Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Originally published in 1922, Siddhartha enjoyed a surge of popularity in the 1960's, a time of hippies, drug use, flower power, and spiritual searching. I was one of many young people who were reading it. Decades later I re-read it and found myself much more receptive to its spiritual message.

The title confused me because the personal name of Buddha is said to have been Siddhartha, but this novella is not about Gautama Buddha whose statues we often see. Rather, it is about a fictional Siddhartha who lives at the same time as Buddha.

The spiritual journey of this Siddhartha takes him first into living the austere and disciplined life of a monk; then through a period of worldly pleasures enabled by a businessman who hires him and leads him to wealth and debauchery. The novel's climax seems to be a middle road between these extremes. When Siddhartha finally turns to a simpler life, he reaches a stage of enlightenment that brings him peace and joy and the ability to love all people.

Hermann Hesse does a better job at describing enlightenment than Deepak Chopra does in his novel about Buddha. Hesse foreshadows much of what Eckhart Tolle says about ego and the goal of recognizing and overcoming the ego's needs. Siddhartha comes to realize that wise men are constantly aware of the unity of all life; they feel and breathe unity.

Danish physicist Niels Bohr said that a simple truth is a truth where the opposite is not true and a deep truth is a truth where the opposite is also true. Hesse writes "...the opposite of every truth is also just as true!" Here again is a point where philosophy and physics seem to come together as it does when Siddhartha makes the point that there is no such thing as time.