Siddhartha and Kamaswami's business relationship

Siddhartha entered Kamaswami's service on the recommendation of Kamala, who had arranged for the rich merchant to meet him. Kamaswami, a swiftly moving man with very gray hair, intelligent, cautious eyes, and a greedy mouth, initially questioned whether Siddhartha, a former Brahman and Samana, had become destitute and sought to serve. Siddhartha replied that he was without possessions voluntarily and therefore not destitute, and when pressed on what he could give in return for a living, he stated his three abilities: "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." Kamaswami tested Siddhartha by having him read a sales-contract scroll, which Siddhartha read aloud perfectly, and then asked him to write something, receiving the aphorism: "Writing is good, thinking is better. Being smart is good, being patient is better." Impressed, Kamaswami invited Siddhartha to live in his house, provided him with clothes, shoes, and a daily bath, and served him plentiful meals twice a day, though Siddhartha ate only once and abstained from meat and wine.

The Nature of the Partnership

Siddhartha soon took part in Kamaswami's business, but he never became subservient to the merchant. Following Kamala's advice, he forced Kamaswami to treat him as an equal, and even more than an equal. Kamaswami passed the duties of writing important letters and contracts to Siddhartha and discussed all important affairs with him. The merchant observed that Siddhartha knew little about rice, wool, shipping, or trade, yet he acted with a fortunate manner and surpassed Kamaswami in calmness, equanimity, and the art of listening to and understanding people. Kamaswami remarked to a friend that Siddhartha was no proper merchant and would never be one, lacking any passion in his soul when conducting business, but possessing a mysterious quality that made success come to him as if by a good star, magic, or something learned among the Samanas. He always seemed to be merely playing with business affairs, never fully becoming part of them, never ruled by them, and never afraid of failure or upset by a loss. On a friend's advice, Kamaswami offered Siddhartha a third of the profits from the business he conducted, while also making him liable for the same share of losses, hoping to make him more zealous. Siddhartha cared little about this arrangement; when he made a profit, he accepted it with equanimity, and when he made losses, he laughed and said, "Well, look at this, so this one turned out badly!"

Siddhartha's Detached Approach to Commerce

Siddhartha's attitude toward business was fundamentally different from Kamaswami's. On one occasion, he traveled to a village to buy a large harvest of rice, but the rice had already been sold to another merchant. Instead of returning immediately, Siddhartha stayed for several days, treating the farmers to drink, giving copper coins to their children, and joining in a wedding celebration, returning extremely satisfied. Kamaswami scolded him for wasting time and money, but Siddhartha replied that nothing was ever achieved by scolding, that he was satisfied with the trip because he had gotten to know many kinds of people, made a Brahman his friend, had children sit on his knees, and had farmers show him their fields—none of them knowing he was a merchant. When Kamaswami indignantly insisted that Siddhartha was a merchant and should think like one, Siddhartha laughed and said he had traveled for his amusement, to get to know people and places, to receive kindness and trust, and to find friendship. He argued that if he had been Kamaswami, he would have returned annoyed and in a hurry, losing time and money, but instead he had good days, learned, had joy, and harmed neither himself nor others by annoyance and hastiness. He concluded by telling Kamaswami that if the day ever came when he saw that Siddhartha was harming him, he should speak a word and Siddhartha would go his own path, but until then they should be satisfied with one another.

The Spiritual Emptiness Beneath the Wealth

Despite his success, Siddhartha's soul was never with the trade. The business was merely good enough to provide him with money for Kamala, and it earned him much more than he needed. His interest and curiosity were concerned only with the people—their businesses, crafts, worries, pleasures, and acts of foolishness—which had once been as alien to him as the moon. He saw them toiling, suffering, and growing gray for the sake of money, little pleasures, and slight honors, scolding and insulting each other, complaining about pain at which a Samana would only smile, and suffering deprivations a Samana would not feel. He was open to everyone—the merchant offering linen, the debtor seeking a loan, the beggar telling his story—and treated the rich foreign merchant no differently than the servant who shaved him or the street-vendor who cheated him out of small change when buying bananas. When Kamaswami came to complain about his worries or reproach him, Siddhartha listened curiously and happily, was puzzled by him, tried to understand him, consented that he was a little bit right, and then turned away to the next person. He gave advice, pitied, made gifts, let people cheat him a bit, and this entire game occupied his thoughts just as much as the gods and Brahmans once had. Yet at times he felt a dying, quiet voice admonishing him, and he became aware that real life was passing him by, that he was playing with business deals and people as a ball-player plays with balls, while the source of his being ran somewhere far away, invisible, having nothing to do with his life any more.

The Descent into Greed and the End of the Partnership

Over the years, Siddhartha's mockery of the childlike people became more tired, and his superiority more quiet. Slowly, among his growing riches, he assumed something of their ways—their childlikeness and fearfulness—and he envied them for the importance they attached to their lives, the passion in their joys and fears, the sweet happiness of being constantly in love. But he learned from them only the unpleasant things he despised. He became angry and impatient when Kamaswami bored him with his worries, laughed too loud when he lost a game of dice, and his face assumed the features of discontent, sickliness, ill-humor, sloth, and a lack of love. The disease of the soul that rich people have grabbed hold of him. He was captured by greed, and the game of dice became a passion through which he demonstrated his disdain for wealth, losing and wasting money with angry joy. After each big loss, he pursued trade more zealously, forced debtors more strictly to pay, and became more strict and petty in his business, occasionally dreaming at night about money. He fled from this ugly spell into new games, into numbing his mind with sex and wine, and then back into the urge to pile up possessions, running in a pointless cycle, growing tired, old, and ill. Finally, after a dream of a dead singing bird in a golden cage, Siddhartha knew the game was over. He left his garden, left the city, and never came back. Kamaswami had people look for him, thinking he had fallen into the hands of robbers, but Siddhartha had already begun his journey back to the river, where he would eventually become a ferryman and learn from the water what the merchant's world could never teach him.