Siddhartha revisited
I recently re-read Hermann Hesse’s brilliant book Siddhartha. I first read it many years ago before I knew anything about yoga. It already made an impression on me back then but now I read it again with fresh eyes and much more background on where Hesse was coming from intellectually and spiritually. Although he was born in Calw, Germany - a charming Black Forest town I had a chance to visit - his family and life experience exposed him to the Eastern wisdom. His grandparents were Protestant missionaries in India. His maternal grandfather compiled the grammar of Malayalam language, a Malayalam-English dictionary, and contributed to translating the Bible to Malayalam. His mother was born in India. While growing up, Hesse read voraciously encouraged by his grandfather who instilled in him a sense that he was a citizen of the world.
Quite à propos current events, Hesse once noted that his family as well as his later travels to Asia - connecting the West and the East - became "the basis of an isolation and a resistance to any sort of nationalism that so defined my life." This is what he said about World War I, “That love is greater than hate, understanding greater than ire, peace nobler than war, this exactly is what this unholy World War should burn into our memories, more so than ever felt before.” Just a few years after the war, in 1922, he wrote Siddhartha, capturing the essence of the Buddhist philosophy in simple yet powerful words.
This compact story makes for a quick read but stays with you. It follows the spiritual journey of self-discovery of a young Indian Brahmin named Siddhartha who gives up privilege in search of enlightenment. His name - which is also the name of Gautama Buddha - consists of two Sanskrit words: siddha (achieved) and artha (what was searched for). Together they signify "he who has found meaning.” In particular, I appreciated Hesse’s thoughts on finding meaning in oneness and connection with nature, something I also feel deeply:
Siddhartha bent down, lifted a stone from the ground and held it in his hand. “This,” he said, handling it, “is a stone, and within a certain length of time it will perhaps be soil and from the soil it will become plant, animal or man. Previously I should have said: This stone is just a stone; it has no value, it belongs to the world of Maya, but perhaps because within the cycle of change it can also become man and spirit, it is also of importance. That is what I should have thought. But now I think: This stone is stone; it is also animal, God and Buddha. I do not respect and love it because it was one thing and will become something else, but because it has already long been everything and always is everything. I love it just because it is a stone, because today and now it appears to me a stone.”
We are everything, have long been everything, and always will be everything. We are wonderfully recycled stardust. As the Presidential Inauguration of Joe Biden in the U.S. is coming near, writing this from DC’s Capitol Hill just a few blocks away from fences and heavy police presence, I pray that we all come back to this simple truth. If we can find it in our hearts to recognize the divine in a stone, surely we can appreciate the same spark in fellow human beings regardless of their political affiliation. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.” Happy MLK Day!