Womb Tomb I: "Unborn Child"

OWPC Ch. 10

– December 18, 2025, 8:07 to 8:42 pm 

The womb and the tomb are inextricably linked—maybe through the practice of daily meditation. This is the gist of what I’ve learned from Chapters 10 and 11, so I’ll be writing responses to them in quick succession and approaching them as a two-part post. 

First, Siddhartha follows up re: his concern about the sustainability of Yasodhara’s work. One day, calling her by a nickname, Gopa (no idea where the hell that comes from), he suggests that she practice meditation with him, because “it will bring peace to your heart and enable you to continue your work for a long time” (69). Yasodhara follows his advice, right away, signaling how much trust has already been built, always “reserving time” for couples’ meditation with Siddhartha every day. (I think Drew and River used to do walking meditations together, for example, I’ll file that away as a great future idea). 

Key question posed by Siddhartha: “Why can’t a man pursue a religious life while he still has a family?” (71). I’m hearing: why does a religious or spiritual life require the renunciation of embodiment, of the social and material world? Siddhartha insists on a more holistic, sensuous living of the sacred that doesn’t see itself as rigidly separate from the libidinal and creative registers of existence. How refreshing. I’m sure this theme will get developed further, but I wanted to flag that. 

In the next short scene, the connection between birth and death becomes structural. Yasodhara returns to the couple’s home in tears after a sick child she was tending to in the village dies: “despite all her efforts, she could not rescue the child from death’s grasp. Overcome with sadness, she sat in meditation while tears streamed down her cheeks. It was impossible to hold back feelings” (71). Elegant and relatable description of acute grief, as well as a model for how to hold such feeling as gestation rather than collapse. Siddhartha comforts her by holding her, first, and then, by offering to accompany her to the funeral. As if opened by his holding and his grounded offering, Yasodhara admits her struggle to cope with the emotional intensity of her work, and asks Siddhartha to show her “how to overcome the suffering” in her heart. Building, deepening trust. 

He holds her again, unlocking another major revelation: she is pregnant, hoping for a boy. Complexity and ambivalence are honored in this text: “in the midst of his great joy, he felt the seeds of worry… [he] felt the ties that bound him to life in the palace tightening” (73). The unborn child is a miracle, and also a chain, something that binds him to the material plane. Another ambivalence, another nuance: the child’s death, and Yasodhara’s suffering as a result of that death, opens the relational threshold where the pregnancy announcement can occur. Is this a “something must die so that something can live” dynamic, but less of a cliche? We’ll find out in the next chapter, which I’ll be posting in the next hour or two. 

More shortly.