---
tags: notes, reading
slug: siddhartha
breaks: false
---

# On _Siddhartha_

[](https://hackmd.io/srauj3kRSXW8zEe4xd86Fg)

The encounters of writings that propel me into philosophical contemplation are few and far between.
Those that lead me to an uncontrollable note-taking session are even rarer.
The long-time classics [_Siddhartha_](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52036.Siddhartha) by Hermann Hesse (translated by Hilda Rosner) has gifted me with such a uniquely enjoyable experience.

I started off the book nonchalantly during my daily commute on a public subway.
After 10 pages in, on an undisturbed Saturday morning, I found myself locked in my chair, with the pamphlet-thin book on my left hand, and pen and papers on the right.
I furiously record down my reaction to the development of the story, distilling my interpretation of the lessons at that moment, worrying that the fleeting and interwoven nature of those ideas would be too consuming to recall and unravel afterwards.
Well, I'm glad I did, and here I got a chance to organize these pointers and present my personal takeaways in a slightly more coherent manner.


p.s. what's particularly fascinating is the multiple instances where soon after I wrote down some reflection using my own words, a similar phrase or paragraph on the exact idea appears in the next 15 pages.
I was prematurely proud of my succinct capture of the author's message, but only for a brief moment.
What I considered as original extraction of insights are right there all along, in the arch of a short story, as if Hermann have presciently predicted the meditation in my mind.
Or more likely, he has practiced meditation devotedly, just like the protagonist Siddhartha, to have walked on the same path (and many others) and reached the same conclusion before.

:::warning
Before going forward, be warned that there are spoilers, and all interpretations are personal takes and should not be taken definitively.
I only report my raw, inherently biased thoughts.
:::

## Knowledge v.s. Self-Knowledge

The core intellectual discussion beneath the story is about the differences and the interplay of *knowledge* and *self-knowledge* -- their characteristics, the perils and pleasure of each, and the various misguided ways people used to obtain them, primarily due to lack of deep understanding of both, especially their distinctions.

*Knowledge* is about how the world works (acquiring) and how to best influence it in desirable ways (applying).
Examples are the laws of gravity in physics, the Central Limit Theorem in statistics, the economies of scale in business, the prospect theory and cognitive biases in psychology, the necessity of civil liberty in politics, etc.
These knowledge are gained through *learning*, let it be reading, listening to teachers, observing the pattern through experiments, or borrowing tricks from successful entrepreneurs.

*Self-knowledge*, in contrast, is about self-identity, understanding of the virtues and vices of oneself with the goal of achieving internal harmony via **self-acceptance**.
(let me underscore the ultimate goal of "accepting who you are" instead of transforming yourself to be better in some dimensions, I'll revisit this later)
Examples are realizations of your regular impulses for random act of kindness and occasional devious curse on people who cut in lines or the tendency to secretly cheat ourselves to get ahead of everyone else.
These self-understanding are obtained through *experiences and reflections*, or as Siddhartha puts it "I can think, wait, and fast".

There are fundamental differences in their purposes and ethos, thus requires different practices to acquire.
Unfortunately, mastering one doesn't guarantee an easier path towards the other, and the successful playbook for one can be at odds with achieving the other.
This dilemma is thoroughly examined by Hasse through various stages of Siddhartha's life.
Knowledge centers around efficient grasp of how things work and how to best apply them to make the most impact.
*it rewards the intelligent, the diligent, the decisive executors*.
In contrast, self-knowledge emphasizes awareness, mindfulness and acceptance.
*it rewards the patient, the forgiving, the untroubled hearts*.
Mastering knowledge requires an industrious (wo)men, the harder you hit, the faster you will forge your iron and sharpen your knifes.
Mastering self-knowledge requires an attentive and loving (wo)men, like grabbing sands, the harder you squeeze, the less you retain; the more gentle and open is your palm, the more you can carry.

### Materialism, Spirituality and Self-knowledge

If we put Knowledge and Self-knowledge into two camps, under the former, I would further sub-divide into "the materialistic" and "the spiritual".
The materialistic focus on knowledge about possession and classical definition of success; the spiritual cares about knowledge for obtaining wisdom (religion or otherwise), nobility, justice and virtues.
Note that they are not mutually exclusive, some people manage to master more than one category.

The tricky part is *many mistake seeking spirituality as obtaining self-knowledge* -- the difference is subtle but it is the source of disciple's disappointment from never reaching "Nirvana".
Like seeking materialistic success, spiritual and devoted disciples still is seeking that something, that mysterious "Nirvana", still yearning for more "knowledge" to get closer to the "truth".
They still need external guidance, like the preaching from Buddha, to navigate themselves.
However, self-knowledge is really internal, and really specific to each individual rather than being universal.
The guidance should come from within, not from external stimuli.
To quote the awaken Siddhartha, "knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom, ..., as in every truth, the opposite is equally true".
The point, at least my interpretation, is that knowledge carried in the medium of natural language is limited in the linguistic (in)precision and its inherent ambiguity.
More importantly, language is a tool for info exchange, whereas self-knowledge should originates and marinate inside yourself, further extraction into any language would inevitably result in loss of precision.

Since there's a large portion of the story on a more materialistic Siddhartha, let me summarize my takeaways.
The materialistic talk in terms of gains and losses, gambling and profit;
their measure of success is *quantitative* as the amount of possessions available at ones disposal;
they fear of losing, aging and humiliation, because they have *something to lose* and are afraid of inefficiency in obtaining more in a shorter time frame.
The spiritual talk in terms of right and wrong, misguided and wise;
their measure of success is *qualitative* as the progress of their journey towards Nirvana;
they fear of triviality, distracted spirit, allured mind and setting foot on the wrong path, because they are afraid of *nothing to learn*.

Interestingly, I think while the materialistic chase maximal efficiency, the spiritual is terrified by it.
Because, the former pursue pleasure, the latter seek fulfillment.
Shortcut and fast lane insinuate triviality, the deepest nightmare of the spirituals.
They tend to embrace meandering journey as it elevates the quality of the final epiphany.
They are not afraid of death, but of wasted time on the wrong path, wrong teaching as those would result in drifting apart from true wisdom.
In stark contrast, death is the ultimate enemy of the materialistic as it marks the possession of none and loss of all.

Hasse also discussed what happen when one camp look through the lens of another.
The spiritual would see the materialistic pursuit as *games*, with no finishing line, as there's always more to grab, thus they use words like "insatiable" to describe this camp.
After playing the games himself for many years, Siddhartha got tired and jaded (well he has to, by definition, these are no-ending game) and return back to spiritual.
I think this softly explain why many elderly become religious, apart from afraid of death and want to believe in an afterlife, there's an element of comfort in saying: "you don't have to play the game, just focus on achieving fulfillment".

### Pitfalls of crossing over

Finally, I'd like to discuss the potential dangers when one camp lurk over the other and impose their accustomed perspective and wisdom of life onto the other side.
I think they are under-stated in this book.

When the materialistic tries to join the spiritual and the self-knowledge camps using his conventional approach, they tend to **over-intellectualize**, thinking that there's an optimal path in every pursuit and every teaching of the wise and aphorism carries deep universal truth.
They are too comfortable with their goal-driven mechanism, and absolute comparison (since comparing how successful two businesses are definite, concretely in numbers), they easily glorify some wise quotes from famous intellectuals, and take them as undisputed principles.
They are rigid and mechanical in approaching wisdom, because most of lessons in their world are empirical and mostly reproducible.

When the spiritual look at the materialistic with their noble value system, they tend to exhibit **arrogance and condescending disdain**.
They pride themselves of their non-trivial pursuit and avoidance of petty obsession.
In fact, this is the attitude of Siddhartha when he was an ascetic.
They are not ashamed of begging for food they didn't harvest with their own labor, but they mock the farmer who anguish over being robbed of the hard-earned money.
They hold themselves to a supposedly higher standard of virtuous and noble ends, but they fail to recognize the dignity of ordinary people.
We are all animals after all, albeit with brain and capably of reasoning,
there's no disgrace of just being materialistic and provides for your family and not thinking about ascending to higher mental state.

When the spiritual and the materialistic strive for joining the self-knowledge camp, the most sought after among the three, they tend to resort to **self-hatred and self-denial**.
Because in their minds, self-knowledge is a such a pristine destination with an extremely high bar of entry, and they fell short and outright disqualified before trying.
There are so many vices in me, so many devious thoughts, so many moments of distractions and concerns for trivial causes.
The display of such self-hatred can be found in Hasse's passage: "..wished passionately for oblivion, to be at rest, to be dead",
".. corrupted, rotting body,.., sluggish and misused soul..".
Ironically, self-hatred is the perfect sign of lack of self-acceptance, the final goal of self-knowledge.

### Summary: two sentences and one punchline

I summarize my limited understanding as follows:

> True self-knowledge is peaceful, internal, non-confrontational, non-radiating, and unconditional on external circumstances thus non-transitory.
> This does not mean it's static, on the contrary, like water in the river, "it continually flows, yet was always there".
>
> **It is being, not becoming.**

## Similarities with Yangmingism

[Yangmingism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangmingism), a.k.a. School of the Heart by the wildly celebrated philosopher 王阳明 from Ming Dynasty (~1500 AC) of ancient China.

I couldn't help but notice lots of footprint of Yangmingism in Siddhartha's practices.
Soon after he left his Brahmin father and trying to live as an Samana, Siddhartha meditated for days and weeks, living through hovering herons, or dead jackals, "became a skeleton, become dust, mingled with the atmosphere... he was animal, carcass, stone, wood, water, and each time he reawakened".
Even though, the intention was to "lose Self" by living vicariously in other beings, the practice reminds me of the famous Bamboo contemplation by the 12-year-old Yangming.
Yangming used to stared at Bamboo in his garden for seven days, concentrating, fasting, seeking universal laws and truth via the humblest, most inconspicuous plant.
His principle of "to acquire knowledge, one must study things" (格物致知) (which he also soon abandon once he failed to find truth in Bamboo and fell ill after the 7 days.) is also the start of his spiritual pursuit.
They both believed that there's some truth behind the surface of reality and both shared a similar epistemological approach.

Coincidentally, (or is it?), Yangming also later switch to the "[The supreme principle is buried in one's mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangmingism#.22The_Supreme_Principle_is_Buried_in_One.27s_Heart-Mind.22)" -- effectively what we have been referring to as self-knowledge above.
Instead of seeking one's need from external things, he argued that "there is nothing exists outside our minds, there is no supreme principle exists outside our hearts."
Siddhartha reached the same conclusion which is why he left his town, depart from his friend Govinda and stop studying even the wisest words and teachings by the Buddha, but instead seek wisdom from within.

To mention Yangmingism, we cannot omit his most famous principle "the unity of inner knowledge and action" (知行合一).
The ultimately wise Siddhartha at the end of his journey awakes to the exactly same conclusion.
When his old friend Govinda came to him for wisdom, he said: "not in speech or thought do I regard him as a great man, but in his deeds and life".
Afterall, what's good use of knowledge and self-knowledge, if they are separated from your action?

## Siddhartha and Mike Tyson

It seems far-fetched to put a sage and a savage (who bite off opponent's ear out of frustration of losing) in the same sentence.
But Mike Tyson has secretly been one of my favorite philosophers.
Let me qualify my statement, the old, coming to age Tyson is a great practitioner and I consider him as a "street philosopher" who walk into true awakening after a life of lust, violence, extreme ups and downs.
He never intend to be one, never attended Harvard or study under the illustrious Buddha, and even though wikipedia and most general public wouldn't agree with my statement, I cannot lie about how many times his words gave me chill and nearly moved me to tears.
In fact, you should find many overlaps in the trajectory of Siddhartha's growth and Mike's, not in a superficial way of course.

Mike rose to all-time great boxer status fairly quickly, an admired "undisputed heavyweight champion", a smooth start like the young Brahmin's son.
It'll be an understatement to say Mike is on the top of the mountain.
Opponents fear him, media love him, money flow to him, women flock around him, even the mighty Muhammad Ali recognize Mike's dominance.
He was drown in women, meaningless numb sex (he said himself in a podcast), in millions squandered on expensive lifestyle and later all to lawyer fee.
Then followed by his quick downfall, the infamous "ear-biting" fiasco, the rape accusation and incarcerated as sex offender.
He has nothing, once a millionaire, a unified champions, now a broke prisoner (he lost 600 million dollars, imagine that).
In an interview, a rapper, supposedly rich himself, asked a much older Mike about being wealthy so early in life, Mike said "if you think having lots of money will make you happy, then you never have a lot of money before".
Stop for a moment, doesn't this mischievous Mike remind you of the "Kamaswami merchant" stage of Siddhartha where he also became a rich bastard, surrenders to sensual desires, physical possession, alcohol, and gambling?

Later in life, Mike return from prison, trying to rediscover himself.
I'm unfamiliar with this chapter of his life, but what I grasp is that he reached the ultimate level of humbleness when he lost his daughter in an accident.
This is the vulnerable and not afraid to admit his vulnerability Mike, the tough-with-face-tattoo but soft from inside and easy-to-cry Mike, the prioritizing family and friendship over personal indulgence Mike.
Go find interview of him talking about his daughter or his coach Cus D'Amato, he always choked up when talking about them.
He gets sincerely and uncontrollably emotional when speaking about his respect for Ali, his family putting up with his past, his friends who didn't leave him at first sight of trouble.
That humbleness and genuineness and no-facade side of Mike easily move me to tears.
He asked people to stop worshiping him, he's a man of sins and vices;
he cautioned youngsters to not be blinded by success and find true friends to be around;
he talked about his drug addition, his multiple suicide attempts and how minuscule we all are in the face of God and history.
This is the humblest, the most vulnerable yet strongest, most naked, most self-accepting Mike I've witnessed.

Doesn't this remind you of the Ferryman stage of Siddhartha? Losing his wife who got bitten by a snake, his son who ran off from him, but he, meanwhile through these extreme ups and downs, is reaching self-acceptance.
It almost seems like a colorful and bumpy life like theirs is necessary for the highest level of awakening.
*Without experiencing the extreme, it's inconceivable to know the rawest selves.*
People say "money don't change people, it only reveal them".
Replace "money" with power, status, admiration, prestige, poverty, loss of family, public embarrassment, cancer, near-death moments.
How can I claim my robustness and resilience when I have never lost anything I hold dear in life;
how can I recognize my integrity and loyalty when I have never been seriously tempted before;
how can Batman be considered as altruistic and heroic when he's not faced between saving his love and the future of his city?

When I read Siddhartha's conversation with his brotherly fellow ferryman Vasudeva, confessing his fear for his sons never returning and opening up his past on ditching his own father and failed to see him ever again.
When he "surrendering himself to the stream", I know the story is coming to an end, the salvation is already around the corner.

## Miscellaneous comments

- I've seen book [review online](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/38573251) that ridicules the vague message, the self-important, sometimes bullshit sounding language from the book. The mockery originates from the excessive references to Hinduism concepts and the reviewer's frustration at not learning concrete lessons (my interpretation, could be wrong). But I'm afraid the reviewer missed the whole point -- this book is an experience, offering a trigger for your own self-reflection, it's not trying to teach or preach some grand, universal, capital T, Truth. Self-knowledge can never be taught (or learned) anyway, as we discussed.
- meta-observation 1: the reader experience, treating the book/text as some sort of higher teaching and trying to decode wisdom Hasse hide behind his story is comically reflective of the mindset of Brahmin and Buddha followers. Early in the book, I was tempted multiple times to skip ahead and quickly know the gist of the final lesson. I want to take shortcut, I want to be wise without "walking the walk". Sometimes, I find my mind wonder off from the page, and would panic for a few seconds about missing some important wisdom. I guess the insecurity and the impatience is the common denominator of all peasants who try to obtain self-knowledge like any other normal knowledge, hoping to get it via a short digest, via a powerful proverb. Sadly, self-knowledge is obtained via experiencing and reflecting only, and there's no TL;DR for that.
- meta-observation 2: the essence of this story can only manifest in a fiction, and the lessons (if any) delivered through somewhat ambiguous language, leaving the interpretation to the readers. It doesn't work in non-fiction, if Hasse were to present his main messages as a law/truth/axiom, people won't treat him seriously, but only dismiss his religious sermons.

### Details that I dislike

- Sex only happens when Siddhartha was a degenerated Kamaswami, as if sexual desire is sinful and not something noble people should have. I could be over-interpreting Hasse here, but I find it arrogant for biblical stories on Mary giving birth to Jesus while remaining a virgin, as if the act of sex would taint a saint.
- "Deep pronouncing the Om ... renewed/rejuvenate him" and lead to his rebirth. I mean, what is this? I seriously doubt monks reach transcendence simply thanks to mantra and wooden fish.
- "But now I think: this stone is stone; it is also animal, God and Buddha. I do not respect and love it because it was one thing and will become something else, but because it has already long been everything and always is everything."
To be fair, the following sentences start to make sense when he said the value of stone lies within its being, its own characteristic, not in any external context.
But I'm allergic to this "anything is everything" bullshit.

:::success
Thank you for reading this far. :tada:

It has been quite a journey, hope you have enjoyed it as much as I do.
:::

<!-- ================ -->
<!-- CSS styles below -->

<style>
.markdown-body {
font: normal normal normal Sabon, "Hoefler Text", Garamond, Times, serif;
font-family: Sabon, "Hoefler Text", Garamond, Times, serif;
}
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {
font-family: 'Circular Std', sans-serif;
color: #5B5B66;
}
h1:hover, h2:hover, h3:hover, h4:hover, h5:hover {
color: #15141A;
}
a {
color: #ba110c;
}
a:hover {
color: #fe2106;
}
code {
font-family: JetBrains Mono, Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, "Courier New", monospace;
}
</style>