The Seed
“Siddhartha had begun to feel the seed of discontent within him.”
“I am searching,” she said. “For many years now. My family keeps telling me to stop.”
I met this woman during my solo trip to Auroville, while staying at a central guest house there. Over the four days of my stay, I had several meaningful conversations with fellow guests—mostly young solo travellers. Many had come to explore the place, many to explore themselves, and quite a few to search for something more elusive: meaning in life.
This particular woman, in her early thirties, had come precisely for that search. She had travelled widely, attended short retreats, met gurus, and sought answers through people and places. Yet paradoxically, with every effort, the very thing she was searching for seemed to move further away.
Her search felt like a modern echo of Siddhartha.
Siddhartha is a timeless novel by Hermann Hesse, set in India over 2,500 years ago. Written more than a century ago, it explores discontent within, denial of knowledge gained through teaching, life as illusion, wisdom gained through experience, being, and seeing etc.
The Discontent
“Well, Govinda, are we on the right road? Are we gaining knowledge? Are we approaching salvation or are we perhaps going in circles?”
The book traces the journey of Siddhartha, a brilliant Brahmin boy—admired by his friends, loved by his parents, a delight to all around him. He is well-versed in everything taught at the ashram and knows his books well.
Yet despite his brilliance and privilege, he is not happy from within. There is something missing—an emptiness, a vast emptiness. Much like this modern traveller.
Siddhartha seeks meaning beyond what is taught, beyond what is learnt, in search of the Atman. He leaves home to join Samanas – wandering ascetics— learning deep meditation, denying the self, learning ‘to fast, to wait and to think’—only to be disillusioned again.
In modern life too, hasn’t abundance brought this critical question of ‘meaning’ back to us? Why do we see young people following so many gurus, leaving secure jobs, searching restlessly?
The Awakening
“You have learnt nothing through teachings, and so I think, O illustrious one, that nobody finds salvation through teachings.”
Siddhartha takes his next step and goes to meet the Illustrious Buddha, surrounded by his followers. Here is a man who embodies everything Siddharth seeks—serenity, compassion, freedom from suffering, a completely enlightened soul.
And yet, it is this very encounter that leads to Siddhartha’s awakening.
At this moment, Siddhartha understands something fundamental. Here is the Ultimate—luminous ,complete—and yet he realises that even this completeness cannot guide him toward what he is searching for. No teaching can substitute the experience of becoming.
He realises he must walk his own path, discover his own truth. And in recognising this, he is freed—from the need to follow.
Today, the need to follow has multiplied endlessly. Social media tells us how to live, how to lead our lives, how to aspire, even how to grieve. These voices do not claim wisdom, yet they guide our inner worlds. In a time of endless guidance, the courage to listen inward has become rare.
One such extraordinary journey is explored in my blog on The Razor’s Edge.
The Samsara
“All this had always been and he had never seen it. He was never present.”
Siddhartha realises that he had not truly lived life. He had not appreciated what the world had to offer. He was so engrossed in learning that he had stopped experiencing.
He chooses to enter the world—learning what being with a woman means, what trading means, what dining and drinking mean. Slowly, this leads to his own decay. He loses touch with his inner voice, his knowledge, his self. He becomes an active player in the world, yet never truly a part of it.
Is it not true that we too become so engrossed in our world of maya—work, family, friendships—that we forget what we really want from life? These things delight us, yes—but do we still hear the inner voice?
The River
“Too much knowledge had hindered him too much… That was why he had to go into the world to lose himself in power, women and money. It is a good thing to experience everything oneself.”
Eventually, Siddharth leaves samsara, dejected, and comes to the river, where he ferries people alongside Vasudeva, an old ferryman. He realises how essential his experiences of the world were.
It is here he learns the secret of listening.
He realizes the river does not speak in a single tone, but in a thousand voices—the cry of the infant, the hunger of the poor, the pride of the king, and the grief of the dying. When he stops trying to isolate one sound from the other, the discord vanishes. The thousands of voices merge into a single harmony: the Om , the sound of the total.
He sees that everything—the suffering he fled and the joy he sought—is interconnected and necessary. The water flows, yet it is always there; it is always the same, and yet every moment it is new.
This is the hardest lesson of the book. The river of life is always flowing and always speaking. One must seek meaning in its entirety, not in isolated ideas of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. And life, like the river, is always ready to begin afresh.
The People
“He saw People live and do great things.”
Siddhartha begins to appreciate the common—their lives, their grief, their burdens. When he finds and then loses his son, he learns, at last, what it means to love. Slowly, he becomes one with everyone and everything around him.
He sees people live and do great things—travel, wage wars, suffer, endure—and he learns to love them for it. He learns to see life itself: vitality and industry, indestructible and Brahman, present in all their desires and needs.
In our search for wisdom, have we become too harsh—judging more and appreciating less the ordinary lives around us?
I explore this idea further—how the ordinary is often unseen—in my blog on The White Tiger.
The Life
“The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.”
By the time Siddhartha reaches the end of his journey, he understands something disarmingly simple: life cannot be taught. It cannot be handed down as a doctrine or explained through moral clarity. It must be lived—fully, imperfectly, and continually.
Everything he had rejected earlier—desire, attachment, suffering, love were necessary passages. Without living through them, wisdom would remain hollow, borrowed, incomplete.
Siddhartha realises that even silence cannot be taught, even understanding cannot be conveyed. One may point to the river, but one cannot make another hear what it says. Each person must listen in their own way, at their own time.
Life, then, is not about arriving at answers. It is about allowing experiences to shape us quietly one moment at a time.
While some readers describe Siddhartha as a set of life lessons or a mental shift, its real power lies not in distilled truths but wisdom arrived at after the messy, lived journey .
The Conclusion
“Perhaps you seek too much that as a result of your seeking, you cannot find.”
Siddhartha’s journey is profound not because it is unique, but because it is universal, speaking to every seeker and every finder, across ages and across continents.
“Your generation is aware and privileged,” I told the seeker I met at Auroville. “But that awareness is also a paradox. In my time, I studied, entered my architectural practice, got married, had children. Life was so full and demanding that we rarely had the luxury to pause and ask what it all meant.
By the time life slowed down, it had already happened. We knew what gave meaning to our world—outside and within. Our experiences shaped us, gave us wisdom, and quietly answered questions we never consciously asked.”
I do not know where her search will take her. Siddhartha, too, could not have known—until life had lived itself through him.
But, this encounter left me reflecting: Was my generation luckier to be forced into the living journey, or did we miss the conscious searching this generation undertakes?
Your views are welcome.
No generations ever have understood everything.
We are re-learning so many things… when we look deeply into history and culture.
Hopefully, this time we will not let it filter through… But then we can be arrogant or ignorant or both… basically humans 😅
At some level, perhaps thats the journey…. to keep learning and then re-learning….
If we could assimilate all the knowledge then living will be meaningless.. joy of accomplishment will fade.
How True. Thankfully this is what distinguishes us from AI. The lived truth.
Your words are so authentic & true writing….
Thanks