Every time I reread Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, the novel reminds me of a more idealistic time in my own life and in American culture, when young people cared more about finding meaning than about making money.

When I first read the book, in 1969, during my graduate studies in England, I felt the “restlessness of soul” that stirs Siddhartha. Was I not also, like Siddhartha, “a seeker, insatiable”? Over the years, and subsequent readings, I have come to share Siddhartha’s skepticism about gurus, systems, and head-knowledge: “Something was no longer in him, something that had accompanied him right through his youth and was part of him: this was the desire to have teachers and to listen to their teachings. He had left the last teacher he had met, even he, the greatest and wisest teacher, the holiest, the Buddha. He had to leave him; he could not accept his teachings.” Again: “He had known for a long time that his Self was Atman, of the same eternal nature as Brahman, but he had never really found his Self, because he had wanted to trap it in the net of thoughts” (39).

After Siddhartha becomes involved with a woman, with business, with the affairs of the world, he is gradually drawn into the cares and values that he scorned as a young man: “Slowly, like moisture entering the dying tree trunk, slowly filling and rotting it, so did the world and inertia creep into Siddhartha’s soul; it slowly filled his soul, made it heavy, made it tired, sent it to sleep” (61). His response to this realization is to walk away—from relationships, money, business, ordinary affairs—and to settle down to live beside a river, where he can lead the simple, austere, unaffiliated life of a ferryman. Here I must part ways with him, for I am committed to my wife, children, grandchildren, students, community, and writing; I could not give up these duties and connections, even for the sake of enlightenment.

Beside the river, Siddhartha lives with another ferryman, Vasudeva, who is old, poor, simple, and wise. “Within Siddhartha there slowly grew and ripened the knowledge of what wisdom really was and the goal of his long seeking. It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling, and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. This thought matured in him slowly, and it was reflected in Vasudeva’s old childlike face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, and unity” (106-7). In an earlier passage, Siddhartha reflects on what it is that distinguishes him from the many passengers whom he takes across the river: “With the exception of one small thing, one tiny little thing, they lacked nothing that the sage and thinker had, and that was the consciousness of the unity of all life” (106).

In his wisdom, Siddhartha lets go of seeking: “Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal” (113). That is a hard lesson for someone as goal-oriented, as purpose-driven, as I am. Meditation, of course, is a training in the letting-go of desire, of agendas, of goals. If we took the Sabbath seriously, it would be a weekly reminder to set aside our projects, let go of our schemes, quit striving and grasping for a spell—long enough to hear and feel a reality greater than our own small selves.

Near the end of the book, Siddhartha tells his lifelong friend, Govinda: “Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it” (115). Again: “It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. but I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect” (119).