THE THIRD BANK OF THE RIVER
Hesse, Siddhartha (1922)
The moving finger writes and having written moves on…
[Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat]
Ah, how glorious!
Green leaves, young leaves
Glittering in the sunlight.
(Basho on visiting the shrine on Mount Nikko)
۞
We in the present live in a world devoid of any spiritual qualities, a world of objects and things drained of any value remotely akin to the sacred. Our contemporary technological modernity or its portentous variations of many “posts” that has hastened us unwittingly in to a world of commodities and prices has perhaps blinded our eye to any such levels beyond the commonplace. As one extended globalised village we all are made to think proudly about our present age of information and communication. Life styles are becoming more or less similar in almost all parts of the world; there is hardly any difference! What else do we need? At the end of the twentieth century after the disappearance of the soviet block that signaled the final triumph of capitalist ideology there were also intellectual voices speaking of the end of history and what not! And now we have entered the era of globalisation that magically enchants us into submitting willfully to its conditioning hegemony as mere unthinking humanoids. There is now no more need for the great grand narratives of the past-- they have all been revealed to us as being mere intellectual and ideological pretensions of a lost homogenizing and totalising culture. It is as if the contemporary technocratic culture, of course, obviously lays claim to nothing of this sort! The questions that confronted the thinking minds of the last century-- those problems of flesh and the spirit that tormented the inquisitive souls for many generations have been safely laid aside as baseless and irrelevant for the youthful spirit of the present day market culture. We currently exist in a world of make belief that the electronic media churns out and are constantly entertained by the information technology that affords no questions or space for any quests whatsoever. Granted these, how and why are we to read a classic work like Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha? What relevance does this text hold for us in the present? Do we need this at all? The grand questions of life and death, of pain and pleasure, of the body and the soul, all that the book problematises in terms of the Upanishadic questions – do they vibe with the concerns of the present? Is it once again another orientalising attempt? To perceive the East as another strange entity and cross over?
The march of history after the European Enlightenment has been virtually one sided in more than one sense. The river of inquiry of human significance and the quest for meaning had come to be visualized with but one river bank: there was no significant other! The western paradigm of progress, and human development through the hegemonial discourse of science and its handmaiden technology came to symbolize the ordered rationalised vision for all mankind as a whole! The discourse of course produced its own other within its western paradigm that worked in two ways: while the West dominated and colonized the East it created and narrated the idea of the Orient (Edward Said and Orientalism) and denigrated the entire non-western discourses as secondary, derivative and subordinate to the rational real of the West and its modernity. Consequently it also created a desire in the minds of many western scholars discontented with the march of western history to seek in the Romantic East the many answers to their wounded civilization. The Nineteenth century search for alternate grand narratives to subvert the over-dominant arrogance of Eurocentric beliefs resulted also in some of the most sensitive and perspicacious readings of Eastern religious and spiritual texts and ways of living and thinking. Academic and non-academic space for clear-sighted, transparent, and intelligible debates were created and the sensitive reader could glean some home-truths of the spirit of the East. Hermann Hesse belongs to this struggle to reach the third bank of human longing. In his never-ending search for the alternate model for history’s waywardness he turned to the mystic East. However, his profound yearning for the third bank of the river of being was never one of othering or domination, but one of silence, understanding, and reverence.
Siddhartha is a unique piece of evidence of a genuine search for peace and human compassion. It is a narrative neither conditioned by the logic of modernity’s excess nor bound by the discourse of western dominance. It is a classic of compassion that groups itself beside non-canonical narratives that proffer unmediated narration and unprejudiced clarity of vision. It goes beyond the limiting rationality of the thinking west in a genuine search for eternal truths. What are these eternal truths? Are we here debating again the monolithic stature of a single unique vision that does not permit the space for even the second bank of the river? Or are we in search of a unifying vision, not an already made-up one, but something that neither segregates or homogenizes-- a holistic plurality that easily accommodates oneness and differences, that reaches beyond all conditions and historicity? Perhaps there is the third bank of the river, after all? Towards the end of the book, when Siddhartha sits besides the river attentively, we read:
Siddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything. He felt that he had now completely learned the art of listening. He had often heard all these before, all these numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different…. And 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. (107)
[1]Hesse’s Siddhartha is a unique individual, a sensitive soul who embodies the questing mind of the West and the compassionate soul of the East. Suffering is a common factor, but its reception and the human response radically differ. The Buddha did not attempt to interpret or explain the world, because his goal was salvation from suffering. For Siddhartha the answer lay elsewhere.
۞
There is little doubt that Siddhartha remains among some of the greatest works produced in the twentieth century--for its simplicity and poignancy of narrative, for its resolute and unwavering pursuit of the position of the thinking individual in a changing world, for its profundity of vision and insights, for its deep commitment to clarifying and questioning the spiritual and the corporeal at the heart of human existence, and above all for its being what it is: a genuine human tale of self and soul and their intriguing dialogues. Now, having said this we need to ask ourselves how the novel manages to blend successfully so much philosophical inquiry into its tiny canvas of a little over one hundred pages. The form itself is like narrating a fable that unfolds spontaneously in to the three levels of body, mind and soul, and self-realisation in every stage of being . Hesse has set his tale somewhere in the mystical East (this adds to its strangeness of setting and provides the reader with a whole arena of different discourses of the flesh and spirit, of passion and sympathy) without making it out as an Orientalist narrative and this serves to provide the story with the sufficient distance from life and suitable involvement with it at several levels at the same time. Siddhartha is the Brahmin’s son and he grows up in the very heart of the Upanishadic country genuinely reflecting its tensions and concerns.
In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the riverbank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and the fig tree, Siddhartha, the handsome Brahmin’s son grew up with his friend Govinda.(3)
This stark opening line sweeps the reader into the narrative, and sets the tone for what is to follow. In fact the elemental quality of the sunshine and the shadow by the riverbank would contribute to the fable-like structure of the tale. The river is as significant as the protagonist of the narrative. Is it a mere tale? Or is it the written records of one who has suffered and thought profoundly in isolation and grief at the human condition? This fable-like quality of the narrative would add to its distinctness and genuineness alike. Hesse has divided his work into two parts: the first contains four chapters from The Brahmin’s Son to the Awakening; and the second from Kamala to Govinda contains eight chapters. The pains and pleasures of growing up and growing apart, of knowledge and experience, of love and wisdom—all these are traced in the tale of Siddhhartha. He is the main focus of attention and all others including the river, the land, sky, and landscape are seen from his perspective, although the narrative itself is in the third person bestowing a suitable distance to the agonies and anxieties of the protagonist. Siddhartha is deeply meditative and completely committed to his quest. Along with his trusted friend Govinda, he leaves his father and joins the wandering Samanas in search of abiding knowledge. There is so much wandering in the tale, a reflection of one of the most enduring issues of the twentieth century—the unending search for the common ground of self and soul, the indomitable quest for the unified experience of the body and the spirit. Siddhartha however, finds the heart returning forever to cycles of existential experience:
But although the paths took him away from the Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when he would again find himself in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle.(13)
The chapter entitled Gotama
* is significant because of the brief interlude of Siddhartha’s encounter with Gotama the Buddha:
He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continual quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace. (23)
It is significant how Siddhartha observes the Buddha’s body attentively: and it seemed to him that in every joint of every finger of his hand there was knowledge; they spoke, breathed, radiated truth. (23) And much later he would tell Kamala: Among all the wise men, of whom I knew so many, there was one who was perfect…He is Gotama (58)
However, Siddhartha’s quest does not end with the encounter with the Illustrious One which only gives back to him his own self. While Govinda chooses to follow the Buddha’s path, Siddhartha sets forth again. The thinker in him awakens and he muses:
Yes, he thought, breathing deeply, I will no longer try to escape from Siddhartha. I will no longer devote my thoughts to Atman and the sorrows of the world. I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins. I will no longer study Yoga-Veda, Atharva-Veda, or asceticism, or any other teachings. I will learn from myself, be my own pupil; I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha. (31)
His recognition that meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things but they were those things themselves is the beginning of another cycle of learning. The second part of the narrative is the story of this discovery when Siddhartha moves from one extreme to another. With Kamala, who represents the sensual pleasures and limits of the corporeal being, with Kamaswamy, who represents the knowledge of the world of business transactions, and much later with Vasudeva, the ferryman who represents the third bank of the river of learning, Siddhartha learns to share many aspects of existential truths and realizes the multiple dimensions of worldly existence. And finally after he manages to extricate himself from all the entanglements of life and its innumerable demands he finds himself beside the river. This is the very same river across which the ferryman had once taken him when he was still a young man. Now, beside himself with the anguish and suffering of the body and soul Siddhartha wrestles with the terrible emptiness within him contemplating suicide. But the reverberations of the pranava mantra, Om, bring him back into his higher senses, and here he sinks into a profound sleep. Govinda encounters him sleeping by the riverside and the two friends once again debate and recognize the crossings in their life’s individual paths. After he watches Govinda depart Siddhartha continues in his struggle to come to terms with his own experience. Now he understood it and realized that the inward voice had been right, that no teacher could have brought him salvation…. That was why he had to undergo those horrible years, suffer nausea, learn the lesson of the madness of an empty futile life till the end, till he reached bitter despair, so that Siddhartha the pleasure monger and Siddhartha the man of property could die. He had died and a new Siddhartha had awakened from his sleep. (79)
The river flows into the narrative once again. Siddhartha’s wanderings have the same familiarity like the river’s meanderings. They are all the same and yet not the same at any time. But beside the river his meditations achieve a greater degree of clarity. Will you take me across?, he asks the ferryman. And in Vasudeva he finds a passive listener to whom he can narrate his life’s experiences. Vasudeva draws his attention to the river: the river has spoken to you. It is friendly towards you; it speaks to you. (84) Siddhartha stays with the ferryman and learned more from the river than Vasudeva could teach him. He learned from it continually. Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinions… (85) This dialogue with the river takes up a supreme space in the novel. The river talks to Siddhartha and he learns to listen. The river stands for articulation and silence, mobility and stillness, continuity, change and presence, at the same time. If the act of crossing the river earlier was symbolic of a change of environment and transition from one geographical space to another, the second crossing is one of transformation and compassion. Vasudeva tells him:
…the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and…the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future… (86)
This is in fact what Siddhartha realizes. He learns to abide by the river and listen to its murmurings. It is while he lives there with the ferryman that he comes to know about the passing of the Buddha, and compassion and good will permeate his very being. It is here that he comes across Kamala, the courtesan once again, and she dies beside him smitten by a snake. It is then that his son is joined with him once again. However, as he was soon to find out, there was a world of difference between himself and his young son-- their pursuits were so different. And soon enough the boy picks up a quarrel with him and rows off in their boat. Siddhartha is broken hearted and behaves like a householder setting off in search of his son. However a sense of purposelessness in his acts and deeds soon comes over him and his higher sense of listening to the river brings back his questing self all over. Nevertheless he does not despise the simple commitments and simpler bondages that tie human beings to this world; they are so inevitable and necessary in the vital actions of the indestructible Brahman. This wisdom mellows in Siddhartha: the consciousness and unity of all life, a holistic sense of unending compassion. This wisdom is unique and incommunicable. This is the result of an existential and experiential encounter. The rest of the novel is the passing of Siddhartha, his final adieu to this world and his lifelong companion Govinda, who is his own surrogate self. This double vision is not unique to this work of Hermann Hesse alone—it is an underlying concern in all his works alike. Everything is valuable and holy, nothing is insignificant—this is the inscrutable philosophy of existential truth that Siddhartha embodies in the final analysis. The sacred is never on the other side of the self, the sacred is the self nor are we out of it!
Siddhartha is a magnificent work of search, vision, and understanding. There is a rebellion at the heart of spirituality that never accepts the commonplace and ordinary as constituting the entirety of existence; this is brought home in the guise of Siddhartha who is even not content with being a follower of the Buddha, the Compassionate one, but ceases not till the truth of experience is brought home through his own lived experience. This sense of individual enterprise is perhaps the outcome of the individualistic humanism of Hesse himself in his encounter with the values embodied by the other side of the river. In reaching toward the third bank of the river-- a logic that defies reason—the novel builds itself on a texture of elemental harmony that defies historicity.
Above all, Siddhartha continues to be a classic work of sympathetic understanding-- of humanism and spirituality at the same time. Living is an experience that is inexhaustible, and the quest for the spiritual at the heart of being only reinforces and strengthens this inexhaustibility.
۞
In our the present day world driven by market economy where all values are reduced to their commodity status and prices, where ignorance and imbecility coupled with collective laziness imposed by the hegemonial order of technology, together, but serves to only reduce and mock at the very concept of spiritual and the questing mind, works like Siddhartha might sound a bit odd and out-of-place. After all, in which century, in which times, in which cultures, have the concern and commitment of sages and saints, mystics and prophets, philosophers and poets, ever sounded sensible and sensitive, relevant and meaningful to the common folk who appear to be concerned only with the daily struggle of existence? Those values for which Socrates died and the Buddha renounced his all and everything are not so simple enough to be internalized by the insensitive and unconcerned. It requires a wideness of concern and a profundity of sense and a will to sympathise, to understand and to listen. The mystical is of course beyond any attempt at historicisation, and hence transcends logic and reason.
When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om—perfection. (107)
Dr Murali Sivaramakrishnan
Professor, Department of English
Pondicherry University
Pondicherry, India
Email: smurali1234@yahoo.com
[1] Siddhartha, translated by Hilda Rosner, Madras: Macmillan, 1973. All citations that follow are from this edition. (Page numbers are provided within brackets). Hesse published Siddhartha in 1922. The first British Commonwealth edition was released in 1954, by Peter Owen Ltd. The Macmillan India edition was under arrangement with Pan Books Ltd., London, who brought out the Picador edition in 1973.
* Usually spelt Gautama.
Oriole
Common Myna
Small Blue Bee-eater
PATRIDGE