Siddhartha 2

The following quote in particular resonated with me from “By the River”:  “Dead were the singing birds of his dreams.  Dead was the bird in his heart…..He was full of disgust, full of suffering, full of death, until nothing in the world allured him, gave him joy, or comforted him.” (82)  “Death” is an unusual way of depicting superficiality, at least by Western standards.  But I agree with the statement.  “He had tasted riches, lust, and power” (71) and this, precisely, is what killed Siddhartha’s soul.  Or at least what helped him realize that indulging vain and carnal desires can cause injury to the human spirit.  His spirit died not only in his waking life, but also in his subconscious:  “dead were the singing birds of his dreams.” (82)  It died in his mind, as in his heart: "dead was the bird in his heart."

“He wished…to be dead” (82). It is interesting that Siddhartha wanted to physically die once he felt his soul and inner peace slip away—as if the two could not live without one another.  For whatever reasons, I have learned a lot about suicide and the idea of wanting to check out, to die.  Here, however, I feel like Siddhartha presents us with a drastically different idea of death and suicide.  For one, the emphasis is on the spiritual life and hardly on the physical body.   

Superficiality and obsession with the material world
is the grim reaper of spirits and souls.  Death isn't just when one's pulse stops; death can also be
a contamination of the soul.
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/the-darkside-illuminati-game-predictions/blog-146167/?page=3&link=ibaf&imgurl=http://api.ning.com/files/6hg5zkMgduj2o41y9sd-lcJqGtEeE9JhH7gIjXT4Oe-gHU3llBnsCLj1ueekraIHDDnHIf2zbAvt2x3-zcowQfT9gSN545KG/GrimReaperMoon.jpg&q=dead%2Bsoul

Usually when I think of superficiality and vanity, I think of emptiness.  Feeling emptiness, as I know it, comes from the thought that one lacks substance—or that one is not yet fulfilled.  But fulfilled is also an interesting word and concept.  Don’t we all want to feel fulfilled—full and filled?  This echoes our last class discussion.  Why the paradox of losing one’s Self to find oneself?  Perhaps because it means emptying oneself of the attachments we have to the physical world, to the comfort we find in things that are construct of the mind (ie. money, power, lust).  This new conception of emptiness reminds me of a common expression in spanish: “manos vacias.”  Literally translated it means empty hands, but the idiom is understood in the following sense: open hands, open heart.  Usually the expression is used in the context of listening to someone without pretext or preconceived notion or expectation, which allows you to be flexible and present.  In this sense, emptiness can simply mean openness, as opposed to the negative Western construct of not having enough and not being full/fulfilled.    

    

Fulfillment anyone?  Full and filling?  This is
ironically one of the first images that came up
on google images for the word
fulfillment.  We have a lot to learn, no?
http://www.medallionenterprises.com/images/fulfillment-house.jpg

   

I think of the word fulfillment.  In this quote, Hesse speaks of the feeling of being “full” as something negative.   Usually people refer to death as being the state of lacking life, being lifeless—but referring to something or person as being “full of death.”  This is perhaps a metaphor for the perils of being full of anything—whether it’s as grave as death or something as innocuous as a healthy ego.  I suppose the object is to strip oneself of ego absolutely in order to become as the river, without beginning or end or here and there or now and then, but rather one and everything.  And perhaps Siddhartha would agree that the purpose of living is to find this balance and unity.  He leaves us with a meditation on his “long search”:  His goal was nothing more than a readiness of the soul, an ability and secret method of thinking the thought of unity every moment of his life.” (122)