The 's Opinion Of Life

    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.

Hinduism is faced with a revolving wheel of life, death and rebirth called Samsara better known as reincarnation. They believe this life cycle is a direct relation to a person’s karma of deeds done. Karma “determines the kind of body, whether human, animal, or insect, into which he or she will be reincarnated in the next

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’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

Siddhartha knows that his Self had merged into unity because he listened to the river. When listening to the river, Siddhartha hears all voices of sorrow, laughter, and all of the teachers that he has had. All of the thousand voices merged together into one song and sang perfection- Om. Hesse says, “...the same smile appeared on Siddhartha’s face. His wound was healing, his pain was dispersing; his Self had merged into unity” (Hesse 136). From this excerpt one can interpret that Siddhartha is content and has found peace in his life, the wound that was formed from his son was now gone, and had finally found peace.

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

There is a time in all religious experiences that people look for spiritual growth by reflecting on the basics of life. An estimated 376 million people are considered to believe and follow Buddhist practices, the question of the four elements (sight’s), aging people, the sick, funerals processions and religion. These elements that Siddhartha Gautama saw, that led to him to seek religious enlightenment, and to give up his privileged life. These four elements come up in every religious walk at some point. Reflection on these elements can have astonishing effects in someone’s life. By looking at these elements, and by showing the effect they had on Siddhartha Gautama’s life, will show that anyone could grow in their spiritual belief by reflecting

In nature, the river is a powerful being that rushes and cuts through the earth with definitive curves that leave lasting marks even after it has disappeared. The path it follows is one that is reconstructive and continuous, a circular path, from the source to down a mountain, the ocean and back to the beginning. This circular construction is often mimicked in literature and is a critical factor in giving the reader a tighter grasp on the power behind individual events along with triggering their logos. In Hermann Hesse’s robust and thought-provoking novel “Siddhartha”, Hesse does a phenomenal job of describing the life of a man named Siddhartha who is born into a prominent and rich lifestyle yet embarks on a journey to seek out himself, who he is himself and all the twists and turns that burn into it. Through this he has written a piece of literature that forces people to see this world in another light and sometimes evaluate their lifestyles. Like the river, Hesse's use of circular construction is powerful and ensures a mental connection to the literature and provokes the idea that throughout every stage in his life. Even though he had certain aspects about him that separated him from society and put him on another level, he still lacked something, or instead had too much of it.

All of the voices combined the sound of “Om”, which represented the unity of all things, universally linked to one soul. It let the audience know that Siddhartha had stopped desiring, and that he had no where else to go which signified that he finally found what he was looking for.

“[A human being] experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness, “said Albert Einstein. “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty” (“Heart Quotes”). Einstein’s view on nature is similar to that of Indian Buddhists. Life-giving Indian weather inspired the Buddhist cyclic view of rebirth while the rugged terrain of Greece inspired their harsh outlook on nature. Buddhists believe man is one with nature while Greek mythology emphasizes the all-importance of man. Buddhists live in harmony with nature whereas the Greeks show violence towards it and all

man and nature are joined in a circular system, in which death is necessary and fosters new life.

Remorse, Isolation, and hopelessness are all feelings that every human has experienced at some time in life. The journey of life is all about a desire to find unity and peace. The story of Siddhartha is no different. It is about a journey to find peace, harmony and contentment both now and in the afterlife. Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, is a story about Siddhartha, a man who is on a spiritual journey to find truth. In Hinduism, the goal is to obtain enlightenment and reach Nirvana; “a state in which the mind is enlightened transcending all suffering and achieving peace” To reach Nirvana, “the individual must escape samsara the eternal cycle of birth, suffering, death and rebirth” (Merriam Webster).

His descriptions of such events that he witnessed in his lifetime from hunger, poverty, and sickness clearly embody suffering. The city that is filled with impurity and attachments could be the cause of the natural disasters that include chaos and death, which a simple life renouncing in nature could avoid (Theme 9 Lecture 3, Mar.19). Furthermore, the population’s suffering can symbolize the city as a whole that does not allow for one to discover one’s buddha nature, hidden within each of us (Theme 9 Lecture 3, Mar.19). Realizing one’s buddha nature would demand one’s mind to be cleared of all delusions and attachments to exhibit the possibility to become the Buddha (“The Dalai Lama: ‘On Buddha Nature.’ ” ;Theme 9 Lecture 3, Mar.19).

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

The Daoism literature on human life and the end of it, suggest that Daoists are interested in, and have been on a continuous quest for immortality. Daoism, like other ancient Asian traditions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, offer a way out of cyclical human existence in a practice known as asceticism. However, the motivations and the methodology behind asceticism vary greatly in each of these Asian traditions in the East. The main focus of this paper