Siddhartha

I finished Siddhartha in two days after buying it — it’s not long, just over 150 pages. Siddhartha’s journey of self-discovery felt fantastical. I felt he was both steadfast and lost at the same time, and the people and events he encountered along the way finally helped him understand what he had been searching for all along.

After reading it, I felt like I had grasped something — and yet nothing at all. Perhaps, as the book says at the end, it is full of poetic and wise language that requires careful reading to yield deep insight. Maybe years from now, when I reread Siddhartha, I’ll have a completely different experience.

The river still flows, and I am becoming part of it.

The part that moved me most was when Siddhartha became a father himself — he clung to his son, unwilling to let him go. His son was rebellious, cold, wanting to escape, just as Siddhartha once was. He chased his son to the city, burning with pain, yet awakened by the river’s laughter. The same love, the same attachment, the same parting — repeated across generations. After his son left, Siddhartha underwent one of his deepest and most tender transformations: he began to envy those foolish, childlike ordinary people.