Siddhartha

I felt that this reading summed up very well the individual goals we in this class have been striving toward throughout the year. Teaching ourselves how to successful be with suffering, how to truly listen, and not to allow our selfish goals to could our minds and behaviors, are themes Bump has been driving into our skulls since the first day of class. However, until now, I have never seen them in action.

"The river laughed. Yes, so it was, everything came back, which had not been suffered and solved up to its end . . ." (Hesse, 119)

Although all of these aims are extremely difficult to achieve, it seems to me the one that requires the most constant, conscious effort is truly listening and sympathizing with those who are suffering. We talked a lot about this while reading How can I Help? "He sensed how his pain, his fears flowed over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him from his counterpart. To show his wounds to the listener was the same as bathing it in the river." (Hesse, 120) How on earth do we reach a state at which we can mimic this kind of compassionate listening? Bump has said many times that if we had ever been listened to like this, we would know it. In all my life, I can only say that I have been listened to once with utter attention and sympathy, and it was from, of all people, a cancer patient. Stephen Whitlow, whom I have spoken about before, was a good friend of mine throughout his battle with brain cancer, when he as around age thirteen. His mother was my piano teacher, and as such we would hang out every week after my lesson. I'd always thought that it was I who was there for him, playing legos, GameCube, or as his sickness took its toll, simply laying around. Never once in my memory, did he speak about his illness or its effect on him. Instead, he asked me how school was going, how our friends there were doing, what I was going to do over the summer. And for some reason, everything would spill our of my mouth in a wave. I try doing the same for him, but was always afraid to ask too much, afraid to talk about his cancer. As if not mentioning it would make it go away. It was only after Stephen died that I realized he had been the one helping me all along. I've spent my entire life, all the hard work I've done, trying to prove to myself that I could somehow make his death worthwhile. I wanted to live up to his memory. In truth, I was angry that somehow as innocent and incredible as Stephen had died, while I had lived. It seemed unfair. I've since moved past this unhappy notion, but I will never forget him or the way he cared for everyone over himself.

From an earlier section of Siddhartha, in which his son is grieving. 

I remain convinced to this day that God spoke to me through Stephen. It always seemed the only explanation for the amount of wisdom he possessed, at such a young age. "this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself, that he was the eternal itself." (Hesse, 120) He is the reason that despite my reoccurring doubts or conflicted emotions, I have remained a Christian. I have to believe Stephen's death was for a reason, and that he lives on in heaven. He's also part of the reason I love music as I do. Stephen was a brilliant musician, and knowing that toward the end of his life he lost the ability to play is extremely painful. I do not know if I will ever learn to listen with the sympathy and compassion that he always showed me. But I will try. I hope that one day I can pass on that love, and do his memory justice. I also hope that one day I can feel about Stephen's death the way Siddhartha came to feel about the loss of his son. For now, he is a fond, albeit painful memory, that will forever have left a mark on my life. (literally, see my tattoo for reference)

obligatory Om symbol