Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha: Enlightenment Can Not Exist Without Love

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Relationships are composed of multiple manipulating factors: trust, honesty, attraction, passion, compatibleness, and many other emotion rattling components. However, the fundamental ingredient that commences a healthy relationship is love. Love is comparable to the seeking for enlightenment. “Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal” (113). Love is natural; it is not sought out or prospective. Love is not tangible. It brings a comfort, protectiveness, disillusion, and the million of nervous butterflies that clutter a stomach. Hermann Hesse journeyed through Siddhartha’s life covering his ambivalent relationships throughout the novel. Siddhartha’s relationships fluctuated with the changes he made for himself. Once a Brahmin, he respected his father’s thoughts and followed his teachings. Craving to be a Samana, he left behind love in order to find a new. When that was not enough, his love desired more and materialistic items captured his soul. He wanted to be taught love from who he thought was a prime master only to run away from her in the end. His love then was to find his Self. The river washed all his relationships into one place. Through Hesse, Siddhartha proved that without his relationships with his father, Kamala, and himself, his path to enlightenment would have not developed.

Siddhartha’s father, a noble Brahmin, gave his son the gift of not only his teachings but also his love. As Siddhartha grew older, he rejected his father’s love. He wanted to explore beyond the Brahmin tradition and uncover Nirvana. His father restricted Siddhartha’s ability to realize spiritual wisdom, which gave him the reason to abandon it. However, his father was hesitant ...

... middle of paper ...

...to protect their relationship. Through his own reflection in his son, Siddhartha’s enlightened path rewarded him with the power of listening.

Throughout all, Hermann Hesse explained how without Siddhartha’s relationships with his father, Kamala, and himself would not have changed as he sought enlightenment. He left his fathers love, never to return to it, only for the gambling chance to find a new love. He craved for Kamala’s teachings of love and their relationship turned from denial to acceptance. In his son, he saw the reflection of himself and had to set love free when it could no longer be restricted. Hesse reveled the existence to enlightenment survived through the value of love in a relationship. All in all, enlightenment could not breathe without the continuous pulse of love.

Works Cited

Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha, New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2003

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