How Did Siddhartha Change

As with the Brahmins, Siddhartha’s experience with the Samanas is not a fulfilling one. Hesse writes, “he slipped out of his Self in a thousand different forms. He was animal, carcass, stone, wood, water, and each time he reawakened” (Pg-15). Siddhartha learned a great deal from the Samanas, yet he was still unable to reach enlightenment. During his time with the Samanas, Siddhartha never saw or heard of a single person achieving enlightenment. Feeling disillusioned with the teachings of others, Siddhartha decided to leave the Samanas, and seek out the venerable Buddha. Siddhartha seeks out the Buddha and hears his sermon, but he ultimately decides to seek his own path to enlightenment. In leaving the Buddha, Siddhartha begins to follow a Buddhist path. Siddhartha says, “But there is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the Illustrious One himself experienced he alone among hundreds of thousands" (Pg-34). In this part of his journey, Siddhartha realizes that no one can teach him how to achieve enlightenment. As Gautama did before him, Siddhartha heads out to find his own path to enlightenment.

At the beginning of the novel we see foreshadowing of Siddhartha’s constant tangle with conformity when it states “Govinda knew that he would not become an ordinary Brahmin… or just a stupid sheep amongst a large herd” (Hesse 4). This relates to the fact that Siddhartha doesn’t want to go through the motions of what the Brahmin’s are trying to teach. Rather he wants to find his self-fulfillment which he can only do by not conforming to ways that make him who he is not. The first instance of this is shown when Siddhartha confronts his father about leaving the house saying “With your permission, Father, I have come to tell you that I wish to leave your house tomorrow and join the ascetics.” (Hesse 10). At first his father rejects his son’s notion to leave, but after time has passed and Siddhartha remained where his father rejected him in

“Yes, he thought breather deeply, I will no longer try to escape from Siddhartha. I will learn from myself, be my own pupil; I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha.” (Page 32)

“What could I say to you that would be of value except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.” (113) Siddhartha, a book written by Hermann Hesse, is about this young boy who throughout the book grows to an old man who, throughout his journey, seeks to attain enlightenment. He comes from a Brahmin family and later decides to become a samana and lives in the woods with his “shadow”,Govinda. Siddhartha is distracted with obstacles throughout his life and ultimately finds a way to conquer them.

There have been many teachers in one’s lifetime, some more important than others. These teachers and instructors affect different people in different ways, and lessons are learned that are important to prepare for real life situations. In the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, a young Brahmin named Siddhartha is not content with his current spiritual self. Siddhartha is directed to spiritual enlightenment and Nirvana because of his guidance and teaching from Kamala, Kamaswami, and Vasudeva.

After being asked how he was able to reach enlightenment, Siddhartha draws the distinction between knowledge and wisdom. He says, “ No, I am telling you what I discovered. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be forfeited by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” (115).

1. Siddhartha believed that wisdom could only be attained by experience. How did his experiences lead him

Every hero faces an ordeal. Siddhartha begins to realize that he is consumed with greed and has lost his will to live. He leaves the village and goes to the river. Siddhartha decides that he should end his life and begins to attempt to drown himself in the river. Suddenly Siddhartha hears the holy word “Om” and again gets “reborn”. This is called the reward. Siddhartha has faced death and survived. Because of this, Siddhartha has gained a sense of happiness and radiance. Siddhartha begins to follow the river until he meets the ferryman, who teaches Siddhartha how to learn the way of life from the river.

The setting of Siddhartha mainly consists of forests and small towns in India around 625 B.C.. These show importance to Siddhartha's journey because he learns from his surroundings. A hero's journey generally goes along the lines of beginning a quest that’s filled with ups and downs, but eventually prevails. His journey is important because Siddhartha reaches enlightenment or Nirvana, which is what all who

Hesse personifies the river creating it into a character of its own which also guides Siddhartha down his final steps to salvation. Vasudeva, the ferryman, who sails his ferry across this river is known to be an enlightened character he is apart of the river who also guides Siddhartha to find himself and to learn from his travelings that it is one’s own discoveries and travels that influence the mind, soul, and body to become one and at peace to achieve Nirvana, an overall inner and exterior peace.

Siddhartha believes that to find one’s true peace you must experience it and not hear it from teachers. Siddhartha does learn things from teachers like wisdom from the Brahman, skills from the Samanas and the teachings from Gotama but he knows theses teachings will not lead to enlightenment. Siddhartha seeks enlightenment at any cost even if he has to leave loved ones like his friends and family. Something that helps Siddhartha reach this state is his patience because he didn’t reach enlightenment until he was an old man and if he wasn’t patient as he kept messing up and failing he never would have reached his goal because he would have eventually given up. Siddhartha left a promising life of knowledge and success to go on a quest to find enlightenment, after a life long journey he finally reaches his goal.

Benjamin Franklin once said,“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn”. These insightful words not only highlight an important philosophy on life, but summarizes a significant distinction Siddhartha learns.

Throughout history there have been countless numbers of teachers: artisans, craftsmen, ideologist, to name a few. They have all master some skill, gained some wisdom, or comprehended an idea. These teachers have achieved knowledge which allows them to excel and to be above and beyond regular people. Knowledge is something everyone strives for, and many desire. To achieve knowledge, one must have an eye-opening experience, and epiphany that leads to the increase of one’s intellect and skill set. In Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, the main character, Siddhartha, goes in an almost never ending quest to achieve knowledge. Throughout this journey, Siddhartha encounters many teachers, whom which he learns a great deal, but

Unlike many people he treated business as a game and did not stress over his failures and did not praise his success. As a result, Siddhartha was able to go from “rags to riches.” Over time however, Hesse writes, “Gradually, along with his growing riches, Siddhartha himself acquired some of the characteristics of the ordinary people, some of their childishness and some of their anxiety” (77). Though Siddhartha envied them for the one thing he lacked, the sense of importance with which they lived their lives.

Siddhartha Gautama is a cunning, intelligent man with a thirst for knowledge. He is expected to live up to his fathers name, and everything appears to show him exceeding it. The only problem is, Siddhartha’s teachers and even his own father have not achieved enlightenment, and he strives to seek enlightenment out within himself. Throughout the entire book, we follow Siddhartha as he discovers what the meaning of life is, and just what life should be about. One day Siddhartha is seeking out the inner fire within himself, while in others he simply waits and drifts upon the river of life, patiently awaiting his fate to uncover the rest of the path. In the end, Siddhartha must give up all possessions, and accept life for what life is. “Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.” (Walter Anderson 1)