Identity In Siddhartha

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The Life and Loss of the Ego through Natur and Ghest
As human beings we often pursue truth to undercover deceit. To overcome death and nonexistence, we are born. To understand the future, we look to the past. To accept ourselves we begin to recognize others. As a result of these unavoidable actions our ego is born. Self awareness. The simple plural pronoun “We”, transforms into “Me”, or “I”, the self of our person. The self becomes thinking, feeling, and willing. Able to distinguish itself from the selves of others and from the objects of its thought. It is this self identity that many 6th century Buddhist, including the main protagonist within the novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, searched to abolish in the interest of reaching full enlightenment and understanding of the world in which they life. “A man asked Gautama Buddha, "I want happiness." Buddha said, "First remove "I," that's Ego, then remove "want," that's Desire. See now you are left with only "Happiness.” (Boulby 173)
Many believe that the great german writer, Hermann Hesse wrote his novel, Siddhartha, with two separate areas of experience in mind: The world of the mind and thought (“Ghest”), and that of the body and physical action (“Natur”). Author Joseph Mileck writes, …show more content…

In order to do so Siddhartha acted as a nomad both physically and emotionally. This view is constant within Hermann Hesse's approach to man’s walk to his salvation. Within Hesse’s other work, Wondering, he writes. “I am a nomad, not a farmer. I am an adorer of the unfaithful, the changing, the fantastic’... ‘I don't care to secure my love to one bare place on this earth.’... ‘Good luck to the farmer!” (Hesse 6) A nomad does not make one place home, nor do they make the entire world there home. Instead Hesse is showing that to be a true nomad you must reject the whole of the land, just as you should reject

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