Siddhartha,
the chief protagonist of the novel is a seeker after truth of life. He explores
it in the Bramanic tradition which he feels lacks systemacy. Then, he moves
among the Samanas and finds their system as temporary escape from the torment
of life. In the Buddha’s teachings, he finds overall satisfaction except that
“it does not contain the secret of what the illustrious one himself
experiences.”
Siddhartha
concludes that what he seeks cannot be acquired from teachings or teachers but
must be acquired from contact with the world. When he turns to life among the
people, he encounters the river and the ferryman, Vasudeva who takes him
across. He spends the night with the ferryman and with the river which seems to
speak to him. As he proceeds to the city he encounters the beautiful courtesan
Kamala, who agrees to teach him the art of love. Kamala also explains to
Siddhartha that he must become a wealthy man if he is to court her favour.
Siddhartha becomes an assistant to the rich merchant Kamaswami and eventually a
partner in his business.
The natural
consequence was “the world had caught him…property, possessions and riches had
also finally trapped him.” Too much of worldly pleasures caused in him strong
aversion towards it so much so that suicidal tendency gripped him. When the
holy OM, meaning perfection reached his ears, his slumbering soul suddenly
awakened. He understood that his inner voice had been right that no teachers
could have brought him salvation.
He returns to
the ferryman and the river. From them he learns the Buddhist concept of
equanimity; how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open
soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions. His
riddle about himself is solved. He says, I reviewed my life and it was also a
river, and Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man and Siddhartha the old
man were separated by shadows, not through reality. Siddhartha’s previous life
was also not in the past, and his death and his return to Brahma are not in the
future. Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence. When
Siddhartha suffered for his runaway son, Vasudeva suggested him to learn from
the river the way of the world: Siddhartha looked into the river and saw his
father lonely, mourning for his son; he saw himself lonely, also with the bonds
of longing for his runaway son. He saw his son, also lonely, the boy eagerly
advancing along the burning path of life’s desires, each one concentrating on
his goal, each one obsessed by his goal, each one suffering.
A very
important philosophy of the Buddha illustrates the way of the world when
Siddhartha says to Govinda that never is a man or a dead wholly Sansara or
Nirvana. Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because
we suffer the illusion that time is something real. He further adds, during
deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the
past, present and future. And then everything is good, everything is perfect,
everything is Brahman.
These
experiences of life that he derives from the river help him find his own
identity and bring him to his goal of communion with the world. His final piece
of mind comes through finding his place in the world as a ferryman as one who
serves others by carrying them over the river of life and finds solace in this
task.
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