Interpretation of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

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The paper titled "Between reverence and revolt: Hesse and the two faces of religion" suggests that Hesse was primarily a (Christian) Protestant.

It says for example that in his 1921 diary he wrote:

β€œAnd now the whole of Buddhism increasingly appears to me to be a kind of Indian Reformation, an exact equivalent of the Christian one”

So far as I know, a primary Protestant belief is that people are saved by God (maybe by their love of God and/or by God's love): a Christian's duty (to God) is faith and obediance, which God rewards with salvation (perhaps miraculous salvation).

I think it's also (especially in contrast with pre-Reformation Catholicism) something to do with a personal relationship, unmediated by clergy (and perhaps by ritual), between each person and God.

I guess that influences this sentence:

But while Govinda with astonishment, and yet drawn by great love and expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched his forehead with his lips, something miraculous happened to him.

You wrote, " It's always been completely mysterious to me." Perhaps that's because it's so Christian-influenced.

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Having read five of his books I can tell you they are nearly all about spirituality,Knowledge and credibility. He believed in god and remarked that Christianity lived not preached made him most of what he was. He could be regarded as a pantheist (although I never read he stated that) as he saw god in nature and felt man was getting to far away from nature and therefore god. At least one of his wives was Jewish and he had various other religion exposures. Narcissus and Goldmund was the parallel Christian version to Siddhartha. Siddhartha is the Buddha.

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This represents the practice of one of the brahmaviharas, namely compassion.

Practicing any of these "divine abodes" is enough to enlighten a person if practiced deeply enough.

In this case, Govinda, who had spent most of his life stuck in a state of "wanting Nirvana" (and thus being all the more distant from Nirvana) finally comes closer to it by kissing the forehead of someone who is Enlightened--symbolic of accepting one's innate Nirvana rather than being stuck in wanting.

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Siddhartha asks Govinda to kiss him on the forehead. As he does so, for Govinda "a certain contempt for his friends's words conflicted with a tremendous love...for him ." Govinda then goes through a kind of mystical experience, as Siddhartha's face somehow merges with and contains a continuous stream of thousands of other faces, which he appreciates in each of their specificity. Govinda emerges from the kiss with tears uncontrollably trickling down his face and an overwhelming feeling of great love for his friend, and through him [quote] "of everything that he had ever loved in his life, of everything that had ever been of value and holy in his life."

"So in the end Siddhartha is not only capable of love himself, but of spreading it powerfully to others."
WAS HESSE'S SIDDHARTHA CAPABLE OF LOVE? A Sermon by Dean Scotty McLennan University Public Worship Stanford Memorial Church July 11, 2004

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