Siddhartha
Siddhartha Learns Nothing From Any Teacher and That Is the Whole Teaching
Directed by Conrad Rooks
Depth ScoreTeaching · 7/10What does Siddhartha really mean?
Conrad Rooks filmed Hesse's novel on the Ganges, and the river ends up saying more than the Buddha does.
Siddhartha leaves his Brahmin father, joins the ascetics, hears the Buddha preach in person, and walks away unconvinced. Not because the Buddha is wrong. Because Siddhartha understands, before he can say it, that enlightenment cannot be received as doctrine. He then does the opposite of what a seeker is supposed to do: he goes to the city, becomes rich under the merchant Kamaswami, takes the courtesan Kamala as his lover, gambles, drinks, and rots in exactly the pleasures the ascetics renounced. This looks like the failure of the spiritual project. It is the completion of it. Siddhartha must lose himself in the world completely because the wisdom he is after cannot be borrowed from anyone who already has it. It has to be worn down into him.
Buddhism Reading: Why He Rejects the Buddha to His Face
The film's quiet pivot is the scene with Gautama. Govinda, Siddhartha's friend, stays and takes the robe. Siddhartha bows, praises the teaching as flawless, and then tells the Buddha exactly why he will not follow it: the one thing the Buddha attained, he attained through his own experience of the world, and that specific thing cannot be transmitted in words. A teaching can point. It cannot carry you across.
This is orthodox Buddhism read against its own institution. The historical Buddha's final instruction was to be a lamp unto yourself, to test the teaching rather than believe it. Siddhartha takes that instruction more seriously than the monks who stay. The sangha becomes, for him, one more thing to renounce. The film understands that the deepest fidelity to the path can look like walking off it. Govinda spends decades in the robe and arrives, near the end, still asking Siddhartha for a method. Siddhartha has no method to give him. He has only a life that was fully lived, including its degradation.
Initiation Reading: The Descent Through Pleasure Is the Descent Through the Underworld
Every real initiation runs through a death. Siddhartha's death is not the ascetic's fast. It is the merchant's boredom. He wins Kamala, masters Kamaswami's trade, and slowly discovers that success is its own kind of corpse. The film lets him sink in real time: the sharp young seeker becomes soft, contemptuous, sick of himself. He gambles away fortunes to feel anything. He stands at the river intending to drown.
That is the threshold. In initiatory structure the candidate must reach the point where the old self genuinely wants to die, because only a self that has exhausted itself can be reborn. Siddhartha does not jump. He falls asleep at the water's edge and wakes to the sound of the river saying Om, and to Govinda watching over him without recognizing the ruined man his friend has become.
The ferryman Vasudeva is the true initiator, and he initiates by teaching nothing. He teaches Siddhartha to listen to the river, which contains every voice at once, the laughter and the grief and the striving, all flowing and none of it staying. The lesson the Buddha could not hand over, the river delivers by simply being what it is. Siddhartha becomes wise the moment he stops trying to become wise.
Questions this film answers
What is the deeper meaning of Siddhartha?
Siddhartha leaves his Brahmin father, joins the ascetics, hears the Buddha preach in person, and walks away unconvinced. Not because the Buddha is wrong. Because Siddhartha understands, before he can say it, that enlightenment cannot be received as doctrine. He then does the opposite of what a seeker is supposed to do: he goes to the city, becomes rich under the merchant Kamaswami, takes the courtesan Kamala as his lover, gambles, drinks, and rots in exactly the pleasures the ascetics renounced. This looks like the failure of the spiritual project. It is the completion of it. Siddhartha must lose himself in the world completely because the wisdom he is after cannot be borrowed from anyone who already has it. It has to be worn down into him.
What is the hidden symbolism in Siddhartha?
The film's quiet pivot is the scene with Gautama. Govinda, Siddhartha's friend, stays and takes the robe. Siddhartha bows, praises the teaching as flawless, and then tells the Buddha exactly why he will not follow it: the one thing the Buddha attained, he attained through his own experience of the world, and that specific thing cannot be transmitted in words. A teaching can point. It cannot carry you across.
What esoteric traditions appear in Siddhartha?
Siddhartha draws from Buddhism, Initiation traditions. Conrad Rooks filmed Hesse's novel on the Ganges, and the river ends up saying more than the Buddha does.
Is Siddhartha worth watching for spiritual seekers?
Siddhartha (1972) directed by Conrad Rooks is essential viewing for those interested in Buddhism, Initiation. Siddhartha Learns Nothing From Any Teacher and That Is the Whole Teaching. It rewards multiple viewings and contemplation.
Rewatch With New Eyes
Now that you've seen the architecture, experience it again. The same film becomes a different film when you know what to watch for.
This time, watch for:
- See impermanence: what clings, what releases, what remains
- Mark the threshold: the old self dies, the ordeal transforms, the new self returns
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