Siddartha by Hermann Hesse

What do I do now?I'm a bit mixed up.

What was the last question?

What was the last question.

No you silly so and so.What was the last question before the one....

Hey mush!Knock it off.

Extra Medium - your summary sounds a helluva lot like "Life on the Mississipi" by Mark Twain. Here's the full text of Hermann Hesse's novel:
http://www.online-literature.com/hesse/siddhartha/
_____________________________________________________________

".....Neither a practitioner nor a devotee, neither meditating nor reciting, Siddhartha comes to blend in with the world, resonating with the rhythms of nature, bending the reader's ear down to hear answers from the river..... "
_____________________________________________________________

I didn't see the movie, have read only the book, quite
a few years back, but I remember how excited I was by
it.

To answer your question: a spiritual journey will lead you
through different sections of life. If you happen to learn from
a high class hooker, than more power to you. If she
wouldn't be psysically and mentally challenging,
you'd moved on.

All of us have/have had mentors in our life who guide(d) us through passages that were either difficult and/or raised
us to another level of understanding. It is not necessary
for a mentor to be a wise philosopher, it can be (at times)
a high class hooker.

Interesting. Yes. There is something about rivers.

I used to live next to a big river, growing up. A crystal clear river.

To me, time is kind of like a river.

One could write a book about the symbolism of rivers.

Twain was onto some of this, I believe.

XM - I read it a few times. The first was in a high school world lit class (I loved that class!). And then again as I went to see a man I was about to be uninvolved with (and I knew that it was over with him before the 8 hour train ride). That second reading put me in a beautifully clear mind-set for the events of that weekend. I read it once more since then, but I don't remember the circumstances. I should read it again with some PhD-type guidance.

This is so ironic JLN.

I was a teenager in California, in an area that heavily influenced by the hippies and sort of baby boomers afterwards. From my angle, I thought that movement was great for sort of opening up people's minds to new ideas, breaking the Eisenhower crushing conservatism, helping to stop Vietnam war, environmentalism, eastern religions etc etc etc. It took me the longest time to see that this subculture had all of its own shortcomings, fakery etc. Well like anything else, it had good mixed with bad. The thing that made it difficult though was that this scene often portrayed itself as sort of flawless, "we're here to show you whats wrong with society and here is how it actually should be done" something like that; and of course we eventually realize it kind of ends up like Animal Farm. Meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss.

As someone put it: "All of the communes ended up having leaders and powerful committees, and the communes that lasted the longest tended to have the strongest more ruthless of leaders."

"Zachariah (John Rubenstein) gets a six-gun in the mail and heads out to become a gunfighter, accompanied by his best friend Matthew (Don Johnson). After some adventures with the Crackers, a Rock 'n Roll outlaw gang (Country Joe and the Fish) they find a true test of their quickdraw skill at the nightclub of Job Cain (Elvin Jones). The Fiddler (Doug Kershaw) warns Zachariah away from his quest, but he continues to the sin town of Belle Starr (Patricia Quinn) to find out what sex is all about. Obsessed with being the top gun, Matthew tracks down Job Cain, while Zachariah learns a higher value system from desert hermit Old Man (William Chalee). But Matthew returns to settle their gunfighter standing with a deadly duel.
It came a surprise to find out that Zachariah is supposed to be Siddartha dressed up as a marijuana western, especially because I saw the film only months after reading the book and never caught on. It's an idea that had to be hatched in the office of a Sunset Blvd. agent, with the Firesign Theater people Austin, Bergman and Proctor floating a prefabricated storyline guaranteed to hold water with the touchy and indefinable kid market, the kids that rejected Tora! Tora! Tora! but made Easy Rider a smash. Turn Herman Hesse into a western trip, man, a spaced-out phantasmagoria where gunslingers play electric guitars and time has, like, lost its meaning! (long inhale here). The script is indeed Siddartha. A pair of young wanderers get lost in the secular world of false values and sensual delights. But good ol' Zachariah sticks to his hippie principles, learns from a wise old man (yawn) and comes out smiling. With Country Joe and the Fish in tow as supposed comedy relief, we get lame doper jokes and references to Bonnie & Clyde. Barry Melton is particularly weak as a clownish robber, stealing crates labeled "El Acapulco Gold."
Doug Kershaw plays a looney prophet-on-the-road-to-enlightenment type, with his fiddle stuck firmly under his chin. 1 Patricia Quinn has a different role than that in Alice's Restaurant, and seems to have been hired simply by association (she's with Arlo, dude). And grizzly sidekick type William Chalee (check out his IMDB credits, they're full of interesting titles and edgy old noirs) has little to do but yell at Zachariah like an irate Mr. Natural.
MGM 1971

Have a bottle of wine and sit next to a river and just shut up and listen. for a long time. Then go see a high class call girl if that feels appropriate. But do it all knowing in the back of your mind that you need to make progress from all of these actions.

dyslexia,

Wow. What was the name of the film?

C.J.

I know exactly what you mean.I myself have been guided through passages by mentors of all shapes and sizes and from many points of the political and ecclesiastical spectrum and I don't honestly think I have ever had cause to regret accepting such guidance.

CJ,

Thanks. Yes, thats pretty much what my thinking was on it.

I guess I've just got this linear thinking thing too much. I'll keep thinking something like:

"Dude, you've got Buddha right there. But no, he doesn't have the answers, you need to go live with a call girl instead? Right. Please explain."

I mean, that sounds like some rationalization I'd make.

Except I wouldn't do the call girl thing. I'd instead try to do that "learning" with some hot kinda sensual smart yet trampy chick instead, who wasn't actually officially a call girl.

Jesus H. Christ! When I posted here just an hour or two ago the thread was only a page; now it's three! (I'm on vacation until next August and I've been drinking steadily for the past three hours--don't make me read so much so quickly.)

I agree with Spendius (wait...did I just type that?)--Siddhartha's shacking up with the prostitute was a necessary part of his journey. I think Hesse's point is that we can, and indeed must, learn even from those whose perspectives are marginalized.

Sorry for the length of this one, thought some might enjoy a brief bio on Hesse. Quite an interesting journey:

"Hermann Hesse: German poet and novelist, who has explored in his work the duality of spirit and nature and individual's spiritual search outside restrictions of the society. Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. Several of Hesse's novels depict the protagonist's journey into the inner self. A spiritual guide assists the hero in his quest for self-knowledge and shows the way beyond the world "deluded by money, number and time."

"For even the most childish intoxication with progress will soon be forced to recognize that writing and books have a function that is eternal. It will become evident that formulations in words and the handling on of these formulations through writing are not only important aids but actually the only means by which humanity can have a history and continuing consciousness of itself." (Hesse in Reading in Bed, ed. by Steven Gilbar, 1974)

Hermann Hesse was born into a family of Pietist missionaries and religious publishers in the Black Forest town of Calw, in the German state of Wüttenberg. Hesse entered the Protestant seminary at Maulbronn in 1891, but he was expelled from the school. After unhappy experiences at a secular school, Hesse left his studies. He worked a bookshop clerk, a mechanic, and a book dealer in Tübingen, where he joined literary circle called Le Petit Cénacle. During this period Hesse read voluminously and determined the become a writer. In 1899 Hesse published his first works, ROMANTISCHE LIEDER and EINE STUNDE HINTER MITTERNACHT.

Hesse became a freelance writer in 1904 after the publication of his novel PETER CAMENZIND. In the Rousseauesque 'return to nature' story the protagonist leaves the big city to live like Saint Francis of Assisi. The book gained literary success and Hesse married Maria Bernoulli, with whom he had three children. A visit in India gave start to Hesse's studies of Eastern religions and the novel SIDDHARTHA (1922). In the story, based on the early life of Gautama Buddha, a Brahman son rebels against his father's teaching and traditions. Eventually he finds the ultimate enlightenment. The culture of ancient Hindu and the ancient Chinese had a great influence on Hesse's works. For several years in the mid-1910s Hesse underwent psychoanalysis under Carl Jung's assistant J.B. Lang.

In 1912 Hesse and his family took a permanent residence in Switzerland. In the novel ROSSHALDE (1914) Hesse explored the question of whether the artist should marry. The author's replay was negative and reflected the author's own difficulties. During these years his wife suffered from growing mental instability and his son was seriously ill. Hesse spent the years of World War I in Switzerland, attacking the prevailing moods of militarism and nationalism. He also promoted the interests of prisoners of war. Hesse, who shared with Aldous Huxley belief in the need for spiritual self-realization, was called a traitor by his countrymen.

Hesse's breakthrough novel was DEMIAN (1919). It was highly praised by Thomas Mann, who compared its importance to James Joyce's Ulysses and André Gide's The Counterfeiters. The novel attracted especially young veterans of the WW I, and reflected Hesse's personal crisis and interest in Jungian psychoanalysis. Demian was first published under the name of its narrator, Emil Sinclair, but later Hesse admitted his authorship. In the Faustian tale the protagonist is torn between his orderly bourgeois existence and a chaotic world of sensuality. Hesse later admitted that Demian was a story of "individuation" in the Jungian manner. The author also praised unreservedly Jung's study Psychological Types, but in 1921 he suddenly canceled his analysis with Jung and started to consider him merely one of Freud's most gifted pupils.

Leaving his family in 1919, Hesse moved to Montagnola, in southern Switzerland. Siddharta was written during this period. It has been one of Hesse's most widely read work. Its English translation in the 1950s became a spiritual guide to a number of American Beat poets. Hesse's short marriage to Ruth Wenger, the daughter of the Swiss writer Lisa Wenger, was unhappy. He had met her in 1919 and wrote in 1922 the fairy tale PIKTOR'S VERWANDLUNGEN for Ruth. In the story a spirit, Piktor, becomes an old tree and finds his youth again from the love of a young girl. Hesse divorced from Maria Bernoulli, and married in 1924 Ruth Wenger, but the marriage ended after a few months. These years produced DER STEPPENWOLF (1927). Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected Pope Benedict XVI, once said that Steppenwolf is among his favorite books because it "exposes the problem of modernity's isolated and self-isolating man". The protagonist, Harry Haller, goes through his mid-life crisis and must chose between life of action and contemplation. His initials perhaps are not accidentally like the author's. "The few capacities and pursuits in which I happened to be strong had occupied all my attention, and I had painted a picture of myself as a person who was in fact nothing more tan a most refined and educated specialist in poetry, music and philosophy; and as such I had lived, leaving all the rest of me to be a chaos of potentialities, instincts and impulses which I found an encumbrance and gave the label of Steppenwolf." Haller feels that he has two beings inside him, and faces his shadow self, named Hermine. This Doppelgänger figure introduces Harry to drinking, dancing, music, sex, and drugs. Finally his personality is disassembled and reassembled in the 'Magic Theatre' - For Madmen Only.

"There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself."

During the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) Hesse stayed aloof from politics. BETRACHTUNGEN (1928) and KRIEG UND FRIEDEN (1946) were collections of essays, which reflected his individualism and opposition to mass movements of the day. NARZISS UND GOLDMUND (1930, Narcissus and Goldmund) was a pseudomedieval tale about an abbot and his worldly pupil, both in search of the Great Mother.

In 1931 Hesse married Ninon Dolbin (1895-1966). Ninon was Jewish. She had sent Hesse a letter in 1909 when she was 14, and the correspondence had continued. In 1926 they met accientally. At that time Ninon was separated - she had married the painter B.F. Doldin and planned a career as an art historian. Hesse moved with her to Casa Bodmer, and his restless life became more calm. Hesse's books continued to be published in Germany during the Nazi regime, and were defended in a secret circular in 1937 by Joseph Goebbels. When he wrote for the Frankfurter Zeitung Jewish refugees in France accused him of supporting the Nazis, whom Hesse did not openly oppose. However, he helped political refugees and when Narcissus and Goldmund was reprinted in 1941, he refused to leave out parts which dealt with pogroms and anti-Semitism. In 1943 he was placed on the Nazi blacklist.

"The secret of Hesse's work lies in the creative power of his poetic similes, in the "magic theater" of the panoramas of the soul that he conjures up before the eyes and ears of the world. It lies in the identity of idea and appearances that, to be sure, his work - like any work of human hands - can do more that suggest." (Hugo Ball in Hermann Hesse, 1947)

In 1931 Hesse began to work on his masterpiece DAS GLASPERLENSPIEL, which was published in 1943. The setting is in the future in the imaginary province of Castilia, an intellectual, elitist community, dedicated to mathematics and music. Knecht ('servant') is chosen by the Old Music Master as a suitable aspirant to the Order. He goes to the city of Waldzell to study, and there he catches the attention of the Magister Ludi, Thomas von der Trave (an allusion to Hesse's rival Thomas Mann). He is the Master of the Games, a system by which wisdom is communicated. Knecht dedicates himself to the Game, and on the death of Thomas, he is elected Magister Ludi. After a decade in his office Knecht tries to leave to start a life devoted to realizing human rights, but accidentally drowns in a mountain lake. - In 1942 Hesse sent the manuscript to Berlin for publication. It was not accepted by the Nazis and the work appeared in Zürich, Switzerland.

"Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding and fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side." (from The Journey to the East, 1932)

After receiving the Nobel Prize Hesse published no major works. Between the years 1945 and 1962 he wrote some 50 poems and about 32 reviews mostly for Swiss newspapers."

Spendius, did you read Steppenwolf by Hesse? Highly recommended.

Zachariah

The only book I truely enjoyed of Hesse was The Glass Bead Game.

I must read that. Got halfway through and something interfered.

What would you say you liked best about it?

OK, I'll admit it. I am guilty of sinning against the holy spirit, his royal highness, the butler, Gezzus himself, my cat, my daughter's cat, my legs and all they stand for, the president of the Steamship boiler room attendants association and the lady standing on the street corner in Seattle, (look I can see her from my 30th story Sheraton hotel window at this very moment) handing out type written accounts of how her husband was kidnapped by the Free Masons and her son has been taken over by multiple personalities all of which are interesting, except some or scary and one is a sex fiend. But I refuse to repent, even if that woman's husband's sex fiend personality offers to make my life more interesting.

curses, foiled again!

Who kidnapped Lola and is posting in her name?