Siddhartha

Siddhartha stays by the river and decides to find the ferryman Vasudeva again and start his new path from there. Gazing into the river, he hears the voice inside him telling him to learn from it. Suffering with hunger, he reaches Vasudeva who recognizes him after a while, welcomes him, and offers him a bed and food. Siddhartha tells Vasudeva all about his life up to now, and Vasudeva listens silently and attentively, especially when he hears about his recent despair and reawakening by the river. Vasudeva tells Siddhartha that he should stay and live with him, learning his skills and learning much more from the river itself: “The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it” (82).

Siddhartha stays with Vasudeva for several months and learns many practical skills. He learns from the river that time is not separated into past, present, and future, but that all exist simultaneously. He also hears Om in all the voices of the river. The two men live happily together and begin to resemble each other. They gain a reputation as wise men because many travelers find comfort in their presence, while others believe them to be “mute, rather odd and stupid” (85). After many years, a group of monks pass by on their pilgrimage to Gotama and explain to the ferrymen that the Illustrious One is dying. Siddhartha remembers him lovingly.

One day, Kamala and her reluctant son pass near Vasudeva’s ferry on their own pilgrimage to see the Buddha. A snake bites Kamala and the two run to the ferry, but Kamala collapses on the way. Vasudeva carries Kamala to the hut, where Siddhartha recognizes her and then realizes the boy is his son. He takes care of them both while Kamala is dying. Before her moment of death, Kamala finds peace by looking into Siddhartha’s eyes and is as happy as if she had reached the Buddha. Siddhartha reflects on age, death, and time. In the morning, he tells Vasudeva he is not sad, because his son has been given to him. The two men build Kamala’s funeral pyre.

Siddhartha’s son stays with the ferrymen, angry and sad with grief for his mother. Siddhartha understands his pain and gives him time to heal, treating him with patience and indulgence. After some time however, Siddhartha realizes that the boy is spoiled, having grown accustomed to a rich, comfortable life. He is unwilling to accept his new situation, nor will he help or even be polite to the two men. Siddhartha also realizes that the boy will not accept him as his father, but he continues to treat him with tenderness and patience because he loves him and cannot do otherwise. Vasudeva advises Siddhartha to take the boy to the town so that he can be where he wants to be. Fearing for the boy’s safety, Siddhartha cannot accept this idea. Again, Vasudeva explains that, just as Siddhartha went his own way and made his own mistakes, Siddhartha should let the boy do the same.

Siddhartha knows Vasudeva is right, and yet his love is so strong that he cannot let the boy go. Siddhartha realizes he is finally experiencing the love that ordinary people feel, and that while this love is “a troubled spring” (95), he welcomes it: “This emotion, this pain, these follies also had to be experienced” (95). The defiant boy, who would prefer that Siddhartha punish him than constantly indulge him, runs away, stealing the men’s money and the boat. The ferrymen build a raft to cross the river, and Siddhartha goes to the town to look for his son. There, he recalls his life with Kamala and the years that ended in nausea until he heard Om again. He realizes he should not follow his son but feels great sadness at losing him. He waits in the town for his sadness to pass, as the river taught him, saying Om to calm his pain, until eventually Vasudeva finds him and they return home without speaking of the boy.

For a long time, Siddhartha continues to feel sad about his son. He experiences envy when he witnesses families together and wishes he could have the same happiness. He no longer feels superior to ordinary people with their “vanities, desires and trivialities” (100), but loves and respects them for their strong and vital urges. He thinks the only thing they lack is the “consciousness of the unity of all life,” (101), which Siddhartha considers to be true wisdom. One day, Siddhartha feels the river laughing at him and he sees his father’s face in his own reflection. This leads him to the awareness that his father had suffered in the same way as him over the loss of a son, and that he is undergoing the same fate. He reflects on this “stupid thing, this repetition, this course of events in a fateful circle” (102). Feeling despair and yet able to laugh at himself, he tells Vasudeva, now an old man, of all his feelings since his son left. Confessing everything to the serene listener, Siddhartha feels Vasudeva absorb his words and pain: “[T]his motionless man was the river itself, that he was God itself, that he was eternity itself.”

Vasudeva instructs Siddhartha to listen carefully to the river, and on looking into it, he sees the faces of all those he has known and loved. These faces flow and merge with his own. He sees them and all their desires and goals washed to the ocean, becoming cloud vapor, and then rain, returning to the river and joining the same cycle again. Then Siddhartha hears all the voices of the river—happy, sad, childish, and manly—with all their feelings “interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways” (105). This great, unified song he realizes is Om. Siddhartha’s pain recedes as he feels his Self merging into unity. Vasudeva sees that Siddhartha has reached the serenity of knowledge, and he says it is time for him to go into the woods, as his job is completed. Siddhartha happily watches him go.

Govinda, still restless and seeking, arrives at the ferryman’s hut, having heard that a sage lives there. The two men greet each other happily. In response to Govinda’s questions, Siddhartha explains what he has learned about seeking, about Holy men and their teachings, about the value of experience over taught knowledge, and about unity. He uses the analogy of a stone to illustrate that the sacred Buddha can be found in everything. Govinda asks about earthly love, and Siddhartha tells him that even love is part of Gotama, as shown by his deeds. Govinda reflects to himself that what Siddhartha says sometimes contradicts Gotama and is incomprehensible, yet he feels that Siddhartha is a holy man. Govinda tells his friend that he can see he has found peace, whereas Govinda himself has not. He asks for one word, something to help him on his way. Siddhartha tells Govinda to bend down and kiss him on the forehead. Doing this, Govinda experiences something wonderful: He sees a continuous stream of faces, of people, animals, corpses, and death, “all helping each other, loving, hating and destroying each other and become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory” (116). These faces merge, and then he perceives Siddhartha’s smile of unity as a mask over all of them. This smile is the same as that of the Buddha. Govinda bows low to Siddhartha, crying but “overwhelmed by a feeling of great love, of the most humble veneration” (117) and basking in Siddhartha’s holy and loving smile.