Siddhartha: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

1. Siddhartha: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For Feraco Search for Human Potential 10 September 2012

2. I have climbed highest mountains, I have run through the fields, Only to be with you…Only to be with you… I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls, Only to be with you…Only to be with you… …But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for… I have kissed honey lips, felt the healing in her fingertips It burned like a fire, this burning desire I have spoken with the tongue of angels, I have held the hand of a devil It was warm in the night, I was cold as a stone… …But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for… I believe in the Kingdom Come Then all the colors will bleed into one, bleed into one… But, yes, I'm still running You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains Carried the cross of my shame You know I believe it… …But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for… Paul David Hewson (Bono)

3. Siddhartha, as a text, is the rare book that gets under one’s skin. This isn’t to say that the language is particularly lively or arresting, or that the characters are drawn with great depth or subtlety. Rather, its power stems from its command of some truly ancient archetypes – storytelling patterns that recur across cultures and eons with surprising consistency. The hero sets out on a journey, facing resistance prior to his departure; he stumbles almost immediately, finds success, suffers a downfall, and repeats the pattern until his journey ends.

4. This is not to say that Siddhartha is the epitome of the Hero’s Journey. I’m fascinated by how easily it subverts the same archetypes it appears, on the surface, to serve. Yes, Siddhartha finds his mentor…but he casts him aside. Yes, Siddhartha recovers from his setback, just as he is supposed to…but he then fails again, and again. Rather than make tangible progress throughout the novel, Siddhartha navigates a frustrating, seemingly endless maze of diversions and digressions: every time he feels close to finding what he seeks, life finds some way to remind him that he remains far from his grail.

5. Yet Siddhartha never sacrifices its universality, even at a remove. (We’re reading this book ninety years late, and one language apart from, its creation.) In its depiction of a son’s struggle to exceed the boundaries of his “programming” – the life he’s meant to lead – we feel the same tension that grips many young adults as they approach a time when they’ll irrevocably depart from (or follow) the path their parents worked so hard to lay out for them. In its portrayal of Siddhartha’s “wasted days” with the Samanas, we see the new-freshman fear of leaving a safe harbor only to fall far short of what one seeks. Siddhartha meets both the wisest man and most beautiful woman in the land, gains influence and renown most men could only wish to wield even after casting off his birthright to his father’s station…yet remains unsatisfied by success, the anxiety of anyone who worries he’s compromised too easily and settled for too little, left financially swollen and spiritually starved.

6. Siddhartha’s adherence to the Star diagram we covered last week is particularly striking, because at first blush, Siddhartha’s departure makes absolutely no sense. Think about it: if love, security, enlightenment, independence, and identity form the foundations of what we seek…what, exactly, is Siddhartha missing at the beginning of the text? Hesse states, bluntly, that everyone in the town adores the Brahmin’s son. The men respect him, the young women want him, his parents think the world of him, his best friend is ridiculously loyal…and to top it all off, he’s been promised a spot as the head of the town as soon as he comes of age. Can you get any more loved and secure than that? Assuming Siddhartha can avoid being crushed by a falling tree in the forest, there’s no legitimate way for him to fail. And Hesse isn’t shy about pumping up Siddhartha’s brilliance, at least with respect to his neighbors in the village. He’s mastered everything the elders have to teach; in some ways, he’s even surpassed them.

7. If we look at Siddhartha’s star, then, we see a whole bunch of points that are close to the center. Independence, perhaps, is lacking by comparison. But is independence all that valuable when everything a normal man could want seems to have already been provided for him? The big question that remains, then, is this: How can someone with a seemingly stable star willingly touch off a supernova? Because make no mistake: Siddhartha burns his bridges at the end of Chapter One. He never – not once – returns to his village. Anything and everything that he has while living with his family is no longer his by the time he departs. How can someone who has everything just throw it all away like that? ---

8. In a book that’s so concerned with questions of identity and meaning – who am I, why am I here, and what should I be doing? – something as simple as Siddhartha’s name serves as a solid entry point for our analysis. Most authors put a great deal of thought into their characters’ names. Some, such as Pete Docter (the writer-director of Up), choose names with personal meaning and resonance: those who know that Docter named his youngest daughter Ellie watch his film from a very different perspective. Others, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment, use names to underscore themes or symbolic concerns, with the name’s sound/definition either reflecting that character’s arc or personality or underscoring the author’s main message(s). Dostoevsky dubs his main character Raskolnikov, a nifty variation on the Russian word for divided – a great moniker for a man whose personality swings wildly between extremes, to the point that he seems like two different men in the same body. Mean Girls actually has a pretty neat example of this as well: everyone mispronounces Cady as “Catty,” then shrugs her off when she tries to correct them. This is appropriate for a girl with some serious identity issues (for one reason or another, no one knows who she really is), and when she begins changing into someone who’s…well, catty…the name fits even more effectively.

9. As it so happens, Hermann Hesse’s character names also reflect the characters’ purposes, personalities, or fates. Take, for example, Siddhartha, our eponymous protagonist. A quick Wikipedia check – always a wonderful and reliable source of academic knowledge – reveals the meanings of “Sidd” and “artha” in Sanskrit. A compound of “Sidd” can mean “fulfilled” or “accomplished”; a compound of “artha” can mean “aim” or “wealth.” Combining the two into “Siddhartha” leaves one with “wealth of the fulfilled aim.”

10. In other words, he who searches correctly and patiently (“aim”) will eventually find what he seeks (“fulfilled” and “wealth”). The traditional meaning of Siddhartha is less literal – “he who has achieved his aims,” or “he who is victorious” – but otherwise similar. If, as our Freakonomics selection in Nice to Know You jokingly suggests, naming has some sort of impact on our destiny – or if we follow the Crime and Punishment approach – Siddhartha’s name indicates that he eventually finds what he’s looking for for, whatever it may be. (You’ll just have to keep reading to find out what it is.)

11. But this explanation for his name is too simple. Consider the following: • The historical Siddhartha Gautama founded Buddhism. • The Siddhartha we follow throughout the story is not the historical Siddhartha Gautama. • Our Siddhartha does, in fact, meet the Buddha himself; in the Rosner translation, the Buddha is referred to as Gotama. Why bother naming your character Siddhartha if he’s not the Buddha? Let’s be honest: at the end of the day, which guy is going to be leading the more impressive life – our protagonist, or one of the greatest spiritual leaders to ever walk the earth? Shouldn’t we be reading about the second guy? Why focus on the nobody? ---

12. In order to understand why Siddhartha and Gotama play separate roles in the book, it’s important to understand first who the Buddha was, and why he was important. For one thing, the historical Siddhartha Gautama (henceforth referred to as Gautama/Gotama for clarity’s sake) is a human being, not a superhuman, deity, or immortal. Moreover, the Buddha is not perceived as a god, particularly not in a way analogous to Christian worship of God and Christ. Rather, Gautama/Gotama is simply a man who finds what he set out to look for: a greater spiritual truth.

13. The idea that an individual could find peace – true peace – over the course of a normal human lifespan is incredibly inspirational to many, and Gautama/Gotama’s achievement is all the more noteworthy because it’s self-generated: he found what he searched for on his own. Thus Gautama/Gotama represents independent spiritual fulfillment, which people can search for over the course of a lifetime…and never find. Just look at Mother Teresa, someone whose life’s work revolved around faith. She firmly believed that God existed, and that He did his work through her. But as revealed following the controversial release of her private letters after her death, Mother Teresa felt very much removed from the deity she worshipped:

14. Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love – and now become as the most hated one – the one – You have thrown away as unwanted – unloved. I call, I cling, I want – and there is no One to answer – no One on Whom I can cling – no, No One. – Alone…Where is my Faith – even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness – My God – how painful is this unknown pain – I have no Faith – I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart – & make me suffer untold agony. So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them – because of the blasphemy – If there be God – please forgive me – When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven – there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. – I am told God loves me – and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?

15. In Mother Teresa’s private pain, we see why so many admire Gautama/Gotama. By finding that which he sought, by filling the silence with something, he has essentially completed himself – fulfilling his potential in the process. We see that Gautama/Gotama has already achieved what Siddhartha seeks, as well as obtained the knowledge and sense of peace that the younger man craves. Yet Siddhartha rejects the opportunity to learn from the master, arguing that he must discover what he seeks himself in order for it to have personal meaning for him. (In this, I find we are similar – at least with respect to my feelings regarding faith and “gravitation.”) In many ways, Siddhartha represents a fundamental contradiction: he knows everything in the world as he knows it (the village), yet he knows nothing. This is why Siddhartha has been denied a last name, and why Gautama/Gotama has been given nothing else: the latter man is a finished product, and our protagonist is woefully raw and unfinished. The implication, then, is that he will someday walk a path that’s similar to Gautama/Gotama’s, one where he not only finds what he’s looking for, but generates the solution himself.

16. Thus we’ve covered two of the factors that most influenced Hesse’s choice for his main character’s name: the meaning of the word’s components and the importance of its “incompleteness.” Yet there is another reason for the name: a parallel between Siddhartha and Gautama/Gotama that Hesse recognized as he wrote. At birth, Gautama/Gotama was predicted to realize one of two destinies: he would either become a great king or a spiritual leader. His father, a king himself, was determined to prevent his son from becoming a religious leader. He reasoned that the best way to keep Gautama/Gotama from turning to that path was to shield him from human suffering: If my son never knows pain, and never knows of others’ suffering, he will never turn from the throne.

17. Consequently, Gautama/Gotama stayed within the confines of his family’s royal estate and property, knowing nothing of sickness, illness, or death. But when he finally went out into the world at the age of twenty-nine, he caught his first glimpses of decline, sickness, and death. This resulted in a profound change in his philosophy. (The king’s worst fears were realized.) Siddhartha walks the same path as the man who would become the Buddha – the path to realization, to awareness of a larger world. By discovering pain outside of his sheltered village world – just as Gautama/Gotama did – Siddhartha will grow more aware of interconnectedness, of the essential unity of existence. This is one of the book’s fundamental ideas: that everything changes, everything repeats, everything is connected. Clearly, the name wasn’t simply meant to foreshadow Siddhartha’s fate; it was also meant to directly recall his spiritual predecessor…a man whose guidance Siddhartha dismisses as firmly as his own father’s.

18. If this strikes you as arrogant, foolish, or hubristic – like a young basketball player responding to a coaching offer from Kobe Bryant with “No thanks, I’m good” – I can’t disagree. By forsaking guidance, Siddhartha loses his best friend, veers from an easy road, and commits himself to genuine human existence – a lifetime of uncertainty and discovery. I’m not sure whether that’s a wise choice, and I’m certain that Siddhartha has no idea how vulnerable he’s left himself by making it. Without a teacher to guide him at every step of the way, he risks making mistakes, suffering, and inflicting pain on others. But in casting off guidance, Siddhartha opens himself to new, exciting possibilities; it may be a foolish decision, but it’s not a decision someone who lacks courage can make. For better or for worse, Siddhartha is brave, strong in his convictions, and determined to fulfill his potential. His journey should make for interesting reading, no? And with your graduation day only nine months away, one can only begin to imagine what you’ll find upon leaving our village…and to wonder whether you, too, will find what you’re looking for.