While I finished reading Siddhartha, it seems that the idea of “oneness” intrigued me very much. To be able to transcend time and be everyone and everything in all tenses of time, past, present, and future is simply amazing. In a sense, I don’t think Hesse literally meant that though. I saw this scene metaphorically in that “oneness” is really just open-mindedness. By being open minded, we can understand like Siddhartha did about everything around him. Perhaps we may not literally transcend time and be everyone/thing at once like he did, but we can understand like Siddhartha did. By having this worldly feeling, he was able to rise above the pain of the “child people” and embrace everything with welcome arms. Though, I would love to ask Siddhartha this question: would you even love death, famine, and misfortune? I think this is the question that plagued and eventually blocked those who tried to find enlightenment in the story. They were limited in their perception of the world as it is colored by good and evil that they lost that balance in which open-mindedness grants. His father couldn’t understand the evil, the samanas couldn’t accept the material world, Kamala couldn’t love, Kamasawmi only understood business, Govinda couldn’t understand Siddhartha’s enlightenment, and Siddhartha at one point didn’t understand his body. All these barriers that blocked these characters for enlightenment, but because one obtained open-mindedness, we saw that one achieve enlightenment; that oneness by Siddhartha. Everything comes in shades of colors and grays that all come back to white and black, but the world and that oneness exist as combination of both. This is what we need more of in our world.
by Cristina L.
