In the final chapter of Siddhartha’s life he confronted various obstacles and events. These events had morphed him into becoming an enlightened and proficient man. In Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha starts out as a young man who is copious and nurtured. Gradually he transforms into a man of desolation trying to get an awareness and grasp back into reality. Through peace, conflict, despair, and salvation Siddhartha is enlightened and fortified to create a life full of content.
We aspire to live a life where there is no scarcity of food, disease, dearth of housing, and no conflicts. There are two sides of everything, peace and conflict, happiness or sadness, and poverty or wealth. Siddhartha lived on the privileged and auspicious side where he was blinded by the realisms of life. Siddhartha was amongst the fortunate few to be advantaged and privileged enough to live in a small flourishing community. “They all loved Siddhartha, he brought joy to all, he delighted them.” (Page 4: lines 20-21) In that community Siddhartha was an charismatic and striking individual, who all aspired to meet. Times were tranquil and wholesome for Siddhartha. “Someday when Siddhartha joined the Gods, the people will follow,” (page 5: line 16) although this does not reference specifically to the action of peace, I sense as if this quote posses a deeper meaning. Siddhartha not only had coinage and noble looks but he had a disposition and reputation that lead others to desire being like him. This status of his leads me to concur that he had a life of extravagance and reconciliation, which are the assets of peace. “Siddhartha grew up the --- the beautiful son of the Brahmin, the young falcon.” (Page 1: Line 14-15) No insecurities were consumed in him, and he had t...
... middle of paper ...
...imeline of his life. "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 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, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of things." (Chapter 15) It was here at this river where Siddhartha chose salvation.
The process of initiation enables us as readers to fully engross in the characters encounters, conflicts, and paths. Siddhartha showed strength and enrichment through this cycle as well as endured a great pain in order to become a fiercer person. Through conflict, despair, peace, and salvation Siddhartha is enlightened by experiences and understanding that lead to the concluding outcome of salvation.
Siddhartha progresses from an aloof and slightly arrogant youth, not unlike young Grendel, to a wise, satisfied man.
In this paper, I will be explaining how Siddhartha had arrived at the Four Noble Truths. The first paragraph contains how Siddhartha’s life was full of suffering, pain, and sorrow. The second paragraph will be the cause of suffering is the desire for things that are really illusions in Siddhartha’s life. Following, in the third paragraph I will be explaining how the only way to cure suffering is to overcome desire. Finally, I will be explaining that the only way to overcome desire is to follow the Eightfold Path.
Siddhartha is a much respected son of a Brahmin who lives with his father in ancient India. Everyone in their town expects Siddhartha to act like his father and become successful. Although he lives a very high quality life, Siddhartha is dissatisfied and along with his best friend Govinda- wants nothing more than to join the group of wandering ascetics called Samana’s. This group starves themselves, travels almost naked and must beg for the food they survive on. This group of people believes that to achieve enlightenment and self-actualization: body image, health, physical and material desires must be thrown away. Although this is the life Siddhartha wished for himself, he soon discovers that it is not the right choice for him. Near desolation, Siddhartha happens upon a river where he hears a strange sound. This sound signifies the beginning of the life he was born to live – the beginning of his true self. Hesse uses many literary devices to assure Siddhartha’s goal of self-actualization and creates a proper path for that success.
In the first part of the book, Siddhartha is consumed by his thirst for knowledge. He joined the samanas and listened to the teachings of the Buddha in attempt to discern the true way to Nirvana. Though he perfected the arts of meditation and self-denial, he realized that no teachings could show him the way to inner peace. While with the ascetics only a third of his quest was accomplished. Siddhartha said, "You have learned nothing through teachings, and so I think, O Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation through teachings" (27). His experiences with the samanas and Gotama were essential to his inner journey because they teach him that he cannot be taught, however this knowledge alone would not deliver him to enlightenment. Siddhartha had taken the first step in his quest but without the discovery of the body and spirit, his knowledge was useless in attaining Nirvana.
In the novel Siddhartha, Herman Hesse used other characters to let Siddhartha grow both intellectually and spiritually. During the course of his journey, Siddhartha encountered many people and experienced different ways of living and thinking about life. Each person taught him something about himself and the world around him.
Frequent allusions to the river correspond w/ Siddhartha's infinite thoughts of Unity and his initial plans to strive for it. Siddhartha has a number of specific goals during the course of this novel, but in no way does this detract from the bare nature of his ultimate goal. The accomplishment of specific goals was an important part of the progression approaching his absolute state of Unity.
While it seems as if Siddhartha’s early stages of following the teachings of others and immersing himself in material goods did not help Siddhartha on his quest, Siddhartha views these stages in a positive way. “I experienced by observing my own body and my own soul that I sorely needed sin, sorely needed concupiscence, needed greed, vanity… and to love it and be happy to belong to it.” (120). Siddhartha states how he needed sin, vanity, and all of these feelings to realize how corrupt his view of enlightenment was. Siddhartha understands, through viewing his own body and soul, that he needs to accept the world he lives in for what it is, and learn to love it. This flaw that Siddhartha has throughout much of the novel is crucial, as Hesse is able to display how wisdom can only be achieved by looking within the self, not through the words or doctrines of others.
During this period-the realm of the mind, Siddhartha actively sets about letting the self die, escaping his Self. This attempt reaches its most concentrated form during his stay with the ascetic Samanas, during which he discards all material possessions and tries further to flee his own body and control his other needs. This is shown when he says, "He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his Self in a thousand different forms." S...
Samsara is defined as the cycle of death and rebirth to which life in the material world is bound. The narrator of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha uses the metaphor, “the game was called Samsara, a game for children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable played once, twice, ten times -- but was it worth playing continually?”. Siddhartha, the main character of the book, tries to decide whether this “game” is worth it. Throughout the book he encounters many different walks of life and learns much about the world around him. Eventually he reaches enlightenment through the teachings of Vasudeva, an old ferryman. Siddhartha found enlightenment by learning the lesson of the river; just as the water of the river flows into the ocean and is returned by rain, all forms of life are interconnected in a cycle without beginning or end. Ultimately Siddhartha decides that Samsara is worth it and that experiencing the many different walks of life is a necessary key in achieving enlightenment.
Copious amounts of individuals do not believe that a teacher could help them improve their everyday lives; however, this is proven wrong throughout Siddhartha’s life. The novel, Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, undergoes Siddhartha’s spiritual expedition to enlightenment. In the beginning, Siddhartha is kept away from the spiritual world from his father, then goes completely into the materialistic world, until he finally goes back to his calling of the spiritual universe. Once he is completely in the spiritual world, Siddhartha learns everything he can about reaching enlightenment. The enlightenment, or Nirvana, Siddhartha is searching for is a transcendent state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self. It represents the final
Throughout the tale, Siddhartha strives to be one with Atman, or internal harmony/eternal self, but by his own attainment. Even when he is offered the insight of Gotama, the divine and perfect one, who is the embodiment of peace, truth, and happiness, he refuses following him and decides to attain Nirvana in his own way. In this, Siddhartha shows his prideful nature but also reveals a positive aspect: self-direction. He realizes that others' ways of teaching can only be applied to their past experiences, but is still reluctant to ac...
...e chased his son. Siddhartha is soon reminded by the river of how he left his own father. He continues to listen to the river and he beings to see people from different walks of life. These images soon flow together, and begin to make a single sound, Om. Siddhartha realizes that the earth is intertwined and now is spiritually complete.
At its core, Siddhartha is a novel examining a young boy’s search for eternal truths, spiritual enlightenment, and a sense of purpose. He attempts to live entirely devoid of self-pleasure, encounters temptations, then tries a life filled with indulgence. He grapples with the highs and lows of friendship, doubt, anxiety, contemplates suicide, the acquisition and subsequent loss of a family before finally finding a way to achieve his own form of enlightenment. While the novel is riddled with themes and motifs about what it takes to achieve forms of content within oneself, as well as historical parallels using the life of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, I argue that Siddhartha is overwhelmingly an outlet that Nobel Prize-winning author Hermann Hesse used to reflect on the early days of his life and his own search for enlightenment.
Enlightenment? The road less traveled on is often the road of most resistance, but when the road evens out and clears up even for an instance it reveals that the worst has already come and gone. There might be a few more rough patches on the road ahead, but the beginning is always the hardest part to get past. When the end of the road appears the best feeling will occurs to us, while everything that has happened along the road replays in the back of our minds and we realize that the end outcomes of our different experiences is the best thing that has ever happened to us. With these realisation like the one that Siddhartha had in the book Siddhartha we come to realize that the path to self-discovery must be never ending.
Readers have been fascinated with Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha for decades. Written in 1951, Hesse’s most famous novel provides the reader with a work of literature that, “presents a remarkable exploration of the deepest philosophical and spiritual dimensions of human existence” (Bennett n.p). Siddhartha takes place in India while the Buddha has first began his teachings. The book follows the life of a man by the name of Siddhartha, on his journey to reach enlightenment. The main theme in Siddhartha is reaching enlightenment without the guidance of a teacher or mentor. Siddhartha believes that he must learn from himself, and the guidance of another teacher will only distort his goals of reaching enlightenment. Siddhartha says that he must, “learn from myself, be a pupil of myself: I shall get to know, myself, the mystery of Siddhartha” (Hesse 36). On Siddhartha’s journey to reach Nirvana, the highest level of peace in the Buddhist culture, he undergoes three stages all of which are critical in helping Siddhartha find peace within himself.