4.
The
Song
Celestial
or
Bhagavad-Gita.
Translated
by
Sir
Ed-
win Arnold. New York: Dover Books, 1993. Ch. 2, Sect. 20.
5.
Shunryu Suzuki. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. New York: Weatherhill, Inc., 1970. 87-88.
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Chapter 10
The Son
Boy, Library of Congress
From the reading. . .
“. . . he preferred the suffering and worries of love to happiness and joy without the boy.”
Ideas of Interest from “The Son”
1. Given the son’s karma, what will most likely be his path in life? Explain how his character could become the architect of his destiny?
2. With respect to his son, in what ways is Siddhartha similar to the childlike people?
3. Siddhartha preferred the sorrow of the love for his son to the happiness without him. Do you think it would be possible for Siddhartha achieve 99
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enlightenment while tending for his son? Can anyone deeply care for something without trying to change it?
4. How does Siddhartha’s unconditional love undermine his son’s self-esteem?
Is Siddhartha’s unhappiness a result of his expectations of what he thinks his son should be, or is it a result of caring too much for his son?
5. How did Vasudeva presage the loss of the oar? Is it possible the ferryman has the ability to see causal sequences as singular events?
The Reading Selection from “The Son”
Timid and weeping, the boy had attended his mother’s funeral; gloomy and shy, he had listened to Siddhartha, who greeted him as his son and welcomed him at his place in Vasudeva’s hut. Pale, he sat for many days by the hill of the dead, did not want to eat, gave no open look, did not open his heart, met his fate with resistance and denial.
Siddhartha spared him and let him do as he pleased, he honoured his mourning. Siddhartha understood that his son did not know him, that he could not love him like a father. Slowly, he also saw and understood that the eleven-year-old was a pampered boy, a mother’s boy, and that he had grown up in the habits of rich people, accustomed to finer food, to a soft bed, accustomed to giving orders to servants. Siddhartha understood that the mourning, pampered child could not suddenly and willingly be content with a life among strangers and in poverty. He did not force him, he did many a chore for him, always picked the best piece of the meal for him. Slowly, he hoped to win him over, by friendly patience.
Rich and happy, he had called himself, when the boy had come to him. Since time had passed on in the meantime, and the boy remained a stranger and in a gloomy disposition, since he displayed a proud and stubbornly disobedient heart, did not want to do any work, did not pay his respect to the old men, stole from Vasudeva’s fruit-trees, then Siddhartha began to understand that his son had not brought him happiness and peace, but suffering and worry.
But he loved him, and he preferred the suffering and worries of love over happiness and joy without the boy. Since young Siddhartha was in the hut, the old men had split the work. Vasudeva had again taken on the job of the ferryman all by himself, and Siddhartha, in order to be with his son, did the work in the hut and the field.
For a long time, for long months, Siddhartha waited for his son to understand him, to accept his love, to perhaps reciprocate it. For long months, Vasudeva waited, watching, waited and said nothing. One day, when Siddhartha the younger had once again tormented his father very much with spite and an 100
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unsteadiness in his wishes and had broken both of his rice-bowls, Vasudeva took in the evening his friend aside and talked to him.
“Pardon me,” he said, “from a friendly heart, I’m talking to you. I’m seeing that you are tormenting yourself, I’m seeing that you’re in grief. Your son, my dear, is worrying you, and he is also worrying me. That young bird is accustomed to a different life, to a different nest. He has not, like you, ran away from riches and the city, being disgusted and fed up with it; against his will, he had to leave all this behind. I asked the river, oh friend, many times I have asked it. But the river laughs, it laughs at me, it laughs at you and me, and is shaking with laughter at our foolishness. Water wants to join water, youth wants to join youth, your son is not in the place where he can prosper.
