DE Weekly: Hesse, Siddhartha, & Oneness
Below is an archived email originally sent on June 23, 2025.
Hesse, Siddhartha, & Oneness
Have you ever felt like the life you’re living is not enough? Like you aren’t satisfied with the way things are? Like there has to be more than this? I suspect you have, just as I have.
This feeling of wondering is a driver of a lot of existentialist thought; the existentialists themselves were searchers, both of meaning and purpose. So, too, were their contemporaries who did not buy into existentialism, but other philosophies and answers to life.
One such man is Herman Hesse, the German-Swiss author who lived at the turn of the century and explored themes of Eastern philosophy and religion. The story of his I'd like to explore today is perhaps his most famous book: Siddhartha.
Hesse’s 1922 novel follows a man named Siddhartha, son of a Brahman, who is raised following the ways of meditation the Brahmans have always practiced, in order that they might attain nirvana.
Siddhartha is quite good at meditation, and this earns him praise. But he doesn’t feel fulfilled by this. He says, “the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied” (11).
After a tough conversation with his father, he gets permission to go and join an ascetic group in the forest called the Samanas, joined by his friend Govinda.
With the Samanas, Siddhartha and Govinda lead a life of poverty, fasting, and extreme meditation enhanced by depriving themselves of comfort as much as possible.
“What is meditation? What is leaving one’s body,” asks Siddhartha. “It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a brief numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life” (22-23).
Siddhartha and Govinda catch word of a great teacher, one who has truly reached nirvana and transcended the world in a way no one else has: a man named Gotama, or the Buddha.
Feeling like they have more to learn, the two set out to meet Gotama, along with many other searchers who wish to follow him, too.
After hearing his teachings, Govinda is convinced he must follow the Buddha; he stays with him from hereon out. Siddhartha, however, decides he can’t follow Gotama’s teachings, and resolves to set off on his own again.
As soon as he does, he has an awakening. He feels the “oneness” of the world, understands the unity of all things, and realizes that no matter what we do to try and escape and to transcend our self, we always wind up back at the self.
“All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. Now he was with it, he was part of it” (50).
Siddhartha’s journey changes drastically from here, as he arrives in a city and meets a woman named Kamala. He lusts over her, and to have her, she tells him, he must acquire material things: money, shoes, nice clothes, and the like.
To do this, he begins working for a merchant, and over time, becomes accustomed to life in the city, and becomes more and more like everyone around him. He loses money gambling, engages in sins of the body and sins of the soul, and, “Slowly, the disease of the soul, which rich people have, grabbed hold of him” (78).
Siddhartha becomes disgusted with the life he has been living, so he sets out again to find himself.
Eventually, he meets a ferryman named Vasudeva at the river––the same one who had ferried him across the river years and years ago when he was still a Samana. He lives with this man in his hut and helps him with ferrying, and also learns from the river at the behest of the ferryman.
Siddhartha sees that the river is always running, nevertheless always there and always the same. This helps him see the secret of the river, that “the river is everywhere at once . . . there is only the present for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future” (104-105).
“Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is present” (105).
For the sake of not spoiling everything in the book, I’ll gloss over a few things that happen from this point and skip to the end.
After enough time living with the ferryman, Siddhartha finally understands everything the river has to teach, and reattains true enlightenment. He has his second awakening: “In this hour, Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate, stopped suffering” (132).
In the last chapter, he reunites with his childhood friend Govinda, both of them now old and gray. Siddhartha shares what he’s learned with him, and tells him how “things” are more real than “thoughts,” how the oneness of the world is to be experienced.
If life were an illusion, says Siddhartha, then what is illusory is just as real as him, so what does it matter? He is one with the world, so everything is equally real and equally one.
After initially doubting him, Govinda has the same awakening to end the story.
In this story, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, existentialist themes are woven into Siddhartha’s life as he walks his path to enlightenment.
Siddhartha’s journey is one of self-discovery, of freedom, of searching for and finding meaning.
What’s more is Siddhartha realizes time and again that he cannot simply follow the teachings of others or live the life of the many, but that he must find his own meaning to reach nirvana.
At several points, Siddhartha must grapple with the results of his choices. His aim of transcending himself––indeed, overcoming his own facticity and fighting sedimentation––is not linear, and not easy.
It could not have happened any other way for him, however. Just as our lives as they are and will end can not happen any other way than by how we choose to live them.
Each and every experience culminates in our existence. Each and every experience forms a completeness, a oneness, that makes our lives what they are.
We can only grasp the meaning of our life when we accept it, when we embrace it. To do that, we first have to live it. Only then might we understand it.
“And everything together, all voices, all goals, all yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all of this together was the world . . . the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om: the perfection” (131).
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
Last week it was the Bible, this week it’s Eastern philosophy. Important to remember the wider the breadth of what you read, the more you can understand it all.
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