even the woman in the garden, each of them seemed to live my moments of existence and Siddhartha’s fun and frolic, hardships and joys, ecstasy and sorrows, all of them seemed to tingle me somewhere.
Ever felt a book was written about you? A movie that was based on your life? A song that was sung for you? It’s fulfilling to know that there’s someone who exists or existed that you could connect with on a deeper level, the term ‘soul connection’ where you just feel like damn we were cut out of the same material. To finally know that you’re home, it’s a different kind of feeling to know that you belong, especially when you never have.
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Ursula K. Le Guin
The book dives into the spiritual journey of self-discovery of Siddhartha, set in India during the time of Gautama Buddha. An interesting bit of trivia, the word Siddhartha is made up of two Sanskrit words: siddha (achieved) + artha (what was searched for).
The best way to approach understanding reality and achieving enlightenment, according to Hesse’s novel, is through experience, or the entirety of conscious events in a human life. Hesse’s design of Siddhartha’s journey demonstrates that understanding is not attained through intellectual methods or by losing oneself in the world’s sensual pleasures and the accompanying pain of samsara, but rather through the completeness of these experiences, which is what enables Siddhartha to achieve understanding.
Siddhartha, Comforting the Discomforted
The book is a little over 100 pages and because I found it that captivating, I went through it in a single day. What I personally found captivating is how Siddhartha’s journey, the one of a seeker, does not get bound down by external circumstances. He’s not satisfied in the deepest wells of lust, riches or belief systems, this is what resonated with me. He does not find solace in the external world until he comes to peace with what is. No guru, no experience, no knowledge got him up that hill, but he used them as support on his way there.
“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.” ~
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
If you have read Siddhartha, I do hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, do let me know in the comments. If you haven’t, I’m not sure what you’re waiting for, here’s the full book for you to listen to.
Resources:
Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
