The Job Interview
A young man walks into a rich merchant’s house and is asked what he can do. His answer is three short sentences. He can think. He can wait. He can fast. That is the entire resume, and the merchant lets him move in anyway.
This is a full summary of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, so it spoils everything, the ending included. I will take you through all twelve chapters and follow those three skills as they get used, lost, and replaced by something else. Every fact and every count comes from the text I read.
The Text I Read
I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number twenty-five hundred. The title page reads Siddhartha, an Indian Tale. It prints two dedications. Part one goes to Romain Rolland, and part two to Wilhelm Gundert, the author’s cousin in Japan. The file names no translator and gives no first publication date, so I will not give either one.
By my count the story runs about thirty-nine thousand words, in twelve chapters and two parts. Part one has four chapters and about ten and a half thousand words. Part two has eight chapters and about twenty-eight and a half thousand. So the famous opening is only a quarter of the book, and most of the story happens after Siddhartha leaves the holy men behind.
The Brahman’s Son
Chapter one. Siddhartha grows up by a river, the handsome son of a Brahman, and everyone adores him. His friend Govinda adores him most, and wants to follow him as his shadow.
But Siddhartha is not happy. The washing is good, he decides, but it is only water, and the offerings and verses do not fill him. He wants to find the Atman, the true self inside, and not even his wise father has found it. So he tells Govinda that tomorrow he will become a Samana, one of the wandering ascetics.
His father says no. Siddhartha stands in the room with his arms folded and does not move. The father checks on him every hour through the night, and each time the answer is the same. At first light he gives in. And Govinda, who was never invited, is waiting at the last hut. Notice what happened there. That was skill number two, and Siddhartha has not even left home yet.
The Samanas
Chapter two. Siddhartha gives away his clothes and starts to fast, for fifteen days, then for twenty-eight. He learns to stop his breath and slow his heart. In meditation he becomes a heron, then a dead jackal, and each time he wakes up as himself again.
That is the problem. Every road away from the self leads back to the self. After about three years he tells Govinda that a cart driver finds the same escape in rice wine. Then a rumour reaches them about a man named Gotama, the Buddha, who has ended suffering.
They decide to go. The oldest Samana is furious, so Siddhartha casts a spell with his eyes and makes the old man bow and bless them. Govinda is amazed. Siddhartha only shrugs. He does not care about walking on water.
Gotama and the Awakening
Chapters three and four. In the town of Savathi they find the Buddha, and Siddhartha knows him at once by his calm. He hears the sermon and admires every word. Govinda joins the monks, and Siddhartha tells him he will leave in the morning.
Then he speaks to Gotama himself, and he is polite and direct. The teaching, he says, shows the world as an unbroken chain of cause and effect, except for one gap, the promise of salvation. And nobody, he says, is saved by a teaching. Gotama calmly replies that the teaching is not an opinion. Its only goal is the end of suffering. He ends with a warning, to beware of too much wisdom.
Walking away, Siddhartha realises what he has been doing. He has been running from himself. He looks around as if for the first time, and the world is colourful. Then comes a cold moment. He cannot go home, and he belongs to no caste at all. He walks on, no longer toward his father.
Kamala
Chapter five opens part two. Siddhartha enjoys the world with child’s eyes. He crosses a river with a ferryman, who says that everything comes back. In a village, a young woman invites him, and he hears an inner voice say no.
Then he sees Kamala, a courtesan, carried in a sedan chair. He shaves, goes to her, and asks to be her student in love. She laughs. Young men come with good clothes and money, she says, and he has neither. When she asks what he can do, he gives his three answers. Think, wait, fast. She is unimpressed, until he mentions that he can read and write. That is rare. He pays for his first kiss with a poem.
Kamala sends him to Kamaswami, the richest merchant in the city. She tells him not to be a servant, but an equal.
The Childlike People
Chapter six. Kamaswami asks what use fasting could be. Siddhartha answers that a hungry man must take any job, and a man who can fast can wait for a better one. He reads a contract aloud, writes a line of his own, and is hired.
He learns trade, but plays at it, and never worries over a loss. Once he travels to buy rice that has already been sold, and happily stays to enjoy the village. Kamaswami scolds him. Siddhartha says he made friends, and that scolding helps no one.
Kamala teaches him that pleasure cannot be taken without giving it. He tells her most people are like falling leaves, and a few are like stars, and the Buddha is a star. Later she tells him he has remained a Samana and loves nobody. He agrees. People of their kind, he says, cannot love. The childlike people can, and that is their secret.
Sansara
Chapter seven. Years pass. Siddhartha grows rich, owns a house and a garden, and slowly becomes like the people he mocked. Then he starts gambling at dice, for high stakes, and what he loves is the fear.
The wake-up is a dream. Kamala’s singing bird lies dead in its cage, and he throws it in the street. He wakes in despair, sits under a mango tree, and decides the game is over. That night he walks out of his garden and the city and never returns. Kamaswami has people search for him. Kamala does not. She sets her bird free and later learns that she is pregnant.
By the River
Chapter eight. Siddhartha reaches the same river, full of disgust, and decides to drown himself. As he leans over the water, the word Om rises from somewhere deep, and he stops. By my count, the word Om shows up fifteen times in this chapter, more than in any other. He falls asleep under a coconut tree, and when he wakes, Govinda is sitting there, guarding him. Govinda does not recognise him.
They talk, and Siddhartha says only that he is on a pilgrimage and cannot say what he will be tomorrow. After Govinda goes, Siddhartha realises that all three of his skills are gone. Fasting, waiting, thinking, he gave them up for pleasure. He laughs at himself. He feels like a child again, and decides to stay by the river.
The Ferryman, the Son
Chapter nine. The ferryman is Vasudeva. Siddhartha tells him his whole life, and Vasudeva listens so well that Siddhartha stays. He learns the boat, and he learns to listen. The river teaches him that there is no time.
Years pass. The Buddha is dying, and pilgrims stream by. Kamala comes, with her son, and a snake bites her. She dies in Siddhartha’s hut, and the boy is his son. Chapter ten. The boy, about eleven, hates the hut, and in the end he steals the ferrymen’s coins, takes the boat, and runs. Siddhartha follows him to the city, and stops at Kamala’s old garden. Vasudeva finds him there and leads him home.
Om, Govinda, and the Count
Chapters eleven and twelve. The wound keeps burning. By the river, Vasudeva helps Siddhartha hear all its voices as one, and the word is Om. Vasudeva then walks into the forest. Years later, an old Govinda crosses on the ferry, and Siddhartha tells him that wisdom cannot be passed on. He asks Govinda to kiss his forehead, and what Govinda sees is for the ending video.
Now my count, and my reading. The words fasting, fasted and fasts appear twelve times, and the last one is in chapter eight. Words built on listen appear sixty-eight times, forty-five of them in the three chapters of the ferry. In my reading, the three skills never disappear. Waiting turns into listening. That is my opinion, and the book never says it.
If this helped, subscribe, and tell me in the comments which skill you would keep.
