Teaching Indian Buddhism with Siddhartha — or Not? by Catherine Benton

n teaching the perspectives of the Asian One such text is Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, I religious traditions, I am involved daily in the sometimes used to introduce students to Indian process of observing, interpreting, and explaining Buddhist thought. I emphasize that Siddhartha is the thinking of one culture to people whose minds problematic only when used as a reflection of have been molded by the world view of quite a dif- Indian Buddhism, not when presented as a narra- ferent culture. In structuring this process, one of the tive reflecting Hesse’s internal struggle to under- most important tasks is choosing texts that work to stand his own life as a spiritual process. Problems I emphasize that form bridges between a primarily (broadly speak- arise when Siddhartha is taken out of its European, ing) American way of seeing, and either an Indian, and more specifically German Protestant Christian, Japanese, or Chinese perspective. To this end, I am context, and used to present Indian Buddhist Siddhartha is always looking for writing that will create links thought, because many of the fundamental perspec- sufficiently clear to allow American readers to tives of the Buddhist tradition are obscured, if not problematic only grasp new paradigms while scrupulously maintain- turned completely upside-down. ing the integrity of the Asian conceptions. Once the Siddhartha-model is fixed in the when used as a In more than twelve years of this continual minds of intellectually curious and enthusiastic stu- search, however, I have sometimes discovered dents, reading and understanding primary Buddhist reflection of Indian writing which, under the guise of presenting an texts or more authentic interpretations and com- Asian perspective, presents instead something more mentaries become more difficult, as contradictory Buddhism, not when congruent with the author’s own cultural and per- models are described in these texts. Studying pat- haps religious values. Such writings appear to terns of thinking and perceptions of a culture differ- presented as a create bridges and links, but they, in fact, superim- ent from one’s own should feel at the very least pose their own culturally defined world views onto unfamiliar, if not unsettling, but Hesse’s presenta- that of a particular Asian tradition. Most often, a tion of Indian ways of thinking flows easily into narrative reflecting uniquely Indian or Chinese perspective is subtly our own cultural frameworks—influenced, as refashioned into a variant of a Judeo-Christian American intellectual thinking is, by European lit- Hesse’s internal model, sounding quite plausible and even intrigu- erary and philosophical ideas. After Hesse’s ing but no longer Indian or Chinese. In addition, “Indian Buddhist” world view has been made so struggle to understand precisely because these newly fashioned “Asian” comfortable in Siddhartha, reading Asvaghosa or perspectives have such a “familiar ring” to them, an N≥g≥rjuna or Vimalakırti and reconciling their his life as a American audience finds these presentations views with those of Hesse’s Siddhartha becomes “clear” and “easy to grasp”; they have seduced much harder work. For young American students spiritual process. both author and reader into thinking that real of Buddhism, the world-loving ways of Hesse’s insight into Buddhist or Hindu perception has been Siddhartha are much easier to relate to than the achieved. highly disciplined ways of Siddh≥rtha Gautama, Although the popularity of these works as the fifth century B.C.E. Indian ascetic. transmitters of Asian thought among a general Treating Hesse’s Siddhartha as a paradigmatic reading public is disturbing, my primary concern Buddhist figure not only misrepresents the nature is rather their use in college or high-school intro- of Buddhist practice, but subsequently makes it ductory Asian religion or world religion classes more difficult to grasp the genuine differences in because they contain enough of the terminology cultural perspectives that exist between the stu- and images of the Asian tradition to be compelling, dents’ own Euro-American monotheistic world but they lack a solid grounding in the tradition as a view and that of an Indian Buddhist culture. When whole. we accept Hesse’s Siddhartha as a bonafide exam-

Teaching About the Religions of Asia 9 A SYMPOSIUM ON HERMANN HESSE’S Siddhartha

ple of Indian Buddhist thinking and practice, superficial understanding of the Buddhist tradition. we camouflage the world view and accompanying Otten quotes a passage from Hesse’s diary written natural biases of the author’s cultural framework, in 1920 documenting his feelings about Buddhism. as well as the framework brought to the reading by My preoccupation with India, which has American students. been going on for almost twenty years and has passed through many stages, HESSE, SIDDHARTHA, AND THE BUDDHA: now seems to me to have reached a DISTINGUISHING ONE FROM THE OTHER new point of development. . . . now Hesse’s grandfather was a missionary in India for Buddhism appears to me more and thirty years, and Hesse wrote that he was greatly more as a kind of very pure, highly bred influenced from a young age by his grandfather’s reformation—a purification and spiritu- stories. As a result of this childhood fascination, alization that has no flaw but its great Hesse travelled to India and other Asian countries zealousness, with which it destroys in 1911 and ultimately wrote several books based image-worlds for which it can offer no 1 on these experiences. The novel Siddhartha was replacement.4 finally published in 1922 after almost four years of writing and rewriting. Through Siddhartha, Hesse expresses this From Hesse’s diaries, we get a glimpse of the skeptical view that Buddhism destroys old beliefs Hesse’s embarrassingly impressions of India which Hesse brought back without offering substantive replacements; with him to Germany and which helped shape his that Buddhism fails to provide effective guidance thoughts for Siddhartha. in the search for inner peace and meaning. In quaint homogenization We come to the South and East full of the novel, Siddhartha speaks these words to the Buddha himself: of Asian Indians as longing, driven by a dark and grateful premonition of home, and we find here a You have learned nothing through teach- paradise, the abundance and rich volup- ings, and so I think, O Illustrious One, that ’pure, simple, tuousness of all natural gifts. We find the nobody finds salvation through teachings. pure, simple, childlike people of par- To nobody, O Illustrious One, can you childlike people of adise. But we ourselves are different; we communicate in words and teachings what are alien here and without any rights of happened to you in the hour of your paradise‘ is matched citizenship; we lost our paradise long enlightenment. . . . That is why I am going ago, and the new one that we wish to on my own way—not to seek another and by a comparably build is not to be found along the equator better doctrine, for I know there is none, and on the warm seas of the East. It lies but to leave all doctrines and all teachers superficial within us and in our own northern and to reach my goal alone—or die.5 future.2 As the Buddha walks away, Siddh≥rtha reflects: understanding of Upon reading Hesse’s reflections, the editor of the Hesse Companion, Anna Otten, remarks that I, also, would like to look and smile, sit the Buddhist tradition. “it is no surprise that Hesse undertook to write a and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so novel about India; [but] by the same token, it restrained, so candid, so childlike and would be naive to read the book as an embodiment mysterious. A man only looks and walks or exegesis of Indian philosophy.”3 Yet readers less like that when he has conquered his Self. informed than Otten often fail to recognize I also will conquer my Self (29). that Hesse wrote primarily about his own inner struggles, and that he used his acquaintance with Siddh≥rtha continues this reflection, wondering to Indian thought only as the framework for this inter- himself: nal exploration. What is it that you wanted to learn from Hesse’s embarrassingly quaint homogeniza- teachings and teachers, and although tion of Asian Indians as “pure, simple, childlike they taught you much, what was it they people of paradise” is matched by a comparably could not teach you? And he thought: It

10 EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 1997 was the Self, the character and nature of novel deeply peaceful and content in his under- which I wished to learn. I wanted to rid standing of life. In a final scene, seeing a radiance myself of the Self, to conquer it, but in Siddh≥rtha that he has seen only in the Buddha, I could not conquer it, I could only Govinda asks Siddh≥rtha to teach him so that he, deceive it, could only fly from it, could too, can attain this peace. only hide from it. . . . The reason why “[I]t is only important to love the I do not know anything about myself, the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate reason why Siddhartha has remained each other, but to be able to regard the alien and unknown to myself is due to world and ourselves and all beings with one thing, to one single thing—I was love, admiration and respect.” Students have afraid of myself, I was fleeing from “I understand that,” said Govinda, myself. I was seeking Brahman, Atman, “but that is just what the Illustrious One sometimes come I wished to destroy myself, to get away called illusion. He preached benevolence, from myself, in order to find in the forbearance, sympathy, patience—but not to me after struggling unknown innermost, the nucleus of all love. He forbade us to bind ourselves to things, Atman, Life, the Divine, the earthly love.” through Asvaghosa’s Absolute. But by doing so, I lost myself “. . . I will not deny that my words on the way. . . . I will no longer study about love are in apparent contradiction Yoga-Veda [sic], Atharva-Veda, or to the teachings of Gotama [the Buddha]. Buddhacarita, a asceticism, or any other teachings. That is just why I distrust words so much, I will learn from myself, be my own for I know that this contradiction is an first-century Indian pupil; I will learn from myself the illusion. I know that I am at one with secret of Siddhartha (31–32) Gotama. . . . Not in speech or thought do narrative that tells the I regard him as a great man, but in his As Hesse’s protagonist sets out to find “the deeds and life” (118–119). life of the Buddha in a Self” by himself, the concepts that are drawn from the Indian religious traditions begin to get muddy. Discounting as illusory any differences colorful and culturally- Is Hesse talking about the Self of The Upanishads, between his way and that of the Buddha, the Atman, or is Hesse talking about the philosoph- Hesse/Siddh≥rtha still dismisses any “greatness” in ical and emotional search that Americans and the words or thoughts of ªaky≥muni Buddha. specific form, and Europeans often feel caught up in, the existential Govinda is advised simply to respect the stature of search “to find oneself”? If Hesse is referring here ªaky≥muni Buddha as “a great man,” and to forget asked whether it might to the Atman of The Upanishads, we must remind his teachings. ourselves that the Buddha, after his enlightenment, While there is a certain appeal to the notion not be more helpful taught most categorically that there is no Atman, no that fundamentally, all differences among various Self (known as the Buddhist doctrine of an≥tma). religious traditions are insignificant or even simply to read Hesse’s Making a critical break from the Hindu tradition, illusory, a problem inevitably arises when we try to the Buddha taught that there is no Self to be found. sort out the reasons for the “apparent differences.” Siddhartha. Yet Hesse’s Siddh≥rtha, adopting what he per- Indeed, the Buddhist teachings of No Self, ceived to be the same goal as the Buddha, offers us Impermanence, and Emptiness communicate a very an alternate way to this same end, but by a way not different world view from that shaped by the bound by the discipline of the Buddhist precepts. In Christian belief in One God and the permanence of stark contrast to the way charted by the Buddha, the individual soul. Hesse’s approach is to pretend the novel’s character lives a life deeply enmeshed that no differences exist. As a historian of religion, in commercial enterprise and sensuality, though a however, I must examine the figure of Siddh≥rtha life which nonetheless brings even deeper insight in the light of such fundamental Buddhist teachings than that gained by his friend Govinda in his forty as the doctrine of No Self and the practice of taking years as a Buddhist monk. Having rejected the refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—a way of the Buddha and following instead his own practice understood by the tradition to encapsulate guidance, Siddh≥rtha appears at the end of the the fundamental guiding principles of the tradition.

Teaching About the Religions of Asia 11 A SYMPOSIUM ON HERMANN HESSE’S Siddhartha

From the perspective of these teachings, Hesse’s ficult time accepting images of Buddhist practice Siddh≥rtha does not embody the Buddhist ideal, described by Indian Buddhists themselves or by rejecting as he does both the three refuges and the western scholars and practitioners immersed in the understanding of No Self which are of core signifi- tradition. In reading these texts, students find them- cance for any Buddhist. While Hesse’s protagonist selves pushed to let go of images and concepts that reaches out for knowledge of his “Self,” the they have found quite appealing. Particularly for Buddhist monk or nun strives to see the inherent those students who have taken earlier courses in emptiness of the “Self.” which texts like Siddhartha were held up as author- Students have sometimes come to me after itative and who feel confident in their grasp struggling through Asvaghosa’s Buddhacarita, a of Buddhist thinking, it becomes difficult to read first-century Indian narrative that tells the life of primary text sources which describe a tradition the Buddha in a colorful and culturally-specific very different from that portrayed in Siddh≥rtha. form, and asked whether it might not be more help- These students find their confidence replaced by ful simply to read Hesse’s Siddhartha. Siddhartha, confusion and a vague sense of betrayal. If a practicing Buddhist they explain, is much clearer and provides an image of a spiritual seeker with whom they can CONCLUSIONS were to read Siddhartha, relate more easily, and isn’t he, as Siddh≥rtha him- My purpose in writing this article has been to self says in the final pages of the book, also a examine the assumptions and perspectives of a text he or she would most Buddhist? which I have found questionable in terms of gain- While Hesse appears to convey Indian con- ing insight into the Buddhist tradition. Students certainly wonder what cepts, he uses themes and motifs more common to have found Siddhartha a fascinating and com- western philosophical thinking, such as the individ- pelling work, and asked for my thoughts on its had ual’s existential search for meaning, the youth value as a reliable source for understanding rebelling against institutions and teachers, freedom Buddhism. Rereading Siddhartha with a mind happened to the as a paradigm for boundless potential, and perhaps trained in the study of, and respect for, primary most importantly, the image of the self-made texts, I found a very different story than I did as an person. Siddh≥rtha’s achievement of what he per- undergraduate who had not yet had any experience foundation of all ceived to be deep religious meaning, deeper than of Buddhists or Buddhism. Having now studied that of the Buddhist monks, is gained by following the texts and the contributions of Indian, Chinese, Buddhist insight, the models more expressive of European existentialist Japanese, and American Buddhists, I must argue thought than of Indian Buddhist thinking. against using Hesse’s narrative as an introduction deep reverence for Siddh≥rtha specifically rejects established religious to the Buddhist tradition. Without arguing that institutions and practices, as well as religious teach- the only authoritative sources are writers indige- the three refuges and ings and teachers. What an appealing model for the nous to a particular tradition, I do think that the American ideals of independence and individual- teachers and writers who speak from within the essential practice ism! When American students compare the the traditions must be used as serious “touchstones” Sanskritic eccentricities of the first century Indian for evaluating other translations and interpretations of meditation. Buddhacarita with the flowing prose of a story of the traditions. The guidance of indigenous prac- which highlights patterns of thinking already titioners and scholars as a whole, not simply the valued by them, Asvaghosa doesn’t stand a chance. work of one or two individuals, must be used as Ultimately, the packaging of Asian perspec- the “measuring stick” for determining the depth of tives in American and European patterns and understanding of the interpolations and elucidations values undermines methods of teaching that of “outsiders.” respectfully but firmly acknowledge cultural and Again, I do not want to say that all studies religious differences. I often find that American emanating from outside particular traditions must students have numerous preconceptions about be viewed skeptically until given the imprimatur of Asian traditions that run the gamut from “brain- an elite group of scholars within that religious washing cults” to “founts of mystical powers.” tradition. But I do think that all authors exploring When these preconceptions are combined with cultural and religious traditions outside their own reading works like Siddhartha, students have a dif- must first be aware of, and second, be sensitive

12 EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 1997 to how the tradition explains itself to its own Siddhartha practitioners as well as to others. If a practicing Buddhist were to read Siddhartha, he or she would — A Journey to the East? most certainly wonder what had happened to the foundation of all Buddhist insight, the deep rever- by Mark MacWilliams ence for the three refuges and the essential practice of meditation. The challenge for all of us who are students of traditions rooted in cultures we were not born into ver seventy-five years after its initial publi- is to chart a course that is academically truthful and Ocation, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha enjoys sound, which at the same time allows us to “enter” the status of a minor literary classic. Yet, despite its that new culture with awareness, sensitivity, and continuing popularity, or perhaps because of it, an respect. Entering with these sensibilities, our goal important question for those of us teaching Asian is to emerge from our study truly grounded in an religions is whether Siddhartha has any useful role This imaginary India, understanding of the new culture, as well as with a to play in our classes. deeper understanding of our own. n Part of me inclines against using it in the typi- cal religions of the East or introduction to which forms the Buddhism course. As Catherine Benton points out, Hesse was profoundly disappointed with what he timeless mytho-poetic saw of living Asian religions during his journey to CATHY BENTON has lectured in the Religion Department at the East in 1911. While the India of his own time world of Siddhartha, owes Lake Forest College for ten years. She teaches classes in Asian remained an uninspiring enigma for him, Hesse Studies, History of Religions, and Comparative Literature. constructed his own mysterious Orient out of his its genesis in part to literary imagination. This imaginary India, which forms the timeless mytho-poetic world of Hesse’s study of the Siddhartha, owes its genesis in part to Hesse’s study of the sacred books of the East—the Vedas, NOTES sacred books of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gıt≥, and the Therav≥da 1. Picture Book (Bilderbuch) was published in 1926, and Out of India (Aus Indien) in 1913. Buddhist Suttas. Passages from The Upanishads, in 2. Otten, 73. She is quoting here from Aus Indien but comments particular, are quoted in the novel. East—the Vedas, that much of this text was also reprinted in Bilderbuch. 3. Otten, 74–75. Upanishads, the Bhagavad 4. Otten, 74. Her quotation is from “Aus Einem Tagebuch des AN INDIAN POETIC WORK Jahres 1920,” Corona, 3 (1921), 201–202. How did he read these texts? He read them in much 5. Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha. New York: New Directions, the same way as other German romantics of his day G¯ıt¯a, and the 1951, 27–28. read them. The subtitle of Siddhartha, “Eine indis- che Dichtung,” an Indian poetic work, is highly Therav¯ada suggestive in this regard. Hesse saw Indian spiritu- ality in much the same way as the great orientalist Buddhist Suttas. BIBLIOGRAPHY Max Müller understood the hymns to the Vedic De Bary, William Theodore. The Buddhist Tradition in India, gods in the Rig-Veda. According to Müller, the China, and Japan . New York: Vintage Books, 1972. religion of the Indians was originally based upon a Freedman, Ralph. Hermann Hesse, Pilgrim of Crisis, a Biography. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. sensuous poetic intuition of the infinite through Hesse, Hermann. Autobiographical Writings. New York: nature. This pure nature mysticism was later cor- Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. rupted by what Müller called “the disease of lan- Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha. New York: guage,” the unfortunate tendency of the later tradi- New Directions, 1951. tion to create phantasmagoric forms of the gods Otten, Anna. Hesse Companion. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 1977. with their own mythologies out of what were origi- Strong, John S. The Experience of Buddhism, Sources and nally only the natural metaphors that the Vedic Interpretations. Belmont, California: Wadsworth poets used to express their experience of the ineffa- Publishing, 1995. ble transcendent.

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