Siddhartha learns several lessons from the river, including the unimportance of wealth and status, how things are connected, and that time is an illusion.
Indeed, Siddhartha grows up by the river and often returns to it and sleeps near it. It's a source of inspiration and enlightenment for him, even early in his life. However, he isn't happy with what he has and seeks other things away from the river—but these don't bring him happiness either. He gets a piece of advice from the ferryman. The ferryman tells Siddhartha that he loves the river more than anything and that he can learn much from the river.
One thing Siddhartha learns from the river is that wealth and status aren't important. He has become a rich man with Kamala but still isn't satisfied or at peace with his life. The river, though, doesn't flow upward or seek status. Instead, it flows downward. This shows Siddhartha that he doesn't need the status and wealth that he had to be happy. This is one of the first lessons and is explained by Vasudeva.
Siddhartha also learns the ways in which life is like the river. The river is always flowing but remains still; it's in constant renewal but it is consistent too. Everything exists as one rather than as separate entities. It shows him how things are connected. People go through cycles and change but remain the same deep down.
The nature of the river shows Siddhartha that he doesn't have a full understanding of time. The river itself is timeless—always flowing, always there through the many changes of the world. The river speaks with many voices and helps Siddhartha learn to examine his own thoughts and his own understanding on his path to enlightenment.
Siddhartha leaves the city and all the riches he has acquired behind. He walks through the forest and stops by the river, where he ponders over his life. He feels goalless, without any real thing to seek or look forward to. He is disgusted by the miserable and shameful life he has lived through the years and yearns to commit suicide.
Instead, he falls into a deep sleep and wakes up a very happy man. He decides to live near the river to learn from it. He is hosted by the ferryman Vasudeva, to whom he tells the story of how he found contentment after a deep sleep by the riverside. According to Vasudeva, Siddhartha has learned that it is “good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek depth”. Earlier on, while seated by the riverside, Siddhartha had observed that the river always moved happily downhill. This means that one can move to a lower status, yet derive more satisfaction in life. He has learned from the river how to “listen, to pay close attention, with a quiet heart, without judgment or opinion." He has learned that “the river is everywhere at once." The life of a person can be likened to the flow of a...
See This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this answer and thousands more. Enjoy eNotes ad-free and cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
river, so that the different phases such as childhood, adulthood, and old age are all one, rather than disparate features of the person. He has learned that “the river has many voices," and when it speaks in all of its voices at once, it says the words of the Holy Om.
Ultimately, Siddhartha learns that “all voices, all goals, all yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all good and bad” are what the world is made up of. All of these things make up the music of life. He learns that in order to achieve Om, the perfection; a person has to detach himself from only listening to a single voice, among the many voices of life, one must learn to listen to all of the voices at once. This means that one accepts his fate as it is, delighting in a knowledge that is “not opposed by any will,” a knowledge that agrees with the flow of life.
The river teaches Siddhartha how to listen. In the river, Siddhartha, now an old man, hears his own father and son, and they flow together; he hears Kamala and Govinda, and all of them flow into one another and over each other, all becoming the river, all making up the river's voice. Siddhartha becomes "Nothing but listener now," and he can't distinguish between the many voices in the river anymore. The more he listens, he hears that the happy and the sad, the raging and the hurting, are all one: "everything was one, everything was interwoven and intricately knotted, a thousandfold." He hears everything, altogether, and this sound is the world in its perfect unity. He hears "OM: perfection." Once the river teaches Siddhartha to listen, to hear OM, his pain joins with it, and he stops struggling with his fate and he stops suffering. At this point, now that Siddhartha has achieved enlightenment and an understanding of OM, his friend Vasudeva leaves him.
Siddhartha has many teachers that he learns from on his journey towards Enlightenment, but ultimately, it is the river that teaches him the final lesson that he needs to learn in order to attain his goal. As Siddhartha listens to the river at Vasudeva's urging he realises that the river symbolically represents life itself as is shown through the sounds that Siddhartha hears emerging from the river, representing the sound of all of creation. In this river, Siddhartha learns that all of creation is absorbed into one harmonious whole. Note how the text presents Siddhartha after this epiphany:
From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with the conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrending himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things.
Siddhartha therefore learns that he is one life that is part of a united whole and that part of Enlightenment consists in the act of surrender. This is shown by Siddhartha's acceptance of his destiny and his surrendering of his conflicting desires. Ultimately, he learns to surrender himself to the flow of the stream and to accept what his destiny has for him.