Siddhartha Enlightenment

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse discusses the many paths of teaching that relate to Hinduism that Siddhartha followed on his journey through life and how each path helped him realize what he wanted with his life. Siddhartha follows many teachings or paths in which to reach his spiritual destination, which at the beginning was to reach Nirvana.

Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, is the story of a young man searching for enlightenment. Through his journey, Siddhartha follows several Buddhist and Hindu paths to achieve his ultimate goal of enlightenment. Siddhartha follows the path of the Brahmin, the Samana, the materialistic gambler, and eventually the Buddhist middle path. Being the son of a Brahmin, Siddhartha leads a privileged life, but this isn’t enough for him. Siddhartha had an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and after a time, he leaves his father to find his own path to Nirvana. Although Siddhartha was raised in a strict Hindu society, his path to Nirvana was a combination of Buddhism, and Hinduism.

    In Hesse's novel, Siddhartha the title character, Siddhartha leaves the Brahmins in search of Nirvana - spiritual peace.  The journey he endures focuses on two main goals - to find peace and the right path (http://www.ic.ucsb.edu/~ggotts/hesse/life/jennifer/html).  Joseph Mileck, the author of Hermann Hesse:  Life and Art, asserts that Siddhartha focuses on a sense of unity developed through Siddhartha's mind, body, and soul (Baumer).  Hesse's Siddhartha revolves around three central journeys - a physical, a mental, and a spiritual journey.

From start to Finish, Siddhartha lived his life in search of one main facet; spiritual enlightenment. While in the process of his quest for enlightenment Siddhartha encountered the four noble truths of Buddhism. In the first part of the novel, Siddhartha is portrayed experiencing each of the noble truths.

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.

Siddhartha comes to realize that he has discovered who he really is, he is Siddhartha. He knows himself more than any other teaching or religion. As he comes to self-realization, he comprehends he has been letting himself slip away, he has been running away from himself.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, is a novel about a young boy who is trying to find his spiritual enlightenment in life. The novel begins with a young naïve boy who is living with his father following the family’s traditions of the Brahmin. To reach spiritual enlightenment Siddhartha and his friend Govinda leave the town to seek

Siddhartha resolved that he would first go to the Samanas, ascetics that hard lives of self-denial of all comforts and pleasures in order to rid themselves of desire and those emotions that would hinder them on the journey to discovering Atman. Although joining these extremist monks was a high ambition, Siddhartha knew that he would succeed as a Samana, for he believed that the path of the ascetic would aid him on his journey of self-discovery. As his time with the Samanas lengthened, Siddhartha began to take pride in the knowledge that he was not blinded by the material world like everybody else was; he saw the world for what it truly was -- bitter lies and misery. Despite the fact that Siddhartha was becoming a great Samana, revered by even the older monks, he felt that what he had learned from them he could have learned on his own and in less time. Once again, he was not satisfied with the path that he was on and aspired to achieve even greater heights by parting from the Samanas. This ambition is plainly displayed when Siddhartha’s friend Govinda, who had become a Samana as well, proclaimed that Siddhartha would have learned to walk on water had he stayed with the ascetics. Siddhartha simply says that he would “let old

Siddhartha’s life was more of a journey, a journey filled with whimsical decisions and many questions; Siddhartha simply did as he pleased. After living this capricious lifestyle, he noticed that he felt empty inside. He wondered why he felt this way for a long time and decided to leave his current life. He abandoned all possessions and left his father in a quest to seek peace with the shramanas. Soon the cycle of the nature of Siddhartha was formed. Siddhartha would seek something and pursue that something blindly and by abandoning his previous lifestyle. It was not until he was an old man did he finally reach peace through the guidance of a river. Siddhartha’s life had changed immensely numerous amounts of times by the time he was old, but the change he experienced was not necessarily caused by of outside influences. He experienced change, but every change originated inside of him; of what he wanted to follow next. Of course, this still required Siddhartha to change to his new surroundings in every instance he obeyed new lifestyle. When he followed the shramanas, he left everything he had previously known and owned. When he left for the city, he completely changed his demeanor and became rich. Once again, when he lived by the river, he abandoned all possessions and former values. I believe that Siddhartha

while joining the semanas Siddhartha learns to be patient, as well to abandon the need to own things because materialism wont bring him happiness. The teachings of the Samanas have shown him that to be satisfied is the inner peace. Not only did he leave home, he be faced with new people along his journey.

In the departure phase of his journey, Siddhartha completely shuns both internal and external desires and lives a more than humble life. During Siddhartha’s conversation with his father about leaving home, Siddhartha’s father, “returned again after an hour and again after two hours, looked through the window and saw Siddhartha standing there in the moonlight, in the starlight, in the dark” (11). Hermann Hesse’s use of dark and light imagery, emphasizes Siddhartha’s stubbornness for his desire to go with the Samanas, whose religious ideals are severe self discipline and restraint of all indulgence; he is adamant about leaving home, as his father checked on him countlessly and Siddhartha stood there unwavering despite the many hours and change of daylight so he could earn his father’s blessing to live the lifestyle of an ascetic. Furthermore, Siddhartha travels to the Samanas with Govinda to destroy Self and the multitudinous amount of desire by quelling each desire and all together Self even though he knows it is a difficult goal to achieve, “Although Siddhartha fled from Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable” (16). The effect of Siddhartha’s multiple attempted destructions of Self as a consequence of living as a Samana are failure in his attempt to discover Nirvana. Moreover, Siddhartha travels with Govinda to the Buddha after leaving the

Siddhartha, the novel, by Herman Hesse explores the journey of two young men on the path to achieving enlightenment. Siddhartha is a young man who puts his friends and family aside to go on a quest to achieve enlightenment. Govinda is Siddhartha’s best friend and he follows him around on his quest while trying to achieve enlightenment himself. Although Siddhartha and Govinda search for different things in different ways, they ultimately find themselves in the same place, revealing Hesse’s belief that there are different ways to accomplish similar goals.

Siddhartha underwent many challenges and obstacles within his life and travels. But with these challenges, he had many teachers and guidance to help him through it. For example, he had his best friend Govinda, his father, the Buddha, and Kamala. But his most important teachers were the river and Vasudeva. They taught him how to see life and all of its beauty while his other teachers taught him how to live and become a better person and to settle down. His main obstacle in his quest for enlightenment was that he fell in love with Kamala which distracted him from reaching his goal. Even though Kamala was one of his teachers, she was also a main disruption. After while, before he meets the river, Kamala, and Vasudeva, he leaves all his teachers and friends, and even his learnings. He left them so that he can search for his enlightenment alone. But he couldn’t do it alone, he needed guidance. And that is what Vasudeva and the river did

Hermann Hesse has beautifully linked the three phases of the novel with the three phases of Siddhartha’s life. Each phase begins with the river and we realise at the end

In the beginning, Siddhartha was loved by many and was a learned man. However, Siddhartha realized “his vessel...was not full, his