Siddhartha's Son's Rebellion and Departure

Siddhartha's Son's Rebellion and Departure is the pivotal crisis of Siddhartha's later life, the event that transforms his hard-won peace into a burning wound and teaches him, through unbearable suffering, that love cannot compel another soul to stay. After Kamala's death, her eleven-year-old son—a boy accustomed to fine food, a soft bed, and servants—is brought to live with Siddhartha and Vasudeva in their riverside hut. The boy is timid and weeping at his mother's funeral, and for many days he sits pale by the hill of the dead, refusing to eat, giving no open look, meeting his fate with resistance and denial. Siddhartha spares him, honors his mourning, and hopes to win him over by friendly patience, always picking the best piece of the meal for him. But the boy remains a stranger, gloomy and proud, stubbornly disobedient: he will not work, he does not pay respect to the old men, and he steals fruit from Vasudeva's trees. Siddhartha begins to understand that his son has not brought him happiness and peace but suffering and worry—yet he prefers the suffering and worries of love over any joy without the boy.

The Breaking Point

For long months, Siddhartha waits for his son to accept his love, while Vasudeva watches in silence. One day, after the boy has tormented his father with spite and broken both of his rice-bowls, Vasudeva takes Siddhartha aside and speaks from a friendly heart: the young bird is accustomed to a different nest, he has not run away from riches out of disgust but was forced to leave them against his will. Vasudeva has asked the river many times, and the river laughs at their foolishness—water wants to join water, youth wants to join youth. He urges Siddhartha to bring the boy back to the city, to his mother's house, or to a teacher where he can be among other boys and girls in the world that is his own. Siddhartha, troubled, admits he has thought of this but fears his son will lose himself to pleasure and power, repeating his father's mistakes and getting lost in Sansara. Vasudeva replies that no father or teacher has ever been able to protect anyone from living his own life, soiling himself with it, burdening himself with guilt, drinking the bitter drink for himself. Even if Siddhartha died ten times for his son, he could not take the slightest part of his destiny upon himself. Siddhartha thanks him but cannot heed the advice; stronger than knowledge is his love for the boy, his tenderness, his fear of losing him. He lets the boy give him orders and disregard him, beginning each day the mute struggle of friendliness, the silent war of patience.

The Violent Outburst

The breaking point comes when Siddhartha gives his son a task—to gather brushwood—and the boy refuses. In stubborn disobedience and rage, he stays where he is, thumps the ground with his feet, clenches his fists, and screams his hatred and contempt into his father's face. "Get the brushwood for yourself!" he shouts, foaming at the mouth. He declares he knows Siddhartha will not hit him, that he dares not, that he constantly tries to punish and put him down with religious devotion and indulgence. "I rather want to become a highway-robber and murderer, and go to hell, than to become like you!" he cries. "I hate you, you're not my father, and if you've ten times been my mother's fornicator!" Rage and grief boil over in a hundred savage and evil words, and then the boy runs away, returning only late at night. The next morning he has disappeared, along with a small basket woven of bast in two colors that held the ferrymen's copper and silver coins. The boat is also gone; Siddhartha sees it lying by the opposite bank. The boy has fled.

The Pursuit and the Realization

Siddhartha, shivering with grief, insists he must follow—a child cannot go through the forest alone, he will perish. He and Vasudeva build a raft to cross the water and retrieve the boat. Vasudeva brings an axe, knowing the boy may have thrown away or broken the oar to keep them from following; when they reach the boat, the oar is indeed gone. Vasudeva begins making a new one, but Siddhartha sets off alone into the forest. After walking a long time, he realizes his search is useless: the boy is either far ahead and already in the city, or he will conceal himself from a pursuer. Deep inside, Siddhartha knows his son has neither perished nor is in any danger, yet he runs on—no longer to save him, but to satisfy his desire, to perhaps see him one more time. He runs all the way to the outskirts of the city, where he stops at the entrance of the beautiful pleasure-garden that once belonged to Kamala. There, standing by the gate, the past rises up in his soul: he sees himself as a young, bearded, naked Samana, sees Kamala giving him his first kiss, sees Kamaswami, the gamblers, the dice, the song-bird in the cage. He lives through it all once again, breathes Sansara, feels once again the disgust and the wish to annihilate himself, and is once again healed by the holy Om. After a long time, he realizes that his desire to cling to his son is foolish, that he cannot help him and is not allowed to cling. Deeply, he feels the love for the runaway in his heart like a wound, and he understands that this wound has not been given to him to turn the knife in it—it must become a blossom and shine.

The Aftermath and the Wound

Siddhartha sits down in the dust of the road, empty and sad, feeling something dying in his heart. He waits, listening, as he has learned from the river. Monks in the garden see him crouching for many hours, dust gathering on his gray hair, and one places two bananas in front of him; the old man does not see him. He is awakened by a hand touching his shoulder—Vasudeva has followed him. Siddhartha looks into his friend's friendly face, into the small wrinkles filled with nothing but his smile, and he smiles too. He picks up the bananas, gives one to the ferryman, eats the other, and silently goes back into the forest with Vasudeva, returning home to the ferry. Neither speaks of what has happened, neither mentions the boy's name or his running away or the wound. In the hut, Siddhartha lies down on his bed, and when Vasudeva comes to offer him a bowl of coconut-milk, he already finds him asleep. But the wound continues to burn for a long time. Every time Siddhartha ferries a traveller accompanied by a son or a daughter, he envies them, thinking that so many thousands possess this sweetest of good fortunes while he does not—even bad people, thieves and robbers, have children and love them and are loved by them, all except for him. Thus simply, thus without reason, he now thinks, thus similar to the childlike people he has become. Yet through this suffering, his heart opens to all people in a new way: he understands their vanities, their desires for possession, their blind love and pride, and he loves them for it, seeing the indestructible Brahman in each of their passions. The wound does not blossom until the hour when, listening to the river with Vasudeva, he hears all the thousand voices at once and the great song consists of a single word—Om, the perfection. In that hour, Siddhartha stops fighting his fate, stops suffering, and his wound blossoms, his suffering shines, his self flows into the oneness.