It shows the atmosphere is not inimical to change but is not ripe enough to initiate change, i. At this point, there was a choice open to Siddhartha who declined it, whereas his father had reluctantly exercised in the non-negative direction. The choice was between submission and defiance. His defiance arose from a mental conviction for which his other parts were not ready. The rule of evolution is not to exclude what you have exceeded which eliminates totality.
Suppose Siddhartha submitted to his father and the father put him through the ritual, his father would have outgrown the ritual in the measure his own readiness permitted. The father gave him permission to leave the house. Siddhartha was haunted by the father in him, when his son deserted him. Had he submitted himself to his father, at least, he would have fully outgrown his father then, instead of later, after 20 or 30 years. Had Siddhartha submitted to his father, not with an ignorant physical submission but with the knowledge that doctrines were of no value and his own conviction was not ripe to be acted upon, whatever he had realised in 40 years would have been abridged into four years and his own realisation would have been greater.
As his own father had to yield to Siddhartha, he had to give way to his son. Among the Samanas, he learnt austerities which according to Mother are meant for the child soul. From there he landed in life with Kamala, to exhaust the life of desires.
Desires can be lived and exhausted or given up as austerities. The desires of the vital and physical can be overcome by mental understanding. Siddhartha chose the second one.
Neither he nor his son were transformed. There was no question of transformation in those days. The Illustrious One, is the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism. He has attained enlightenment, as his peaceful demeanor and gentle, half-mocking smile show, and Siddhartha admires him deeply.
But Siddhartha does not believe that it is possible to attain enlightenment through teachers, doctrines, or disciplines, so he leaves Gotama and goes on his way. Govinda, however, becomes one of Gotama's followers, a monk. The beautiful courtesan from whom Siddhartha attempts to learn the pleasures of life. He comes to her filthy and poor, and she helps him to become a man of wealth, clothing, and earthly pleasures.
After realizing that he has become an ordinary man, just like the others in the town, he leaves Kamala to again search for salvation. She bears his son. While on a pilgrimage to Gotama's deathbed, she is bitten by a snake and dies in Siddhartha's arms. Kamala represented his desires, but she also represented his detachment.
That helped him to give up twenty years later. But the physical is more truly real. She conceives and the final discipline for Siddhartha came from the physical through his son. A rich, conventional merchant. When Siddhartha offers himself to earthly desires, Kamala tells him to make money and become rich by becoming an associate of Kamaswami.
Under the apprenticeship of Kamaswami, Siddhartha soon becomes a very rich man. Siddhartha is contemptuous of Kamaswami for lacking compassion and self-discipline, for living only for wealth and property.
Over time, however, Siddhartha becomes almost a replica of Kamaswami and his vices. A ferryman who has attained enlightenment by listening to the river. Like Gotama Buddha, he is a truly peaceful and happy man. Siddhartha first encounters him when he needs to cross the river, but has no money to pay for transport.
After Siddhartha leaves the town, leaving Kamala and Kamaswami, he again meets Vasudeva, attains enlightenment the same way, and becomes a ferryman too. Vasudeva goes into the woods and dies in the last but one chapter of the novel. Vasudeva listening to the river is seeing the Becoming as Force and absorbs its wisdom in the subtle plane. Also named Siddhartha, is the son of Siddhartha and Kamala. Siddhartha doesn't know of the son until he meets Kamala on her Buddhist pilgrimage.
After Kamala dies, little Siddhartha refuses to obey his father and eventually steals the ferryman's money and runs back to the town. The major theme in the novel is enlightenment. From the start of Siddhartha's journey, he seeks salvation. He joins the ascetics, visits Gotama, embraces his earthly desires, and finally communes with nature, all in an attempt to attain Nirvana. The novel also shows how the path to enlightenment cannot be conferred to another person because it is different for everyone and will likely never be achieved simply by listening to or obeying an enlightened one.
For words and teachings may describe the truth but are not the Truth itself; being concepts, they trap you, since enlightenment means release from concepts.
Siddhartha knows that he will not attain enlightenment by following Gotama. Siddhartha awakens from his sleep in the forest and contemplates the lives he has lived. He comes to the conclusion that every approach he has taken at life has lead him to a dead end. His quote refers to his past experiences, explaining the questionable reality man still ponders.
As he looks back on his experiences, he notes one significant conclusion about each. The knowledge he has before he leaves his home town is not his, it belongs to the community elders he debated with and his father. Siddhartha joins the samanas as a way to gain his own knowledge. Eventually, he comes to realize that the path to enlightenment may not constitute ridding himself of all belongings.
He decides to try the opposite teachings of Buddhism and accumulates wealth and possessions. My favourite quote from this book: 'What you search is not necessarily the same as what you find. When you let go of the searching, you start finding. My favorite book ever. I hope to attain the spiritual wisdom seen here in this book.
See all 32 questions about Siddhartha…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Siddhartha. Jun 22, Kemper rated it really liked it Shelves: , sky-cake , famous-books. After he meets Buddha, he finally gets tired of being broke-ass and homeless, and he goes into town where he makes a pile of money. This is good because everyone knows that engaging in capitalism is the only proper way to go through life.
As a bonus, he also meets a beautiful woman. Well, this hippie ends up living in a hut down by the river. Finally, Siddartha thinks that the river is god. Or something stupid like that. Give me one of them Lee Child novels any day over this hippie dippie crap. Just kidding. Actually, this is an elegant allegory about a guy going through different phases as he pursues a lifelong quest to rid himself of his ego so that he can know true peace and enlightenment.
View all comments. Aug 15, Stephen rated it it was amazing Shelves: religion-spirituality , literature , easton-press , life-changers , classics-european , classics , ebooks.
My apologies if this review reeks of "GUSHness. Beautifully written and a deeply personal story, Hesse has created the ultimate expression of the journey of self-discovery. The book details the story of Siddhartha, the young and brilliant son of a Brahmin in ancient India. I'm just saying!! He knows deep inside that there is something missing and decides to leave his father and his future and seek enlightenment.
Thus begins one of the truly exceptional stories in modern literature. First, to a group of ascetics who shun personal possessions and view the physical world as the source of all pain; 2.
Next to a beautiful courtesan who teaches Siddhartha the mysterious of physical love, to a world; 3. Third, to a wealthy trader who teaches Siddhartha about profit, trade and worldly pleasures; 4.
Then to a life of hedonistic excess in which Siddhartha eats, drinks, gambles and indulges in numerous sexual conquests in a very SinCityesque way Finally, back to an ascetic life, but one that embraces the world and everything in it as special and unique. Throughout the various stages of his journey, Siddhartha finds something of value in everyone he interacts with and each stage brings him closer to his ultimate goal.
Through elegant and deeply evocative writing, Hesse demonstrates, through Siddhartha's journey, the fundamental value of each and every person on Earth. Everyone has something special to contribute to the universe. Siddhartha's final realization of his goal of finding enlightenment is simply amazing and one that I can not recommend more strongly that everyone read.
I'm a U. I was raised Roman Catholic and spent most of my undergraduate and graduate academic life learning about western philosophy, history and literature. It is an amazing read but also a deeply personal one and I think that everyone will get something different out of reading it.
Hopefully it is something very, very positive. View all 35 comments. In life we all look for meaning, we all look for something to give us a purpose and, in essence, a reason to actually be alive. Nobody wants to get to the end of their journey and realise it was all for nothing, and that their days were utterly wasted.
So how do we find this meaning? Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error. Siddhartha followed the teachings of others and it granted him very little happiness. He meets Buddha, or a Buddha, and he realises that the only way he can achieve the same degree of serenity is to find it himself. So he takes his own path, albeit an indirect one, and finally awakens his mind into a sense of enlightenment. But, in order to do so, he must first realise the true state of emptiness.
And, of course, to understand emptiness one must first experience temporary fullness; thus, he walks into the world of the everyday man. He indulges in their pleasure, gains possessions and takes a lover. He forms attachments and begets a household of servants and wealth. Through experiencimg such things, he learns that they are shallow and transitory; they will never create the feeling of lasting happiness within his soul, so he walks out once more with the full realisation that peace can only come from one place: himself.
I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace. Suffering exists, suffering will always exist, and it is how we deal with this suffering that defines us: it is how we pick ourselves up afterwards not letting it ruin our lives, and those around us, that makes us stronger. In this Hesse capture something extremely difficult to put into words, which is something the novel frequently recognises.
How does one accurately define these vague concepts of belief? So we rely on allegories to teach us these ideals, to make us understand that happiness is not equitable with materialism, and to make us realise that seeking something too ardently may mean we miss it altogether.
Seeking the meaning of life is not the answer, living life, the life of peace and compassion, is. Siddhartha follows the vibrations of his soul, the sound of the river, and it takes him exactly where he needs to go.
As a student of Buddhism, as a struggling practitioner, I found this book extremely helpful. It cuts through all the rhetoric, the arguments and debates, and gets to the very heart of the matter itself.
This is a book I will carry with me through life; this is a book that has so much wisdom to impart, and now the third book to truly impact me individually. View all 22 comments. Book from Books - Siddhartha.
The book, Hesse's ninth novel, was written in German, in a simple, lyrical style. It was published in the U.
View all 16 comments. Dec 22, Sanjay Gautam rated it really liked it. It was the book I read it four years back. And to tell the truth I did not liked it much at the time. I thought this guy has written a book for western audience who are not familiar with the 'philosophy of karma and dharma', or rather, in general, the basic philosophy of India, who after reading it will realize something esoteric.
And so it seemed to me a book containing wisdom that didn't touched me. And I finished it with the verdict: contains wisdom, but lacks depth, boring at times, and do n It was the book I read it four years back. And I finished it with the verdict: contains wisdom, but lacks depth, boring at times, and do not grabs your heart, and is not extra-ordinary in any way.
But over the years I've come to understand that it is this ordinary-ness that which makes this work exceptional. It is the story of common man, just like you and me, who goes through the struggles of life.
He is a man who have the qualities that we all, common man, possess, such as: ambition, greed, possessiveness, lust, lying, and etc. And it was one day when I was pondering over the book I came to know that - it was Hermann Hesse's own life that inspired him to write Siddhartha. And it became clear to me: why he has written, the way it is written. Then it dawned on me that it was all realistic happenings that the book pointed and not something esoteric.
Now I understand, after many years, that Hesse has written from the point of view of a common man, not a protege like Buddha or Adi Shankaracharya. And it is in this light of 'the struggle of a lay man' that this book comes in all its glory. I mean in terms of wisdom, and not in terms of reading pleasure. And as the time is passing by I'm getting deeper and deeper into this book, and understanding it better.
Highly Recommended! May 26, J. By the latter part of the 19th Century, the colonial spread of European powers across the world was in full swing. The British ruled India and Australia and had gone to war with China to force opium on the population. Africa, South America, and the Philippines had been portioned out for Western rule and control of resources.
But tyranny does not travel only in one direction, from conqueror to subject. When Medieval European knights returned from the crusades, they brought with them mathematical p By the latter part of the 19th Century, the colonial spread of European powers across the world was in full swing. When Medieval European knights returned from the crusades, they brought with them mathematical principles , Greek and Roman texts , and thus was the European Renaissance kindled by the Light of Islam.
Africans were brought to America as slaves, but even being scattered and mistreated did not prevent them from changing the culture, gifting us with blues, jazz, and African-descended words like 'funk', 'mojo', 'boogie', and 'cool'.
Many Europeans grew obsessed with these foreign religions, finding in them both universal truths of human existence and completely new modes of thought.
Organizations like the Theosophical Society were formed to explore these religions--it was all the rage. But there was a problem: they got almost all of it wrong.
A Frenchman could spend his entire life learning the intricacies of Greek and Hebrew in order to study Catholicism--its origins, philosophies, schisms, heresies, and history--and still find that, in the end, there is much he does not know, and that he'd made many errors along the way.
This, despite the fact that his culture is already steeped in it, he can go and speak to one of hundreds of experts any time he has a question, and has access to a complete library of texts on the subject written in his own language, and by people of a similar culture.
Now, imagine our 19th Century Gascon trying to do the same thing with Buddhism, where not only the original texts on the subject but the histories and analyses are in not merely a foreign language, but a completely different language branch, where the experts are from a different culture and speak a different language, and where the complexity and depth of history are just as vast.
It's no wonder that the Theosophists and similar groups ended up with garbled, mistranslated, simplified versions that combined opposing schools of thought haphazardly. As an old philosophy professor of mine once said: "You can learn a great deal about German Protestantism from reading Siddhartha , but almost nothing about Buddhism".
What ultimately emerged from the Theosophist movement was not a branch of Western Buddhism, but the 'New Age Movement': a grab bag of the same old Western ideas dressed up as mystical Oriental wisdom. Indeed, the central idea of the inane self-help book 'The Secret' and of Siddhartha are the same: the 'Law of Attraction' , which is not a Buddhist principle. Like most of Hesse's work, it belongs in the 'Spiritual Self-Help' section, where vague handwaving and knowing looks are held in higher esteem than thought or insight.
It's the same nonspecific mysticism he shows us in The Journey To The East and The Glass Bead Game , where the benefits of wisdom are indistinguishable from the symptoms of profound dementia. If you want to understand Buddhism, start somewhere else, because you'd just have to unlearn all of Hesse's incorrect arguments and definitions. Happily, we have come a long way since Hesse's time, with experts and commentaries in many different languages available to the avid student. But, if you'd like to see someone try to explain the principles of Lutheranism using only misused Hindu terms, this may be the book for you.
View all 44 comments. The main wrong idea I had about this novel--which had quite a bit to do with it taking so long for me to get around to reading it--is that it's specifically about the Buddha. I don't have to explain the reason for that misconception, right?
Cool, moving on. I thought maybe it was like a biography or some sort of weird Hessian alt-history or, well Drugs, drink, gambling, greed, and fornication ensue for years. And years. Some of you may be familiar with the place he eventually finds himself: remorse, self-hatred, what-if's, what if not's, physical illness, years of wasted time, obsessive reflection i.
Was there still any kind of filth he had not soiled himself with, a sin or foolish act he had not committed, a dreariness of the soul he had not brought upon himself? Was it still at all possible to be alive? A dark place, no doubt. Unfortunately, this is the point where the book I was at first mildly bored with and then fully engaged in suddenly became just really fucking irritating.
Hesse takes the word-slash-concept "Om" and uses it as the ultimate--and probably shortest named--deus ex machina of all time in my personal brain library's dusty archives.
After spending unnumbered decades living like Robery Downey Sheen, our protagonist sits by a river for, I dunno, a couple of minutes reciting "Om" before it just miraculously all comes back to him and he's all enlightened and at peace again and shit this is not even remotely the end of the novel, so please don't spoiler-mark me out of spite.
So wait, what? Sure, I am not enlightened and I know I sound like a total wimp right now, especially compared to one so self-disciplined as a monk-type, but I'd say his story of basically spending half a lifetime dipped in chocolately booze pools with naked bodies slithering all around him while he passed the glass n' rolled up dollar bill around gives new meaning to the phrase "falling off the wagon.
Anyway, my point is that everything just happened so fast and I wasn't ready. All this nitpicking makes it sound like I didn't like the book, even though I pretty much did. Trite as the whole "setting free the bird" image was as in, one character literally sets free a bird on the day her lover decides to leave her because it's symbolic , my heartstrings did play a purdy song when Siddhartha and his gal split ways, and everything that happened after the whole Om Affair did snap me back into the story.
I particularly dug the ending, as there was ambiguity in a lot of the right places, and the very last scene was quite lovely. Read it, young me. Read it right after you get the almanac back from Biff. Oh, and speaking of the almanac, you're definitely gonna want to hold on to that thing because, honey, let me tell you a little something about the world economy in the early 21st century View all 31 comments.
Jul 03, Nandakishore Mridula rated it really liked it. Most religions know of it as "Enlightenment" - when the individual transcends himself and sees himself as one with the ultimate reality. It can be theistic the Aham Brahma Asmi - "I am the Brahman" or Tat Tvam Asi - "Thou Art That" of Hinduism or atheistic the Buddhist Nirvana, based on the Anatman - "non-soul" ; but the person who achieves it, according to all sources, is caught up in profound rapture. To reach this stage, one has to tread an arduous path.
Carl Gustav Jung called the process Most religions know of it as "Enlightenment" - when the individual transcends himself and sees himself as one with the ultimate reality. Carl Gustav Jung called the process "individuation": Joseph Campbell called it "the hero's journey". Herman Hesse's eponymous protagonist of Siddhartha is a man who embarks on this enterprise. Siddhartha, the handsome Brahmin youth who apparently has everything, is dissatisfied with life: with the whole pointlessness of it.
He leaves home with his friend Govinda and joins a group of ascetics the Samanas who have made renunciation a way of life. However, the true seeker he is, Siddhartha finds that simple renunciation does not work for him: he joins the Buddha in pursuit of enlightenment. However, he soon understands that whatever knowledge he must possess, must be experiential. Leaving Govinda to become a Buddhist ascetic, Siddhartha buries himself in the sensual world across the river, where Kamala the courtesan trains him up in the pleasures of the flesh and Kamaswami the merchant instructs him in the secrets of commerce.
Siddhartha soon tires of these too: he returns to the river in penury not knowing that his child is growing within Kamala , and is taken up by the aged boatman Vasudeva as a helper. Here, ferrying people across the river, Siddhartha finally attains enlightenment - not from a great teacher, not from years of penanace and not even from the kindly Vasudeva even though he points the way - but from the river. Kamala's death and his son's abandonment of the stranger father completes his education, as distress turns to peace.
Then it's time for Vasudeva, the mentor, to disappear - leaving his student alone with the river. What the river told Siddhartha The river flows, and becomes one with the ocean. The vapour from the ocean form into clouds, and descend on the mountains, becoming the river. The river keeps on flowing: it is inconstant, ever-renewing, never the same - yet it is eternal. The river flows, and the river is.
On its surface, you can see the faces of all your loved ones: whether alive, dead or yet to be born. In the roar of the river, if you listen carefully, you can hear the sacred AUM - the first syllable outward, the second one inward, the third one silence Highly recommended. View all 28 comments. Apr 15, Himanshu rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: Those looking for a quick spiritual tour. Shelves: unforgettables , reviewed , to-re-read.
Has it ever happened to you that you are standing, facing a magnificent, breathtaking view, in solitude, and a strong wind hits you in the face? You try to stay still, with eyes closed and then an involuntary smile comes across your face? This book was like that.
Jul 14, Greta rated it it was ok Shelves: best-reviews , classics. His main character is Siddhartha, who searches for total spiritual enlightenment. Doing so he experiments with different teachers and religions, as well as material striving, to approach Nirvana. When those teachings prove unsatisfactory, he turns his search inwards, achieving total spiritual understanding. Main Message The main topic of this allegory is the search for spiritual enlightenment, inner guidance and the wisdom of indirection.
Siddhartha has a fundamental desire to understand his life through spirituality and explores different philosophies to reach the Nirvana. He is willing to abandon the path of the Brahmins priests for the path of the Samanas ascetics , to leave the Samanas for Gotama Buddhas , and then to make a radical departure from spiritual teachers and search in the material world and wealth.
He fully lives in all of those philosophies for a while, but everything proofs unsatisfactory. Siddhartha obeys and leaves the woman.
In the next town, Siddhartha sees another beautiful woman being carried on a chair by her servants. He vows that he will meet her and learns from people in town that she is a courtesan who is named Kamala. Siddhartha meets the woman and asks her to teach him about the art of love. Kamala insists that she will only do this if he manages to make himself more presentable and obtains some money so that he can buy her gifts. Wondering where he might acquire these things, Siddhartha asks Kamala and she, in turn, asks him what skills he has.
He answers that his only skills are waiting, thinking and fasting. Kamala gives him a kiss and tells him to see the merchant Kamaswami for a job.
When Kamaswami learns that Siddhartha can at least read and write he offers him a job. Siddhartha lives with the merchant in his house and begins to learn about business by day and visit Kamala to learn about love by night. He believes that the value and meaning of life lie in the time with Kamala and not in his work with Kamaswami.
Siddhartha begins to become somewhat of a successful merchant but the work interests him little and he mostly lives for his time with Kamala.
He realizes that there is something that separates him from Kamaswami, although he does like the man. Siddhartha feels that it is his time living as a Samana that has done this and that it has affected all of his relationships with other people. He feels that he has a distance from his emotions that other people do not and feels that this indicates that his true self is not really there for his daily activities. He feels that his self only really comes out when he is with Kamala and admits that she knows him better than anyone else in his life ever has.
With her he regularly discusses the Buddha and enlightenment. The longer Siddhartha spends in the town, the farther he gets from what he feels is his mission in life. His inner voice begins to get drowned out and he can hardly hear it. Siddhartha wonders if he is still a Samana at heart and if his frequent discussions of Buddha indicate this.
He begins to gamble often, initially enjoying it because he feels that it is something of a protest against being rich but the excitement of winning soon overtakes him and he bets on higher and higher stakes until he is addicted. One night Siddhartha notices that Kamala is starting to age and this sets off his own deep-seated fear of mortality. He tries to forget this by dancing and drinking wine all night but it only makes him sick and more desperate.
Siddhartha takes this as a sign that he has discarded everything valuable that existed in himself and begins to once again reflect on his life. He discovers that he is very tired of his current hedonistic life style and of all of his possessions. With no explanation, he leaves town, taking nothing with him. Kamala is not surprised by his departure but is still saddened. She releases her songbird and closes up her house to visitors.
Siddhartha returns to the river that he crossed to consider his life. Siddhartha realizes that he should not commit suicide but still feels as though his life has been wretched and falls asleep on the bank of the river under the stars.
The next morning he wakes to a man standing over him and realizes that it is his old friend, Govinda. Govinda does not recognize Siddhartha initially because the other man is dressed like a rich man. When he does, the two friends chat about their lives for a while before Govinda must return to the Buddha.
After he leaves, Siddhartha sits by the river, feeling that although he almost killed himself, experiencing that depth of despair was good for him. He must let all of his identities die so that he may find his ultimate true self. Soon, the Ferryman that brought Siddhartha across the river years earlier returns and Siddhartha tells him all about the amazing life he has been leading.
The Ferryman, Vasuveda, asks Siddhartha if he would like to live with him. Many years later, Siddhartha hears that Gautama is dying. Nearby, Kamala hears the same news and decides to travel with her son to be with the Buddha as he dies. As they are traveling through the forest, Kamala is bitten by a snake and cries for help. Vesuveda runs to her aid and brings her back to his hut. Siddhartha recognizes her immediately and Kamala introduces him to his son. She realizes that Siddhartha has finally found the peace he was seeking and soon dies.
Siddhartha keeps his young son with him although the boy refuses to accept that Siddhartha is his father and act appropriately. Siddhartha does not want his son to fall victim to the town in the same way he did years earlier. However, soon the boy runs away. The pain of losing his son is almost too much to bear for Siddhartha. He eventually sets off one day to find the boy but is stopped by what he thinks is the sound of the river laughing at him.
He sees an image of his own father, whom he had left many years earlier, in the river and turns back to the house. Upon hearing this story, Vesuveda brings Siddhartha back to the river and instructs him to listen again. He realizes that he has, at long last found enlightenment and peace. Vasuveda soon dies and Siddhartha realizes that this means that his friend has joined the unity of all creatures.
Siddhartha remains as a Ferryman and comes to be known as a sage to the surrounding area. Many years later, Govinda visits him in search of his sage wisdom. Govinda tells Siddhartha that he has still not found the enlightenment that he was looking for and Siddhartha tells him that he is putting too much effort into the search. The men spend the night talking and the next day, Govinda asks Siddhartha for something to help him on his path.
Siddhartha instructs his friend to kiss his forehead and when Govinda does this he sees visions of timelessness and unity. Govinda is so overwhelmed with joy that he falls to his knees.
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