This is a quick summary and analysis of Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse.
This is a story about a man named Siddhartha
who wants to find enlightenment as a monk.
He leaves his family and travels with his
friend, Govinda, to learn from samanas, or
wise monks, who are living in the forest.
Over time, Siddhartha dislikes the teachings
and teachers and wants to learn more on his
own, so he leaves behind Govinda, who stays
back to learn from Gautama, the Buddha.
Siddhartha finds his way into a town and meets
Kamala, a beautiful woman.
He is attracted to her, but she wants a man
who is wealthy.
Because he knows nothing of business, Siddhartha
seeks the help of a local merchant, who trains
him.
Soon, Siddhartha gains wealth and wins over
Kamala.
However, Siddhartha loses his passion to find
enlightenment and indulges himself in gambling,
possessions, and women.
He realizes that he has strayed from his original
path towards enlightenment and gives all of
his possessions away, leaving Kamala behind
with a son.
Siddhartha encounters a ferryman named Vasudeva,
who seems to have found peace and enlightenment
on the river.
Siddhartha stays with him and he learns to
find inner peace.
One day, Siddhartha encounters Kamala and
her son, Siddhartha, near the river.
Kamala gets bitten by a snake and dies, leaving
the boy with Siddhartha to raise.
However, the boy runs away and Siddhartha
doesn’t know what to do.
After Vasudeva leaves, Siddhartha stays as
a ferryman and is visited by Govinda.
In the end, Siddhartha has found enlightenment
and shares a glimpse of it with Govinda.
As always a lot can be said about this story,
but what draws my interest and attention is
the idea of the self needing to die to progress
growth.
And this has nothing to do with suicide, but
rather a dying of character within ourselves,
which then pushes us to change and become
the person we are trying to become.
Siddhartha realizes that in order for him
to fully achieve enlightenment, he would need
to forget the many lessons he learned as he
started as a samanas.
And as a way of unlearning those ways, he
had to kill his former self and all of the
ways of thinking that went with that self.
This was accomplished when he became a merchant
and discovered greed.
Think of it this way.
There’s a caterpillar and then a butterfly.
In order for the caterpillar to become a butterfly,
it has to kill the part of itself that is
a caterpillar and becomes something different,
something that is unrecognizable, which is
the cocoon or pupa.
And when the caterpillar ceases to be a caterpillar,
it emerges and is now something totally different,
a butterfly.
And as a butterfly, it doesn’t think the
same as the caterpillar.
It is something completely new.
And so in this same way, for a lot of us,
we need our former selves to die in order
to become something greater, or at least something
different.
For Siddhartha, it took him his entire life
to realize this.
That what he was chasing, which was enlightenment,
could never be attained in the state that
he was in.
He could only attain it after he had experienced
more of life and ultimately became a different
person.
So, let me know what you think of the story
in the comments below.
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