Siddhartha

Hesse’s fictional parallel to the life of Siddhartha Guatama, who became known as the Buddha, tells the story of a character named Siddhartha who is on a lifelong quest for truth and salvation. He begins by leaving his wealthy background as a Brahmin (the highest priestly caste in Hinduism), noticing that “ablutions were good, but they were water, they did not wash away sin, they did not quench spiritual thirst, they did not dissolve fear in the heart.” He becomes an ascetic, a “world-renouncer,” for a time, but finding that this is not the answer either, he tells his best friend Govinda, “I, Siddhartha, find only brief anodyne in my exercises and meditations and am just as far from wisdom and release as a child in my mother’s womb.” To me, the most fascinating part of the book is when Siddhartha crosses paths with the historical Buddha, Gautama. Following the masses of seekers who become disciples of the Buddha, his friend Govinda sets off in the Buddha’s footsteps, assuming Siddhartha will do the same. But then Siddhartha realizes that if he really wants to follow the Buddha, he will do what the Buddha actually did, which is not to sit at the feet of teachers, but to walk the earth on a personal quest for eternal truth. So, Siddhartha shocks everyone when he leaves the “world-renouncers,” leaves his friend Govinda, and walks away from what would seem to be the path leading to truth.

I couldn’t help but see the parallel in what God has been teaching me in so many ways here in India. That is, if you really want to follow Christ, if you really want to be a Christian, you can’t do it by studying the theology behind his words and by “sitting at his feet” in church, but by doing what he actually did. Jesus left his comfort zone and spent time loving the poor, outcast, and sinful. Add to this preaching against the wickedness of self-righteousness and greed, and you have a summary of his lifestyle. To be sure, we need to study the critical issues in theology, and we definitely need to sing hymns and spend hours in quiet devotion, but do we not also need to “sell all that we have and give to the poor” and befriend a few winebibbers and tax collectors. Should we not live, in the words of Tolstoy, “in the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them.”