Frog the Ferryman

05/23/2016

Siddhartha. I read the thing, what, twenty years ago. Maybe more.

In my memory, all the key characters were Indians seeking oneness with the universe through the perfection of selfless behavior and thought. Om….

These characters have, over those twenty odd years, blended into one big fat grinning Buddha.

But this book is not about Buddha, they say.

Well it is really. It’s a sneaky critique of Buddha and his followers, if nothing else.

There is a hell of a difference between a how-to guide for membership of a cult of Sansara, and a travel guide for hitchhikers that are avoiding the same.

This book pretends to be the former and is more the latter.

In the book, Siddhartha learns to stop time and imagine his own life. Vasudeva is a figment of Siddhartha’s hallucinogenic imagination, a la Brad Pitt in the Fight Club. Sidd even taps into the singularity of time and space, well before such things became popular.

Whereas Gotama can only conjure up a weight loss program for the morally overburdened. And, to be fair, he also manages to walk around with a very admirable sense of sereneness.

Siddhartha was Hesse of course. It was an ode to himself.

None of this matters too much either. There’s no judgement here. Thanks for sharing, I say.

It’s always good to read the distilled efforts of others.

For the author, this book is an act of kindness, with no obvious downsides, which probably had a primary benefit of allowing him to arrange his wisdom just prior to the binning of it, along with the rest of the hard-earned fruits of his experience and contemplation.

It does leave me wondering, though, where did I read the story about the frog and the scorpion?Nuh, it’s gone.

Here are some randomly noted and recorded quotes gleaned from today’s re-read … akin to a stream of consciousness from the river of Styx;

And so I’m starting to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the desire to know it, than learning.

[Gotama’s failed millennium project] “Have you seen the multitude of my Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in the teachings? And do you believe, Samana, do you believe that it would be better for them to all abandon the teachings and to return into the life the world and of desires?”

Truly, nothing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own Self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is nothing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!

You should also learn this: love can be obtained by begging, buying, receiving it as a gift, finding it in the street, but it cannot be stolen.

Surely, I am without possessions. But I am so voluntarily, and therefore I am not destitute.

Everyone takes, everyone gives, such is life.

Pleasure cannot be taken without giving pleasure.

Siddhartha’s interest and curiosity [in business] was only concerned with the people, whose businesses, crafts, worries, pleasures, and acts of foolishness used to be as alien and distant to him as the moon.

And then, for an hour, he became aware of the strange life he was leading, of doing lots of things which were only a game, of, though being happy and feeling joy at times, real life still passing him by and not touching him.

I am like you. You also do not love—how else could you practise love as a craft? Perhaps, people of our kind can’t love. The childlike people can; that’s their secret.

He envied them for the one thing that was missing from him and that they had, the importance they were able to attach to their lives, the amount of passion in their joys and fears, the fearful but sweet happiness of being constantly in love. These people were all of the time in love with themselves, with women, with their children, with honours or money, with plans or hopes.

Slowly the disease of the soul, which rich people have, grabbed hold of him.

Never before, had it become so strangely clear to Siddhartha, how closely lust was akin to death.

The name of this game was Sansara, a game for children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable to play once, twice, ten times—but for ever and ever over again?

He smiled a little – was it really necessary, was it right, was it not as foolish game, that he owned a mango tree, that he owned a garden? He also put an end to this, this also died in him. He rose, bid his farewell to the mango tree, his farewell to the pleasure-garden.

And it was this very thing, so it seemed to him now, that had been his sickness before, that he was not able to love anybody or anything.

I had to become a fool, to find Atman in me again. I had to sin, to be able to live again.

That he had felt this despair, this deep disgust, and that he had not succumbed to it, that the bird, the joyful source and voice in him was still alive after all, this was why he felt joy, this was why he laughed, this was why his face was smiling brightly under his hair which had turned gray.

He had died, a new Siddhartha had woken up from the sleep. He would also grow old, he would also eventually have to die, Siddhartha was mortal, every physical form was mortal. But today he was young, was a child, the new Siddhartha, and was full of joy.

Now he saw it and saw that the secret voice had been right, that no teacher would ever have been able to bring about his salvation. Therefore, he had to go out into the world…

Most of all, he learned from it to listen, to pay close attention with a quiet heart, with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without a wish, without judgement, without an opinion.

Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present.

“You’ve experienced suffering, Siddhartha, but I see that no sadness has entered your heart.”

Would you actually believe that you had committed your foolish acts in order to spare your son from committing them too? … But even if you would die ten times for him, you would not be able to take the slightest part of his destiny upon yourself.

He did sense very well that this love, this blind love for his son, was a passion, something very human, that it was Sansara, a murky source, dark waters. Nevertheless, he felt at the same time, it was not worthless, it was necessary, came from the essence of his own being. This pleasure also had to be atoned for, this pain also had to be endured, these foolish acts also had to be committed.

They lacked nothing, there was nothing the knowledgeable one, the thinker, had to put him above them except for one little thing, a single, tiny, small thing: the consciousness, the conscious thought of the oneness of all life.

It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness.

Did he not have to expect the same fate for himself? Was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid matter, this repetition, this running around in a fateful circle?

His wound blossomed, his suffering was shining, his Self had flown into the oneness. In this hour, Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate, stopped suffering.

“What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you’re searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don’t find the time for finding?”

Searching means having a goal, but finding means being free, being open, having no goal.

“Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.”

After which point, Herman completely loses the plot and proceeds to pass on his all his ‘wisdom’!

I do believe that he got to the place where he decided that wisdom is pointless and consciously decided to end the book in a way that (a) laughingly sent some readers off into a cult-de-dac, and (b) alerted the odd hitchhiker to stop reading the thing so bloody avidly.