Siddhartha: A Poem of India

by Hermann Hesse

There was a tree that hung over the river bank, a coconut tree. Siddhartha leant his shoulder against it, put his arms around the trunk and looked down into the green water as it continued to flow beneath him. He looked down into it and found himself possessed with the wish to let go of the tree and to perish in the water. A grisly emptiness was reflected back at him from the water, a reflection that showed the awful emptiness of his soul. Yes, he had come to the end. There was nothing more for him than to extinguish himself, than to strike down the picture of deformity that was his life, to throw it down at the feet of the gods who laugh at him in contempt. This was the great breakthrough that he had longed for: death, the destruction of the form he hated! The fish could come and eat him, Siddhartha the dog, the deluded, the decayed and putrid body and the flaccid and abused soul! The fish and the crocodiles could come and eat him, the demons could dismember him!

His face distorted into a scowl he stared into the water, saw his distorted face mirrored back at him, and he spat at it. Deep in tiredness he loosened his arm from the tree trunk and twisted round slightly so that he would fall vertically and finally go under. With eyes closed he sank down to meet his death.

From some distant place his soul began to twitch, from some time past in his tired life came a sound. It was one word, one syllable which he uttered to himself without a thought and with voice that mumbled, the ancient word that formed the beginning and the end of any brahmanist prayer, the holy word “OM”, meaning “perfection” or “completion.” And at the moment when the sound of “Om” touched Siddhartha’s ear his dormant spirit suddenly awoke and saw the folly of what he was doing.

Siddhartha was deeply shocked. So this was the state he had come to, this was how lost he was, how confused. He was so forsaken by any kind of wisdom that he was able to seek death, that this whim, this childish whim, could have grown within him: to find peace by extinguishing his body! All that he had recently suffered, all the disillusionment, all the doubts, none of these things had the effect on him that Om had at that moment as it entered his consciousness: and he became able to see his misery and his folly.

Om! he said to himself: Om! And he knew of Brahman, knew that life could not be destroyed, knew once more everything about the divine that he had forgotten.

All this, however, lasted for just one moment, just a flash. Siddhartha sank down at the foot of the coconut tree, lay down exhausted, and muttering Om he laid his head on the root of the tree and sank into a deep sleep.

Deep was his sleep and free of dreams, he had not known sleep like this for a long time. Many hours later when he woke it seemed to him that ten years had gone by, he heard the gentle flow of the water, did not know where he was or who had brought him there, abruptly he opened his eyes and was amazed to see trees and the sky above him, and then he remembered where he was and how he had arrived there. This process took a long time, though, and the past seemed to him to have had a veil thrown over it, it was infinitely far, it lay at infinite distance, infinitely meaningless. He knew only that his previous life (at first as he came back to his senses, this previous life seemed like something lying long in the past, an earlier incarnation, an early birth of his present self), that his previous life was something he had left behind, that, full of disgust and misery, he had even wanted to throw his life away, that instead he had regained consciousness at the side of a river under a coconut tree with the holy word Om on his lips, that he had then slept and now had woken and he looked at the world as a new person. Quietly, he spoke the word Om to himself, as he had done while he was falling asleep, and it seemed that all the time that he had been asleep had been nothing but a long immersion into saying Om, into thinking Om, a submersion and envelopment in Om, in the nameless, in the perfect.

It had been such a wonderful sleep! Sleeping had never before left him so refreshed, so renewed, so rejuvenated! Could it be that he really had died, had gone under and now been reborn in a new form? No, he knew himself, he knew his hand and his feet, knew the play where he lay, knew this self in his breast, this Siddhartha, the headstrong, the odd, this Siddhartha however was transformed, renewed, he had slept remarkably well and now he was remarkably alert, joyful and inquisitive.

Siddhartha sat up straight and saw a man facing him, a strange man, a monk in yellow robes with shaven head and in a position of meditation. He looked at the man, who had hair neither on his head nor his face, and he had not looked at him for long before he saw that this monk was Govinda, his childhood friend, Govinda who had taken refuge with the noble Buddha. Govinda had changed, just as he had, but he still bore the old features in his face that spoke of zeal, of loyalty, of searching, of fastidiousness. Govinda felt now that Siddhartha was watching him, opened his eyes and returned his gaze. Siddhartha saw that Govinda did not recognise him. Govinda was glad to see that he had woken, he had clearly long been sitting here waiting for him to wake even though he did not know him.

“I have been sleeping,” said Siddhartha. “What has brought you here?”