My Friend, Siddhartha

I wish I had read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha when I was a teenager, but I’m so glad I picked it up at 25.

While browsing through the clearance section of a Barnes and Noble,–a great place to find collections of ancient myths, story books depicting the lives of sacred figures, and modern spiritual inspirations–I picked up a coloring book that advertises itself as an aid for meditation. I must have been leaning into my artistic side that day because another little book caught my eye among the disheveled stacks: an Illustrated Edition of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.

It felt as if the gold lettering on the book’s spine was illuminating my soul. Since I was on a tight schedule that day, I quickly tucked the glittering text under my arm with the coloring book and headed to the check-out counter. My new meditation manual was only $9, and the book that seemed to appear before me as if from some divine intervention only cost me $10. Could I really reach enlightenment for the low price of $19 plus tax?

I still needed to buy some coloring utensils, as required by my meditative coloring guide, but I wondered if I had just taken the first step in embarking on a new path that day. Perhaps, I had simply decided to cater to my inner child’s desire to use Crayola markers again and look at pretty pictures of trees, rivers, and gurus.

Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, in case you are unfamiliar with the story, is not about the Buddha, though he does play an important role and makes an impactful cameo appearance. The male lead does not identify himself as a practicing Buddhist, either. Siddhartha discovers his own path toward a fulfilling existence by abandoning the teachings of others and discovering truth and light within himself. His journey takes him through quite a few pitfalls before reaching his most perfect state of mind.

This book is written from the perspective of a German author and contains an outside perspective on South Asian traditions and cultures. Many readers have viewed this point-of-view and interpretation as problematic and misrepresentative. It can be considered a Eurocentric perspective, as it does not adequately represent the religious traditions of South Asia in several cases throughout the text. Siddartha is a work of fiction, but it still holds a place on the bookshelves of many world religions scholars as a unique study of Western perspectives–whether they may be respectful of cultural distances, unintentionally supportive of Western colonialism, or intentionally supportive of Western supremacy.

Through the lens of Hesse’s understandings of the practices, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and asceticism serve as prominent guides during significant stages of Siddhartha’s life, but he leaves many of the tenets of organized religion behind in his advancements toward self-fulfillment. Siddhartha realizes that his sacred truth can only be found by following his own individual path that eventually connects him to the communal oneness of everything. This consciousness and alignment with the world around him is identified as Om, a principal concept in South Asian traditions, and it is often achieved through the practice of mediation.

The act of coloring is not mentioned as the key to a perfect meditation session in Hermann Hesse’s narrative of Siddartha, but accessing a state of imagination and inner focus on the creative task has certainly helped me in mine. I have also learned that creating and contemplating visual patterns such as mandalas serve as tools for meditation and spiritual development for a variety of spiritual practitioners. Even the images featured in my Illustrated Edition of Siddhartha gave me a feeling of wonder while I walked through Siddartha’s life with him.

While he does not stand as a perfect symbol of South Asian traditions that should be relied upon for adequate studies, Siddartha’s relatability as a human character through repeated failure and redemption made me wish I had read his story sooner, but I know that I will seek inspiration from him again and again throughout my life.

Siddartha’s life is told from birth to old age, featuring friendship, love, and fatherhood. It is easy to see Siddhartha as someone meant for something greater than the average man from his youth, yet he faces every common feature of human experience along the way: lust, inspiration, greed, adoration, despair, and so much more. Though spiritually wiser and in many ways distant through time and space, Siddhartha feels like an encouraging and relatable friend to me. There will most assuredly be times in life when we think we have figured it all out only to discover that we are farther from inner peace and self actualization than ever before. Siddhartha is all too familiar with these glittering illusions, but his journey reminds us that we can start over as many times as we need.

Take this book as a bit of everyday inspiration, when needed. Be sure not to misunderstand it as a work of religious scripture, but seek it out from a place of individual need for connection to the world around us…and the need for a friend. While I haven’t managed to pay less than $20 for an ensured path to spiritual enlightenment, I am glad I found such a unique text and read it with an open heart.

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© Jane C. Fitzpatrick, 2024.

This work is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

Cover Image: Taken by the author.