What a beautiful fable! A simple, poignant and symbolic tale about one man’s quest to find the ultimate knowledge and wisdom. The titular ‘Siddhartha’, shares his first name with the ‘Buddha’, whose own journey to enlightenment is well known, is the prodigal son of a revered priest. Siddhartha grows impatient once he begins to realize he has learnt everything his father and his religion could teach him. He knows there has to be a higher truth that his father and his religious teachings could never teach him. This realization gets him started on a decades long journey through extreme ways of living.
He joins an ascetic group and learns to suppress his worldly desires and yet doesn’t find himself and even his much older and wiser teachers any closer to ‘enlightenment’, so he takes their leave.
He comes across ‘Gotama Buddha’ and is quite taken by the ‘exalted one’. After meeting with the Buddha, he immediately knows that there is indeed a higher wisdom that Buddha has attained. Siddhartha comes to realize that like Buddha, he too must undertake his own journey to find this truth for himself.
Buddha, here, in my opinion stands in for learned teachers who are undoubtedly wise but there is no way for even the wisest of teachers to pass this knowledge on to their disciples. Everyone needs to find their own truth and meaning.
His quest then takes him to the other extreme – he learns the ways of the material world and lives out his days as a wealthy merchant immersing himself into consumption of all fine things in life. This too does not bring him any closer to finding his peace. He bids goodbye to this world too. He comes to realize giving everything up is far easier than losing a part of one’s fortune. Losing is freeing.
He comes across a wise and peacefully content ferryman who lives by a beautiful river. Siddhartha begins to live in the ferryman’s hut by the river and begins to live as a ferryman himself. The ferryman encourages Siddhartha to commune with the river who the ferryman considers to be his teacher.
Siddhartha starts to enjoy being one with nature. Fate then brings his son to him that he did not know he had. He then learns about the pangs of suffering and pain that unconditional love for a child brings. After his son runs away, he begins to realize how life is a cycle and how every single being in the universe is part of a universal ‘flow’. And, once he learns to go along with this ‘flow’, the current of life without resisting, he finds himself at peace at last.
“‘When someone seeks,’ said Siddhartha, ‘then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.’” — Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
This book is written very simply and with a lot of humility. I think everyone will walk away with a different perspective after putting this down based on their experiences, beliefs and their life situation. One thing is certain- you will surely walk away with something. Highest possible recommend!
Guidance for thriving in the professional world 