Teaching Siddhartha, Questioning Teaching

Wednesday, May 10, 2006
By Steven W. Simpson, Ph.D.

I have been teaching a unit on the book Siddhartha , about the life of a young Brahmin. Siddhartha is a scholar, a seeker of wisdom and of his own soul. He is the perfect student- attentive, receptive, analytical, and questioning. He learns everything he can, everywhere he can. But in the end, Siddhartha rejects all teachers and all teaching as mere diversions from true knowledge, true enlightenment. His rejection of teachers and learning has made me relive my own journey.

I suppose great literature, by definition, takes readers into themselves and stirs up the difficult human questions. Still, I am a bit long in the tooth to be suddenly questioning the purpose of something that for most of my life has been my great passion, my foundation, my profession. But I cannot escape the power of the great Hermann Hesse , whose books captured me in the madness after my war. The Steppenwolf, Harry Haller, reminded me of myself in those days, alone and wandering in a bleak and confusing world. Like the Steppenwolf, I could find no path from the deadly brutality of Vietnam to the suburbs and shopping centers of our middle class cities.

Like Harry Haller, I questioned everything, was depressed and desolate. I tried the hedonistic excesses, which a generation of us found to be illusory and mocking. I tried life as an intellectual, reading everything, living for seminars and analytical discourse. This adventure helped me focus more clearly on my spiritual malaise and gave me the words to identify my angst with power and grace. But it did not give me the knowledge, the understanding, the enlightenment for which I was searching. The war had taken my soul and I wanted it back.

One night, walking alone in the freezing black emptiness of an Olympia beach, I remembered a powerful experience I once had in the wilderness of Alaska . It was also a freezing black night, a night I was alone except for the river, the mountains and the enormity that is the Alaskan sky. I had my own divine moment that night, a brief connection with what Paulo Coelho calls the "Soul of the Universe." I knew the divine purpose of life that night, knew for the first time the flavor of my own soul. I would lose it in the war, but later, much later, I would remember it. And that memory is what led me into the mountains again, this time with a man named Willi Unsoeld , one of the greatest teachers I have ever had.

Willi was a professor at The Evergreen State College during my stay in those soft, green forests. He made me think clearly, but never told me what to think. It was a distinction I did not clearly understand until this year while teaching Siddhartha . Like the young Brahmin, I was searching for enlightenment. Like Siddhartha, I learned all I could from as many books as I could read, from as many teachers as I could find. Like Siddhartha, I sought enlightenment in the world of books and teachers, and also found that path was not my path. My path, it turned out, was that same wilderness experience I had stumbled on as a young man in Alaska . My wormhole into a spiritual connection with the Soul of the Universe was above ten thousand feet.

I went into the mountains as someone very similar to the Steppenwolf Harry Haller. While in the rocks and ice of the Northwest's great volcanoes, I was transformed somehow into a more sane and human person, changed from desolation and madness to a true seeker of spiritual enlightenment, not unlike Siddhartha. And that wilderness experience, that spiritual reconnection and rebirth in my time of desolation is what today forces me to ask again the hardest questions, to once again revisit my confusion about the purpose of life and my place in its infinite confusion.

It is that wilderness spiritual experience that makes me, like Siddhartha, question the value and purpose of teachers and learning in the lives of the students who pass through my classes. Siddhartha learned from the greatest teacher of his time, Gotama Buddha. He listened to the teachings of Gotama and valued the system of thought and the teacher above all others he had encountered on his journey. But he rejected both the great teacher and his philosophy because for Siddhartha, the only path to enlightenment was experiential, through his own heart, his own thoughts, and his own soul.

I learned from one of the greatest teachers of my time, Willi Unsoeld . But Willi , himself was more like the ferryman Vasudeva , who taught Siddhartha to listen to the river. Willi always valued the spiritual lessons found in wilderness more than the intellectual lessons found in books. Willi's lessons resonated for me then, and still do now. Like Siddhartha, my most profound spiritual connections have been in wilderness, not in classrooms. I have not achieved enlightenment, like Siddhartha, but I still listen, still seek that same goal.

The problem for me, as I read Hesse 's novel to my classes, as I discuss the journey of Siddhartha and his rejection of teachers and philosophies, is that even now I am not sure what I believe. I spent 14 years in college, earning three degrees. I have been a teacher myself for 14 years. A lifetime seeking knowledge and guiding others has left me, like Siddhartha, questioning the real value of what I do.

I don't expect any answers, but teaching Siddhartha has reopened old wounds, forced me to revisit old questions. I can feel my soul tapping on my consciousness, reminding me of my own personal journey, still incomplete.

In the end, I try to do what Vasudeva did, what Willi did. I encourage my students to listen and to ask questions, but try to avoid telling them what to think. I give myself the same gift.