Suffering In Siddhartha's Awakening

Buddha preached that life is just full of suffering. Is it true? Just these past 17 years that I have lived proves that Gotama Buddha is in fact, correct. Hesse portrays Siddharth, a son of a Brahmin priest who although understands the mantra Om, the idea of Nirvana still eludes him. In order to achieve Nirvana, Siddhartha abandons his Brahmin life for awakening. I, also, like Siddhartha, am born to a Brahmin family. Although I did not forsake my home in order to achieve Nirvana like Siddhartha, some events in my life parallel the moments of Siddhartha’s awakening. Many of his awakening from the teachings of the Samanas and the Buddha is similar to the awakening that I have achieved through the experience of my childhood in Nepal. Towards the

Although Siddharth learns to meditate very well and “slip out of himself in a thousand different forms [from] animal, B, stone, to wood, each time, [however] ,he reawakened.” Because he reawakened each time and arrived at the same point he was in before he meditated, he comes to an understanding that in order to attain Nirvana, he needs to learn from himself and not depend on someone else’s teachings. After he holds a conversation with Buddha, he realizes further, the flaw of Buddha’s teaching, because, in order to attain awakening like Buddha, people ought to experience themselves rather than listening to it. While this consciousness was frightening, it was also exhilarating. Siddhartha was more himself than ever. Enlivened by this new feeling of authenticity, Siddhartha "began to walk quickly and impatiently, no longer homewards, no longer to his father, no longer looking backward" (42). As a sheltered girl, I entered a world, that unlatched my safety bars. My new immigrant parents always stressed the danger of completely leaving my culture and drowning into the Western culture. They used to tell me stories of how a good girl from a reputed family entered a dooms hole when she chose to leave her culture for the Western Culture. I, however, like every teenager, wanted to realize it myself. At 12, I had my first smoke, as the tar of the smoke

I, also, attained my own awakening through encountering impoverished kids, my own experience, and my grandfather’s death. Like Siddhartha I learned that there is life beyond materialism; a human can only learn from their own experience, and time is ageless. Life is indeed full of suffering, but suffering is just part of life that evolves a human to become who they wish to