Siddhartha's entire journey through life is a "learning process" in which, as with many other characters in literature, he seeks some level or degree of fulfillment beyond the usual experiences of "ordinary" people. The process is one that is arguably never completed. He begins with a deliberate effort of self-denial but finds that this is unsatisfactory. Then he transitions into what is essentially the opposite of the ascetic life of a samana. By becoming a businessperson and living with the beautiful courtesan Kamala, Siddhartha is enveloped in worldliness—physical, material comfort. It is in this phase of his life that he is focused on gaining knowledge: knowledge about love, about money-making, and about the things we normally consider the essence of "human nature." But this too is not what he wants and is not a source of fulfillment. Therefore, in spite of the knowledge he gains, his learning process...
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must continue, and he leaves Kamala in order to return to what is, by contrast, a life of self-denial.
The link between these two aspects of his life, the quest for knowledge and the unending task of learning, is arguably the son Kamala had by Siddhartha. The boy is, unsurprisingly, spoiled and understands only the material world. He is unable to adapt to his father's lifestyle. In some sense, this is symbolic of the dichotomy between the finite acquisition of knowledge upon which Siddhartha has embarked in the "middle" phase of his life with Kamala and the unending learning process that is at the root of his overall quest. It is up to the reader to determine for himself or herself whether Siddhartha is, or ever will be, successful in this quest and will find the fulfillment he has sought from the beginning of the story, which has eluded him for so long.
Siddhartha discovers that there are certain kinds of knowledge that simply cannot be taught. Elders in his community have been teaching for years, yet no one is closer to achieving an end to the cycle of reincarnation. He realizes that one simply cannot be taught this kind of knowledge; one must learn this knowledge through one's own experiences. It is through his own experiences and wisdom that he achieves Enlightenment; it is not a result of the learning he obtained from various teachers. The Buddha seems to completely understand this perspective as well, as does Vasudeva. It seems clear that there is no path to true knowledge and understanding that involves learning from someone else; one must experience for oneself.
Hesse is very interested in the “Journey” that is life; this book can even be considered a Bildungsroman, in which not only does a boy grow into a man, but a “soul” (a consciousness) grows from the physical world of “Knowing” to the spiritual world of “Learning”. For Hesse, our existence is a state of gaining understanding of universal truths through experiencing physical realities. So knowing is an earth-bound comprehension of facts; learning is a process of understanding paths, methods, journeys of the soul through planes or levels of experiences. This is obvious in the structure of Siddhartha, and the developments in Journey to the East, but is also the theme of Steppenwolf (where the autobiographical character journeys through stages of reality/consciousness leading to the Magic Theatre) and his masterpiece, Magister Ludi (or The Glass Bead Game). Educators, too, have understood the difference between teaching “facts” and teaching “what processes use those facts to reach conclusions and understanding” (see Bloom’s taxonomies, for example).