Siddhartha: An Experimental Life

Any schoolboy can do experiments in the physics laboratory to test various scientific hypotheses. But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

At first glance, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha is a distillation of the religions of the East into a Western novel. The titular character shares his name with the Buddha (though the Buddha was to discard the name), is the son of a Brahmin (India’s priestly caste), joins a group of Samanas (seekers or ascetics in Indian religions), and on finally obtaining enlightenment hears a cacophony of voices coalesce into a single word, Om (the most sacred sound or invocation in Hinduism).

While the religions of the East provide the visual imagery and language of Siddhartha and represent its core influence, I was struck by the parallels of the philosophy of the book with a particular reading of Friedrich Nietzsche. This reading brings out the themes of the book in a way which most appeals to my tastes and worldview, and so I present it here.

The core, defining belief of Siddhartha (the character) is the rejection of enlightenment through teachings, which must instead be found through the accumulation of experiences. He tells the Buddha as such to explain why he will not remain with him:

That is why I am going on my way – not to seek another and better doctrine, because I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and teachers and to reach my goal alone – or die.

That one must choose not doctrines or to follow a teacher but instead to carve one’s own path is both a part of Buddhism and a core theme in Nietzsche’s oeuvre. Consider this line from Thus Spoke Zarathustra in which Zarathustra admonishes his followers:

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

And indeed Siddhartha repeatedly repays his teachers well. He leaves his father behind for the Samanas, leaves the Samanas for the Buddha, and leaves the Buddha to experience life for himself entirely without teachers. And I think that the way in which Siddhartha has to try different experiences for himself is the crucial, second Nietzschean theme of the book. This is why he must leave behind the ascetic path for a while to experience the sensual with Kamala and commercial life with Kamaswami, until he realises this makes him miserable:

Now he understood it and realized that the inward voice had been right, that no teacher could have brought him salvation. That was why he had to go into the world, to lose himself in power, women, and money; that was why he had to be a merchant, a dice player, a drinker and a man of property, until the priest and Samana in him her dead. That was why he had to undergo those horrible years […] till he reached bitter despair, so that Siddhartha the pleasure-monger nad Siddhartha the man of property could die. He had died and a new Siddhartha had awakened from his sleep.

To find his path, Siddhartha must experienced other paths and really find that they are not for him. Continues Zarathustra in the same speech:

You say that you believe in Zarathustra? But what matters Zarathustra? You are my believers – but what matter all believers? You had not yet sought yourselves; and you found me […] Now I bid you to lose me and find yourselves […]

For much the same reason, Siddhartha cannot prevent his son from making the same mistakes. His son too must find his own path through his own experiences. The final Nietzschean theme tying all of this together is the very fact that what works for Siddhartha will not necessarily work for others and vice versa. In his conversation with the Buddha, the Buddha asks if given his decision he thinks the other followers of the Buddha should give up on the Buddha’s teachings and return to ordinary life and wordly desires. Siddhartha declines to say so, telling the Buddha:

It is not for me to judge another life. I must judge for myself. I must choose and reject.

Nietzsche was committed to perspectivism, the view that knowledge, truth, and values are rooted in subjective perspectives. From this he rejected the idea that moral facts exist, that there can be a one-size-fits-all approach to life. He rejected the view that the same morals should exist for everyone alike.

Caution is needed here: it is all too easy to santise Nietzsche, who believed that most people were not capable of finding their own way and who regarded egalitarianism as a herd morality. But I said at the start that Hesse’s Siddhartha draws on a reading of Nietzsche. What Nietzsche would have made of it I know not: I know only that it could have been made from Nietzsche.

What is striking to me in Siddhartha is that unlike Kundera, who regards the impossibility of knowing what kind of life will best suit us as a kind of tragedy, Hesse seems to regard experiment as the only way worth living. It is in taking on enough experiences, each educating us further about ourselves, that we find our way to live. This, for me, is the great appeal of Siddhartha.