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Siddhartha enlightenment essays
Siddhartha enlightenment essays
Siddhartha path to enlightenment
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In Hermann Hesse’s novel, Siddhartha, the main character of the story, Siddhartha, a young Brahman along with his beloved friend, Govinda leaves home to find enlightenment. They join a group of ascetic Samanas and for many years Siddhartha and Govinda deny their body’s pains and senses including the external world. Yet, Siddhartha is not satisfied with the result and fails to find the true path to enlightenment that he is seeking. Furthermore, Siddhartha because of dissatisfaction renounces the life of asceticism and departs with Govinda to visit and hear Gautama Buddha speak and learn from him. However, Buddha’s teaching does not provide Siddhartha with what he needs therefore; he leaves Buddha’s presence and continues his journey to discover the true enlightenment while Govinda stays with Buddha. Siddhartha realizes that Buddha’s teaching will not be enough for him since his thirst is not that of knowledge but rather it is a thirst of feeling and experiencing that moment of attaining the enlightenment. Therefore, he decides to continue with his journey. While on his journey, Siddhartha suddenly realizes that one must seek and attaining enlightenment through living, not through preaching since what he is seeking is not something the outer world but rather it is the inner world, the self. During his journey, Siddhartha meets a Kamala, a beautiful courtesan, who introduces him to the life of wealth and pleasure. However, Siddhartha decides to leave Kamala after realizing that he has gone astray from his real path, from the path of self-discovery, unaware that she is not pregnant with his son. Siddhartha starts living with a Vasudeva, a ferryman who lives by a river. They both believe now that the river can teach them great wisdom...
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... to further his knowledge. He was always moving along, never stopping in one place permanently. His quest was never ending until the river had taught him what he needed to know. Hesse, in a way, shows us that only through sacrifice will someone gain what he is looking for. He shows us that life is not given to one on a platter, but needs to be looked for in order to be found. Siddhartha, through his departure from home and the Samanas, his realization that not even the Buddha was perfect in his teachings, his abandonment of Kamala, and finally through his decision to stay and learn from Vasudeva, shows us that he had spent his whole life in search of something that was missing, his peace. In the end, Siddhartha finds his inner Self, he finds his peace.
Works Cited
Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2000. Print.
Hermann Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha” is one of spiritual renewal and self discovery. The novel revolves around the life of one man named Siddhartha, who leaves his home and all earthly possessions in an attempt to find spiritual enlightenment. The novel contains many themes, including the relationship between wisdom and knowledge, spirituality, man’s relationship to the natural world, time, love, and satisfaction. To portray these themes, Hesse employs many different rhetorical devices, particularly diction, symbolism, and point of view. These devices allow us, as a reader, to reevaluate our lives and seek fulfillment in the same way that Siddhartha did.
Siddhartha is a much respected son of a Brahmin who lives with his father in ancient India. Everyone in their town expects Siddhartha to act like his father and become successful. Although he lives a very high quality life, Siddhartha is dissatisfied and along with his best friend Govinda- wants nothing more than to join the group of wandering ascetics called Samana’s. This group starves themselves, travels almost naked and must beg for the food they survive on. This group of people believes that to achieve enlightenment and self-actualization: body image, health, physical and material desires must be thrown away. Although this is the life Siddhartha wished for himself, he soon discovers that it is not the right choice for him. Near desolation, Siddhartha happens upon a river where he hears a strange sound. This sound signifies the beginning of the life he was born to live – the beginning of his true self. Hesse uses many literary devices to assure Siddhartha’s goal of self-actualization and creates a proper path for that success.
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.
In the first part of the book, Siddhartha is consumed by his thirst for knowledge. He joined the samanas and listened to the teachings of the Buddha in attempt to discern the true way to Nirvana. Though he perfected the arts of meditation and self-denial, he realized that no teachings could show him the way to inner peace. While with the ascetics only a third of his quest was accomplished. Siddhartha said, "You have learned nothing through teachings, and so I think, O Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation through teachings" (27). His experiences with the samanas and Gotama were essential to his inner journey because they teach him that he cannot be taught, however this knowledge alone would not deliver him to enlightenment. Siddhartha had taken the first step in his quest but without the discovery of the body and spirit, his knowledge was useless in attaining Nirvana.
The beautiful courtesan, Kamala, taught Siddhartha the importance of love along with the pleasures of it. While in the town of Samsara, he was introduced to a life of luxuries by her. She taught him how to please a woman and how to keep her satisfied. He also learned how to gamble and the art of running a business from her friends. Although Siddhartha felt moments of joy, nothing fulfilled the longing in his soul. Over the years, one of the more important lessons he gained from Kamala was that he could have this life of pleasurable things and yet still yearn for a deeper meaning in his heart.
Frequent allusions to the river correspond w/ Siddhartha's infinite thoughts of Unity and his initial plans to strive for it. Siddhartha has a number of specific goals during the course of this novel, but in no way does this detract from the bare nature of his ultimate goal. The accomplishment of specific goals was an important part of the progression approaching his absolute state of Unity.
While it seems as if Siddhartha’s early stages of following the teachings of others and immersing himself in material goods did not help Siddhartha on his quest, Siddhartha views these stages in a positive way. “I experienced by observing my own body and my own soul that I sorely needed sin, sorely needed concupiscence, needed greed, vanity… and to love it and be happy to belong to it.” (120). Siddhartha states how he needed sin, vanity, and all of these feelings to realize how corrupt his view of enlightenment was. Siddhartha understands, through viewing his own body and soul, that he needs to accept the world he lives in for what it is, and learn to love it. This flaw that Siddhartha has throughout much of the novel is crucial, as Hesse is able to display how wisdom can only be achieved by looking within the self, not through the words or doctrines of others.
Siddhartha ends his knowledge quests: Brahminism, Samanic asceticism, and Buddhism. He turns to the use of his senses in finding his goal. His main goal is to be his 'Self'. His sense of 'being' is isolated by his knowledge. He realizes that he does not know his 'Self' which he has spent his life avoiding. He vows him self to explore the 'Self'.
“Siddhartha had a goal, a single one: to become empty--empty of thirst, empty of desire, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. To die away from himself, no longer be self, to find peace with an emptied heart, to be open to miracles in unselfed thinking: that was his goal.” (13) Siddhartha thought that completely losing everything would help him find his enlightenment. He thought following what the Samanas believed would give him the journey to his soul that he was looking for. After fasting for weeks and learning all he could from the the eldest Samanas Siddhartha realized that “he has turned sixty years old and has not reached Nirvana.” (17) The Samanas does not give him the Om he is in search for. Siddhartha says, “I do not desire to walk on water,” and with realizing this he continues on to find the Sublime
	The second concept in Siddhartha is the idea that knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. Siddhartha believes this very strongly, and feels it is only right that one must gain wisdom for himself. When he and Govinda come to the garden of the Buddha and listen to Gotoma’s words, Govinda is immediately converted and stays. Siddhartha, however, does not. He respects Gotoma and believes that he has actually reached Nirvana, but Siddhartha does not believe that Gotoma can teach him to reach it. Later Siddhartha finds himself at a river, having run away from his riches. Here he sees another wise man, Vasudeva, the ferryman. He stays at the river and learns wisdom for himself. Siddhartha learns of the wonders of life, and that what he had always held to be true was true; that wisdom is not teachable.
In Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha and his friend, Govinda, leave their sheltered lives as Brahmins, Hindu priests, to be Samanas, ascetics who deny themselves all pleasure. Some years after, they meet the Buddha, whom Govinda stays with to be a monk while Siddhartha leaves to continue on his own adventures. Toward the end of their lives, they meet again at a river bank and discover if they have truly achieved inner peace. Hesse uses Govinda as a contrast to Siddhartha. As displayed in excursions with the Samanas, with the Buddha, and on other adventures, Siddhartha is a character who is more independent and must learn on his own while Govinda is more dependent and feels he must be taught.
Siddhartha began his adolescence with learning the ways of Brahman in hopes to find enlightenment by following the footsteps of his father. He lived along with his best friend Govinda but slowly grew discontent with his life. He felt empty and was hungry for something new. “that the wise Brahmans already revealed to him the most and the best of their wisdom, that they had already filled his expecting vessel with their richness, and the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied” (page 6). Siddhartha was in search of a more refreshing spiritual fulfillment, which resulted in his decision to become a samana. After years of meditation and fasting once again he felt like he was missing something.
Throughout the tale, Siddhartha strives to be one with Atman, or internal harmony/eternal self, but by his own attainment. Even when he is offered the insight of Gotama, the divine and perfect one, who is the embodiment of peace, truth, and happiness, he refuses following him and decides to attain Nirvana in his own way. In this, Siddhartha shows his prideful nature but also reveals a positive aspect: self-direction. He realizes that others' ways of teaching can only be applied to their past experiences, but is still reluctant to ac...
Siddhartha has the urge to become enlightened There was something telling him to endure on his journey to enlightenment and thus begins the Hero Journey This is the first step towards his journey After seeing the Samanas, he decides he wants to follow in their footsteps to learn more about himself and the world that he has been sheltered from his whole life When he tells his family about his decision of becoming and Samana they refuse to let him go, especially his father who has done most of
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.