Siddhartha: Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Siddhartha wanders into the forest knowing that he can never go back, and feeling that the songbird inside him has died. He is full of the disgusting greed and excess of the town. He longs for something to happen to him, to be dead. He longs to stop awakening. He believes that it is barely possible for him to continue living with such deep sin inside him. He reaches the river, which had seemed like a symbol of hope before, but now it speaks of destinations, and Siddhartha cannot imagine his next destination. He can only think of death.

Siddhartha leans on the branch of a tree and watches the flow of the water and wishes to become part of it. He feels that he is at the end, that there is nothing left but to end himself and give his body to the crocodiles and creatures of the river. He sees his reflection and spits at it. He lowers himself closer to the surface, closer to death. But he hears something. A word, a sound, comes to him, from deep in his soul. It is the ‘om’, the perfect word. He suddenly realizes how close to death he had come and how miserable he was, and remembers the holiness he had forgotten.

After this moment of realization, Siddhartha falls into a deep sleep by the river. As he awakens, he feels that years have passed, and he sees the full beauty of the water and the heavens again. He struggles to remember his life up to this point, everything seeming so far away. But he remembers how the word ‘om’ had come and saved him, and he utters it again now. He feels transformed by this wonderful sleep.

Then Siddhartha notices a yellow-robed man sitting near him. At first, he thinks the man is a stranger but then he recognizes him as Govinda. Govinda has aged, like Siddhartha has, but still wears the expression of devotion that he always had. He is delighted to find Siddhartha awake, but he does not recognize him. Govinda introduces himself as a disciple of Gautama and explains that when he saw a man sleeping, where snakes and other dangerous creatures go by, he wanted to wake him up. Seeing how deep the sleep was, Govinda decided to stay and watch over him instead.

Siddhartha thanks Govinda and, as they part, calls him by his name. Siddhartha explains how he knows him and Govinda is very pleased to see his old friend Siddhartha, and very surprised that he did not recognize him straight away. Siddhartha thanks him for being the sentry to his sleep. He asks Govinda where he is traveling. Govinda replies that he is always on the move, going nowhere in particular, such is a monk’s life. Siddhartha says he too is always on the move. Govinda believes that he is on a pilgrimage, but is confused as to why he looks like a townsperson, with perfumed hair and rich clothes.

Siddhartha reminds Govinda that the world is ephemeral. Outward identities are passed through as one passes the stages of life. Siddhartha has been a rich man and a samana but now he doesn’t know how to describe himself. The formations of the ephemeral world he is trying to explain are swift. Still puzzled, Govinda says goodbye to Siddhartha and Siddhartha watches him go, fondly. After that long sleep and hearing the ‘om’ again, Siddhartha is full of love.

Siddhartha is suddenly very hungry, and laughs at the memory of reciting his three skills to Kamala, waiting, fasting and thinking. Those skills have left him now. He traded them in for quick childlike passions and became a child person. He finds thinking hard too, but forces himself to ponder on how he had started life with nothing and now he is standing here with nothing again. He has gone downhill, he thinks, but he is not sad, he laughs, and is happy to compare himself with the river, going cheerfully downhill. He remembers that he almost drowned in the same river, but the memory is dim like a dream.

Siddhartha goes through the twists and turns of his life, from a Brahmin’s son to a rich man and each awakening in between. He describes the rich man stage as having to forget and unlearn what he had learned. Like this, he reflects, he has become a child again. Even though he had to go through such distress and spend so many years unlearning, he still feels deeply that it was right. He needed to go right to the bottom to be able to rise again. Joyfully he accepts where he has been and is excited to go wherever his path will lead him next.

Siddhartha muses on where this happiness has come from, whether from the word ‘om’ or the sky, or somewhere else. He marvels how he has come from such a loathsome place, where everything smelled of perfume and he despised his own behavior. And he congratulates himself now on turning his self-hatred around and following the inner song bird again. He reflects that as a child, he had known that those kinds of worldly pleasures were not good, but he had not experienced it until now.

Siddhartha keeps pondering and wonders, if it is not the song bird that died, what part of him died today so that he no longer wanted to kill himself? He decides it is the ego, with which he has been warring all this time, that has died and allowed him to see the world as a child does. He understands now why he always fought with his ego. He had been surrounded by too much knowledge, too much seeking, and his pride was built within this holy knowledge because he was so talented.

Siddhartha knows that he had been right, he couldn’t have been taught any more. He had to go into the world to learn what he has learnt about his own ego. He had to grasp and desire until he was sick so that the grasper and desirer in him could die. And now he has awoken from sleep a new Siddhartha. Now he greets the voice of the river and his hungry stomach with a smile. He feels a deep love for the water and believes it still has something to give him.