Siddhartha

In Buddhism, renouncement is used as a method to free yourself to find the god and truth within, also known as Atman. The idea is that without the ties to the objects and people that hold us back, you can develop in the way that you need to, in order to find your inner god or truth. Siddhartha, a novel by Herman Hesse about his spiritual journey and his search for Atman, the god within, uses this as a key concept in his development. While this idea ultimately helps Siddhartha’s personal development and allows him to achieve his goal, it has him going from severe deprivation to total indulgence in order to find himself, often leaving him unhappy or regretful.

Siddhartha starts with the rejection of his parents and early mentors so that he can join the samanas and further his knowledge. He felt that the Brahmins and teachers around him had already “poured their fullness into his waiting vessel, and the vessel was not full” (5). So when the samanas pass through his village, he makes the decision to leave his family, and go with them to learn more about the god within. At the time, Siddhartha thinks little of the decision he has made, but when his own son leaves him later on in the book, he realizes the impact this would have had on his family. While he never outright says that he regrets his decision, he certainly has a greater understanding of the position his father was in all those years ago. His father “suffered the same sorrow that Siddhartha was now suffering for his own son” (115), a deep wound of loss. Despite the how he feels later, the renouncement was necessary for Siddhartha to start his journey on a clean slate, free of any responsibilities or obligations.

Similar to the rejection of his initial teachers in his father and the Brahmin, Siddhartha also leaves the samanas and the Buddha Gautama. Siddhartha leaves the ascetics because he sees that some of his teachers have “turned sixty and [have] not reached Nirvana” (17), so why would he be able to achieve what they couldn't, or haven't yet, by following the same path? Similarly, after meeting the Buddha, Siddhartha realizes that no one can teach him the way to reach enlightenment, not even the great Buddha he has complete respect for. Siddhartha believes that experience over words is what will teach him wisdom, which is reasonable enough, but his path becomes so twisted that the reader becomes unsure whether or not he will reemerge in a better place than where he started, this also not being a Hollywood movie, so there is no guarantee of a happy ending.

The samana, on their way to find Nivana, rid themselves of all that isn’t necessary, and even some that is. The idea is that when the soul is completely empty, the “innermost essence, which is no longer ego,” (14) awakens. To be without an ego is a good goal to strive for, but in Siddhartha’s attempt to renounce his own ego, he pushes himself to severe depravation and creates an opinion of himself that puts him above his fellow samanas and his samana teachers. When he is among the ascetics, he is no different than them, so he doesn’t feel superior to them, but when Siddhartha leaves them to go see the Sublime Buddha, he disrespects the samana by showing them how much better he is than them, and “tak[ing] possession of the samana” (22), overpowering him and making him bow and kneel at him, in an air of superiority that is completely egotistical, and brash. This superiority carries over to his time with the child people. With Kamala, he is unable to love her, since he still retains those values of renouncement, and only “the child people can; that is their secret” (64). The pair is clearly in a relationship, but this superiority to the child people that he never wants to join prevents him from being happy staying with her and his child.

Eventually, Siddhartha ends up in a town, where he meets the beautiful Kamala. After deciding that she would be his teacher of love and sex, Siddhartha is told that in order to be able to stay with her, and be able to love her, he must have “lovely clothes and shoes…lots of money in his pouch and gifts” (51). Essentially, Kamala forces Siddhartha to give up his former life of deprivation, though he doesn’t realize that he has, as he still thinks that he has the same disdain for property and wealth. This obsession with keeping up the semblance of rejecting greed, while giving himself over to a life of complete decadence, makes him extremely unhappy. When he gambles, he plays high stakes to show “the disdain of wealth” (71), while after every loss “he schemed to obtain new wealth…to keep on squandering” (71).  Siddhartha spends entire nights in the lap of luxury, dressing in beautiful clothes, drinking himself into a stupor, watching dancing girls, eating food in excess “play[ing] superior to his peers, [though] the superior man that he no longer was” (72) continuing this pretense that he doesn't indulge in the silly things that the child people indulge in, but rather indulges in order to show them how stupid they are in doing so. Whereas, what's really happening is he's allowing himself to become one and the same with the child people. The only place, ironically, where he still feels that former detachment from all material things is with Kamala. Even there though, he sees the two of them growing old, their senses were dimming, turning more and more into those “child people” that he refused to be like. This keeps going to the point where Siddhartha contemplates suicide so that he could rid himself of “the form he hated” (78). Siddhartha’s renouncement of his earlier ways of deprivation lead to unhappiness, and the only way he can fix it is by completely giving up that entire part of his life.

After living in the two extremes, total depravation and total indulgence with equal lack of success, Siddhartha is finally in a place to reflect on the true path he set out to seek. As he spends time with the ferryman, his reflection with the river and Vasudeva allow him to come to the conclusion that “never is a man or a deed all samsara or all Nirvana” (124) and man must “worship in the sinner, in you, in everyone” (125). This revelation is only possible because of that fact that his renouncement in the extremes has allowed him to experience multiple ways of living. It provides justification and a reason for the dissatisfaction and unhappiness he has felt with life. He comes to terms with what he has experienced, from his renouncement of material things and attempted rejection of indulgence, to the realization that no man is all one thing or another. This idea connected to Siddhartha's rejection of the teaching of others of, as “wisdom that a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish” (124) because words are an opinion and often one-sided, where as life isn’t, and teaching isn’t. Furthermore, he now knows the true meaning behind actions over words, as they can't be distorted. During his time in the village, his words and thoughts had him believing in his samana thinking, but his actions showed that he had rejected it. Since Siddhartha has found peace in the multiple aspects of himself, and when his friend Govinda kisses his forehead, he sees “the oneness over the…thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha’s was exactly the same” (131). Siddhartha found the truth within, while remaining the person that he was. The fact that Siddhartha must go through a spiritual journey for the entirety of his life to find this conclusion shows the long life of thinking that Buddhism requires. Life is a circle, so Buddhism requires its followers to live not in the moment, but look at the greater picture of life.