Suffering In Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

     Siddhartha first tries to follow the path of the Brahmins.  His father thinks of him as "a prince among Brahmins" (Hesse 4).  Siddhartha washes "in the daily bath of atonement" (Hesse 5) so that his soul might be cleansed of guilt in order to merge with the all-perfect being (Archie 60).  He also offers sacrifices to the gods.  The Brahmins teach him that Atman created the world and that this great god can be found by men only when they sleep (Hesse 7).  Despite the love and

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.

Here Siddhartha is demonstrating that he is the only one that matters when it comes to thoughts of who he is, and only his opinion of himself matters. Acceptance and the ability to look into himself will lead to that road of happiness. Also, to be minimalistic as to if there is nothing to be needed then it is not. This is something many people should take into consideration as to stay away from being materialistic.

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.

Buddhism’s four noble truths are Buddha’s declaration of key discoveries of his quest to find enlightenment. The first noble truth is that all humans suffer, this is called dukkha. This philosophy came through to Buddha by realizing that all being try to achieve happiness and when they fail to succeed they suffer and thus life is full of suffering. People also suffer because of fear, fear of death, fear of sickness, fear of poverty. The second noble truth is what causes the suffering which is desire or also called tanha. Our desires are endless, people always want bigger and better things, and when our desires are not met we suffer because of it. The third noble truth is the cure or the prescription to the first two truths, it is called the eightfold path. The

Famous actor and comedian, Robin Williams, was very well known and lived a life with richness and supporting loved ones, but it must not have been all it was looked to be. He must not have been truly happy with his life because he committed suicide. Similarly, in the book, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha is not able to find true happiness. Siddhartha leaves his family in the beginning of the book because he wants to find himself. Then he ends up with the Samanas and is there for a while, but then he decides he has not truly found himself yet. So, he leaves again and meets this man on a ferry boat that encourages him to find enlightenment. Siddhartha then meets this woman named Kamala and they fall “in love” and he becomes wealthy and believes that he is happy. But after a while, he leaves Kamala and all of his wealth and social honor behind because he has not found enlightenment. All this shows the reader that Siddhartha does not find happiness with wealth and social status, as shown when he leaves Kamala and everything he has to go find himself and is only able to find enlightenment as a ferryman, which is not a wealthy position or rank in life.

The two boys leave the town to join the Samanas, a group of people who believe that spiritual enlightenment comes with the rejection of body and all other needs. The boys quickly realize that their ideas of the group are very different, Govinda loves the way that improvements that he has gained spiritually and morally. While Siddhartha has yet to reach the spiritual enlightenment that he wishes to achieve. “Siddhartha learned a great deal from the Samanas; he learned many ways of losing the Self. He traveled along the path of self-denial through pain, through voluntary suffering and conquering of pain, through hunger, thirst and fatigue. He traveled the way of self-denial through meditation, through the emptying of the mind through all images. Along these and other paths did he learn to travel. He lost his Self a thousand

In the first chapter we can clearly see how siddhartha experiences the first noble truth, the truth of suffering. We start off with the author, Hesse portraying Siddhartha with a sort of ultimate experience having a loving father caring for him and is excelling greatly ahead of his peers spiritual practices, almost having a perfectly put together life. Yet,Siddhartha wanted something different, a change. A detour from his father’s past. He didn’t want to be another sheep in a large herd .Set on his journey for nirvana, Siddhartha felt that he was not progressing in his search for enlightenment as a young Brahmin; to him “the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied.” At this stage of the novel is where we are able to clearly connect the puzzle pieces and conclude that Siddhartha’s suffrage is the presence of dissatisfaction due to not yet reaching spiritual enlightenment.

He starts out by finding friendship with his buddy, Govinda. They have been friends ever since their childhood. There are really close, like each other's shadow. They have traveled and lived most of their life together. Govinda was a very loyal friend. "Govinda, his friend, the Brahmin's son, loved him more than anybody else. He loved Siddhartha's eyes and clear voice. He loved the way he walked, his complete grace

Siddhartha is going his own way; his destiny was beginning to unfold itself, and with his destiny, his own” (9). He wants to become enlightened and Siddhartha thinks that the Brahmins have already given all of their knowledge to Siddhartha, but he wants more so he decides to follow the Samanas in order to gain the amount of knowledge he desires. Siddhartha is talking to the Buddha about why he disagrees with his idealism. Siddhartha thinks that no one else will be able to teach him, since the

Perhaps the most abundant religion influence in Siddhartha is Buddhism. The four noble truths and the eightfold path are very prominent in Siddhartha. All of the noble truths are mentioned in Siddhartha. For example, the first truth, all life knows suffering, is portrayed in the quote, “"He saw businessmen trading, princes going to the hunt, mourners weeping over their dead, prostitutes offering themselves, doctors attending the sick, priests deciding the day for sowing, lovers making love, mothers soothing their children -- and all were not worth a passing glance, everything lied, stank of lies; they were all illusions of sense, happiness, and

The story of a young man that searches high and low for the path of enlightenment. In Hermann Hesse’s, Siddhartha, it shows how a young man tries to find a balance in self and spirit. Many of Hesse’s books reflect the experiences he had as a adolescent, Hesse also had trouble balancing religious aspects of his life, in the same way Siddhartha did. Hesse had attempted suicide and was expelled from school. Unlike Siddhartha, he was not very loved among people in his early life. I believe that Hesse wrote about Siddhartha because he could relate and sympathise with his feelings.

The second Noble Truth is that suffering itself has a cause. At the simplest level, this may be said to be desire; but the theory was fully worked out in the complex doctrine of "dependent origination," or pratityasamutpada, which explains the interrelationship of all reality in terms of an unbroken chain of causation (Conze).

In Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, the four Noble Truths of Buddhism are revealed throughout the journey of Siddhartha. The Four Noble Truths include: Life means suffering, the origin of suffering is attachment, the cessation of suffering is attainable, and the path to the cessation of suffering. Siddhartha discovers that in order to reach enlightenment, one must have experiences and struggle through these Noble Truths firsthand.

Fathers and sons have special bonds that connect them in a different way from other individuals. Although they may not expose much emotion, respect and honor are key factors that link their relationships. Siddhartha and his father had a certain understanding towards each other. Siddhartha loved, feared, respected and was patient towards his father; an equal amount of these traits were reciprocated with the addition of understanding.