The Importance Of Meditation In Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

In the novel, Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, the main protagonist, Siddhartha, reaches enlightenment while meditating by a river. When Siddhartha reflected on his newfound knowledge, he states “I looked at my life, and it, too, was a river, and Siddhartha the boy was separated by Siddhartha the man and from Siddhartha the old man merely by shadows, not by anything real”. Recently I have attempted to reach a similar enlightenment as Siddhartha through meditation, and have come to a conclusion that differs slightly from Siddhartha’s.

While Siddhartha believes that the river represents time, due to its never ending flow, I have learned that a river symbolizes more than just time, but also life itself. Even though the eternal cascade of water is

If the past, present, and future really is like a river then what is perceived as the present, the second of time that just occurred is merely a drop of water amongst trillions upon trillions of other drops. On my way to the river meditation, I (unfortunately) got lost and arrived late. This event, this one drop amongst trillions, caused me an enormous amount of stress. However, after meditation I have come to the conclusion that in the river of time this handful of drops do not truly mean anything in the scheme of the river. What is observed as “now” then, by the time it is actually interpreted, is already gone, swept away in the constant flow of the river. So the moment I started feeling stress about missing the scheduled river meditation, the metaphorical drop was already dissipated amongst many others, and knowing this, I knew in order to keep up with the river I must release my stress into the

Some obstructions that are more troublesome like war and famine, involve more of the river than just am drop. These horrid problems are more like rocks than drops. They involve a larger portion of the river, or time, than a momentary emotion would. These rocks can severely block the river for a while, but eventually the water would erode the rock until all that remains is a speck of stone. War occurs in a similar way. For a time it dominates the spectrum of life. However, as time passes the war fades from the headline before vanishing altogether, and, like the pebble, it will forever remain buried in some history