Siddhartha Reflection

After leaving Buddha, Siddhartha moves to a village.  In the village, Siddhartha meets a woman named Kamala.  Kamala influences Siddhartha to change the lifestyle to which he has grown accustomed (http://www.imsa.edu/~trasched/siddhartha/phys.html.

With every experience, there is a lesson learned. In Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, as the main character Siddhartha journeys through life, each experience he encounters teaches him a different aspect of the value of life. Through his relationship with Kamala he learns the importance of love, when he tries to commit suicide he realizes the beauty of life, and when he lives with the ferryman he is taught to listen and ultimately achieve the end goal to life, Nirvana.

Kamala soon becomes Siddhartha’s lover, and she helps him learn the ways of the city, leaving his ascetic life as a Samana behind. She then has a child that is from Siddhartha, whom Siddhartha had never met. Kamala does not have a very spiritual life, and Siddhartha influences her to seek a more spiritual lifestyle to better herself. She becomes tired of being a courtesan and realizes she can be a better person. The author brings Kamala back into the story when the news of Gotama’s advancement towards death breaks out into the villages; “One day, when very many people were making a pilgrimage to the dying Buddha, Kamala, once the most beautiful of the courtesans, was also on her way. She had long retired from her previous way of life, had presented her garden to Gotama’s monks, taking refuge in his teachings. . .” (Hesse 90). Kamala is one of the most important characters in the book because she is able to teach Siddhartha about physical love, and lead him to spiritual enlightenment.

This change in character, though it is more dominant towards the end of the novel, is also seen in the second part of Siddhartha’s journey when he meets Kamala for the first time. It is very surprising when Siddhartha asks Kamala to be his teacher, especially after he relays to Govinda that he was not satisfied with the teachings of the Samanas. But even so, Siddhartha follows through and is a good student, “He visited the beautiful Kamala regularly, learned the art of love in which, more than anything else, giving and taking become one. He talked to her, learned from her, gave her advice, received advice. She understood him better than Govinda had once done. She was more like him” (Hesse 58). This shows that Siddhartha has made a much deeper connection with Kamala than he has anyone before. These connections then show us that Siddhartha has learned about attachment, something that he did not have as a Samana.

Siddhartha begins to deviate from his holy walk in life when he meets Kamala. In Siddhartha Kamala is a pleasure woman who owns a beautiful grove outside of a larger town. “Siddhartha saw how beautiful she was

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 follows his journey through various changes in pace and mood, as he enters the samsara as a samana or one without possessions, he believes he can “think, wait, and fast”(64). Yet Siddhartha’s previous upbringing as a Brahmin and a samana, he refuses to accept the materialistic wealth “his heart was not in business”. (69) Yet his need to please Kamala, his love teacher, he needs to earn money therefore, by earning money he pleases Kamala “It (business) was useful in order to bring him money for

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

In Siddartha, the primary character, named Siddartha, is the son of a Brahmin priest, is loved and adored by his village and an expert in the religion of his father; however, he is ill-content. Siddartha realizes that he will

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

By requiring Siddhartha to work a job and earn money and achieve status, he again becomes more relatable because these are all events, that we as modern Americans, require or want. Further, Siddhartha develops what is essentially a friends with benefits relationship with Kamala. While their relationship not necessarily romantic is does resemble a more modern relationship dynamic. They both acknowledge that they care for each other, even if they cannot love each other. Kamala said, “... “You do not really love me-you love nobody. Is that not true?” “Maybe,” said Siddhartha wearily. “ I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can-that is their secret.” (Hesse 73). While this does outline how they are different from regular or normal people, it also establishes a weariness, or despondency at not being able to love each other, something that is distinctly familiar, in a way that fairytale romances are often

The novel Siddhartha written by Hermann Hesse is a philosophical novel that explores the journey of life and to enlightenment. This is done through the narration of the life of a young boy – the eponymous Siddhartha by a third-person omniscient narrator. My goal in this essay is to explore the role of the most important female character in Siddhartha, Kamala.

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

I could only deceive it…..I am Siddhartha; and about nothing in the world do I know less than about myself, about Siddhartha” (Hesse, 38). Siddhartha struggles not knowing what to do, where to go and who he was. Siddhartha was trapped in a cycle of losing and regaining his self. “You have observed well, you have seen everything. You have seen Siddhartha, the son of Brahmin. Who left his home to become a Samana and who has been Samana for three years. But now, I have left that path and came into this city, and the first one I met, even before I had entered the city, was you.  To say this, I have come to you, oh Kamala!  You are the first woman whom Siddhartha is not addressing with his eyes turned to the ground.   Never again will I love my eyes when I meet a beautiful women” (Hesse, 53). Things suddenly changes after meeting Kamala. Siddhartha starts getting involved in the things that he was once against which are pleasure and money. He struggles and works hard in-order to impress Kamala.