Student Question
In Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, what does Siddartha learn from his journey?
Quick answer:
Siddhartha learns that true self-discovery and salvation come through understanding and transforming the mind, a core teaching of the Samanas. His journey reveals that worldly pleasures and family life are distractions. Despite initially rejecting these teachings, his experiences with love, wealth, and self-indulgence ultimately lead him back to them. Siddhartha's interactions with the ferryman Vasudeva and his reflections on life help him embrace these insights, highlighting the unity of good and evil as part of self-realization.
In Hermann Hesse'sSiddhartha, the title character
Siddhartha goes on a quest to find his true self. Though it
takes some time for him to realize it, his quest finally leads him to
an acceptance of the samana tradition, which he actually
rejected when he began the journey.
His journey with his friend Govina first leads him to live with the
ascetic Samanas for three years. Samana teaches that individuals reach
salvation by transforming and fully understanding their own minds. They
abstained from pleasures and family life, teaching that they were distractions,
and used yoga and meditation to try to transform and understand their minds.
However, Siddhartha grew to disbelieve in the idea of
abstaining from pleasures and decided it was time to move on in his quest to
find himself.
He next journeys into the city where he meets and falls in
love with the
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where he meets and falls in love with thenoblewoman Kamala. Kamala shows him sexual
pleasure and helps him get a job with a wealthy merchant. Under the wealthy
merchant, Siddhartha grows a prosperous business that allows him to
afford every luxury. Hence, Siddhartha starts living a life
that is the complete opposite of that taught by the Samanas. While he enjoys
the lifestyle at first, he soon comes to find that the more he lives the life,
the more selfish and reckless he becomes, even turning to a
life of gambling. When he becomes thoroughly disgusted by his own actions, he
decides to leave, not knowing that Kamala is pregnant with his son.
His journey nearly leads him to think of committing suicide,
but he decides that this, too, is the wrong path. As he reflects back on his
experiences, he begins to see that his experiences with the Samanas and in the
city were both opposite experiences that worked together to define an
understanding of good and evil, which is a classic
samana teaching. He also meets river ferryman Vasudeva, who teaches
him more samana teachings, such as the fact that time cannot
be real if Brahmaa is to be considered the ultimate, infinite reality, Brahmaa
being the god who created morality as defined in the scriptures called the
Vedas. Later, when united with his son, who only wants to go back to the city,
Siddhartha comes to understand the samana teaching that family
is really only a distraction.
Hence, through his journey, he learns the samana teachings
that salvation is achieved through bettering the mind and that the things of
this world merely serve as distractions from bettering one's mind.
References