Posted by Hermann Hesse’s classic Buddhist text, Siddhartha, published in 1922, tells of the journey we will all take on our way to Enlightenment.
Hesse’s beautiful short novel is a version of the life of the Buddha, where an Indian named Siddhartha takes a spiritual life-journey resembling that of the Buddha at the time of the Buddha’s teachings.
“Siddhartha” or “Siddha-Artha” in Sanskrit means “achieved meaning” or “one who knows”, “has found meaning (in existence)”, or possibly “he who has attained his goals”, in other words, achieved Enlightenment.
In Hesse’s novel, the ‘Buddhic’ story goes like this:
Siddhartha has grown up in an affluent and scholastic, but unfulfilling, environment which he renounces and leaves in search of enlightenment. He joins the ascetics (‘samanas’) but ultimately realises that asceticism alone did not allow him to escape the circle of existence.
He then moves to the world of lovers, riches, hedonistic parties, merchant trading, fine wine, clothes and perfumes. This too ultimately did not take him to enlightenment.
Finally he found his goal as a simple ferryman, free of all possessions, desires and attachments. Here he found his Atman, his soul, his unity with the divine, his understanding that his Atman was part of the divine, and his liberation.
It’s a great story, a road which we will all take in one way or another.
Prior to his liberation from suffering (“Nirvana”) at the time of his death, he experienced, and then released all the negative emotions created from his life experiences, he let go of all earthly attachments, had no further purpose in returning to physicality, and had developed a pure clean heart.
His experiences included learning about self-dissolution and self-immersion.
With the Samanas, he practiced self-denial, extreme poverty, hunger, thirst, isolation, all the harsh methods leading to ‘self-dissolution’ and the ‘not-self’.
But although these paths led away from one’s being, in the end they always led back to the ‘self’. Return was unavoidable. It was only a brief escape from the pain of existence and meaninglessness of life.
With the carnal pursuits, he taught himself the opposite of self-dissolution: the experience of full immersion in self.
But eventually he also left this world behind in disgust, and wandered to the river bank, where he fell into the water and was saved from death as he drowned.
This ‘death’ awakened him out of his ‘sleep’.
He never left the river again, and became a ferryman. He stopped searching, as he had no further goals. He had realised in the end that life is just a journey, a pilgrimage, an experience, and he discovered (as had the Buddha) that no one can really teach another, we have to find our own way.
Pankaj Mishra’s excellent travel book on the life of the Buddha, entitled An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, confirms that Hesse’s recounting of the Buddha’s 2,500 year-old story is essentially correct, as far as the records of the Buddha’s life allow.
In the course of Mishra’s marvellous writing, he mentions a fundamental feature of Eastern esoteric practice, a method the Samanas used to ‘detach from active life’ as taught by the Buddha. This was was ‘no-thought’ meditation.
Western living is a far cry from the more relaxed lifestyle of sitting under a Bodhi tree meditating, but the goal of stillness of mind through meditation has not changed. This is something we can still try to do, even in these times when concentration spans are negligible.
The problem with meditation, as the Buddha acknowledged, was that, no matter how deep the meditation, it provided only temporary escape, temporary removal from the world. William James, the father of modern psychology, went further and even asserted that it was impossible to stop the flow of thoughts.
But stillness of mind is considered a critical component of liberation, and the adepts consider that even a very brief period of daily meditation assists this process, so it is worth including this practice as far as we can in our busy Western lives.
But all these things are just a piece of the puzzle.
In the end, for both Siddhartha and the Buddha (and for us today), the key was (and still is) the totality of all knowledge accumulated while living our lives. The combination of all the scholastic reading, research and learning, the carnal pleasures, and the ascetic life (which the Buddha called “experience”).
The Buddha said that all these components were necessary to obtain the experience which leads to understanding. Understanding was the ultimate path to Nirvana, to liberation from suffering. We had to go through all the stages.
So we can say: We need to live life to escape.
We can’t avoid experience on the path to Enlightenment.
7 June 2026
Piers Morris Blogspot 