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A Symposium on Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha 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.
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