Siddhartha: A Poem of India

by Hermann Hesse

“Did you lose all your riches?”

“I lost them, or they lost me. I no longer have them. The wheel of forms spins fast, Govinda. Where is Siddhartha the brahmin? Where is Siddhartha the samana. Where is the wealth of Siddhartha? Things that are transitory change fast, Govinda, you know that.”

Govinda stared long at his childhood friend, his eyes full of doubt. Then, using words that were very polite, he said goodbye and went on his way.

With a smile on his face, Siddhartha watched him as he went, he loved him still, faithful Govinda, conscientious Govinda. And how, at that moment, at that magnificent time after such a wonderful sleep permeated with Om, how could he not have loved someone and something? This was the very magic that had taken place in him by the power of Om while he was sleeping, he loved everything, he was filled with joyful love for everything he saw. It was also the reason, it seemed to him now, why he had earlier been very ill and unable to love anything or anyone.

With a smile on his face, Siddhartha watched the monk as he went. He felt much stronger after his sleep, but he was nonetheless painfully hungry as he had not eaten for two days and the time was long past when he had been hardened against hunger. With some sorrow, but also with laughter, he thought about that time. In those days, he remembered, he had boasted of three things to Kamala, three noble and invincible arts that he had mastered: fasting, waiting, thinking. These were his possessions, his power and his skill, his firm and trusty staff, these three arts were what he had learned in the hard-working and arduous years of his youth, these and no others. And now he had abandoned them, not one of them was in his possession any longer, not fasting, not waiting, not thinking. He had thrown them away for the most miserable of desires, for the most short-lived, for sensual pleasure, for affluence, for riches! They had rarely done him any good. And now, it seemed, he really had become one of the childlike people.

Siddhartha thought about his position. Thinking came hard to him, there was nothing in him that wanted to do it, but he forced himself.

Now, he thought, as all these transitory things have slipped away from me, now I stand here under the sun again as I did before when I was a small child, there is nothing that belongs to me, there is nothing I can do, nothing I am capable of doing, there is nothing I have learnt. This is wonderful! Now, when I am no longer young, when my hair is already half-grey, when my strength is beginning to fade, now is the time for me to start again from the beginning and be a child again! His fortunes had indeed been odd! He had been on a downward path and now he stood in the world once again penniless and naked and stupid. But he was unable to feel any concern about this, no, he even felt a strong urge to laugh, to laugh at himself, to laugh at this bizarre, ridiculous world.

“You’re on a downward path!” he said to himself, and laughed about it, and as he spoke his glance fell on the river, and he saw that the river was on a downward path too, always migrating downwards and, as it did so, it sang and was gay. He found that very pleasing, and he gave the river a friendly smile. Was this not the river in which he had wanted to drown himself, some time in the past, a hundred years ago, or had he dreamt it?

My life truly has been wonderful, he thought, wonderful are the varied courses it has taken. As a boy I had nothing to do with anything but the gods and making sacrifices to them. As an adolescent I had nothing to do with anything but asceticism, with thinking and meditation, I sought to find Brahman, venerated the eternal in Atman. As a young man, though, I followed the path of penitence, lived in the forest, suffered heat and frost, learnt to hunger, taught my body to die away. It was wonderful when, at that time, knowledge came to me through the teachings of the great buddha, I felt knowledge of the unity of the world, felt it flow within me like my own blood. But I had to go on my way even from the buddha and that great knowledge. I went on and learnt the joy of love from Kamala, learned business skills from Kamaswami, accumulated money, wasted money, learned to love my stomach, learned to flatter my senses. It took me many years to lose my spirit, to lose the ability to think, to forget unity. Is it not so, that I went slowly and by circuitous routes from being a man to being a child, from a thinking being to a childlike being? This was a very good way, though, and the bird within my breast did not die. But what a way it was! There was so much stupidity, so much vice, so much folly, so much disgust and disappointment and misery that I had to go through before simply becoming a child again and to be able to start anew. But it was the right way, my heart tells me yes, my eyes laugh about it. I had to experience doubt, I had to sink down to that most foolish of thoughts, the thought of suicide, before I could experience mercy, before I could hear Om again, before I could sleep properly again and before I could wake properly again. I had to become a fool before I could find Atman within myself again. I had to commit sin before I could live again. Where will my path lead me from here? This is a foolish path, it goes round in loops, perhaps it goes round in circles. Whichever way it chooses to go, I will follow it.

In his breast he felt a surge of wonderful joy.