Siddhartha - 晉羚莉

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

The novel is based on a historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, who lived 25 centuries ago in northern India. He was born into wealth and privilege, but chose to relinquish the luxurious palace life and seek enlightenment. Buddhism is both a philosophical and religious teaching in India. In the novel, by Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha is known as the “Illustrious One.” He is a well-known enlightener that all people admired. His countenance is fulfilled with intellectual knowledge of wisdom and his inner self is possessed with invulnerable peace.

Siddhartha was a young priestly caste fellow with high vocation and status. He was enclosed with features of intellects, fervent thoughts, and strong wills in his beliefs of karma and the Four Noble Truth in Buddhism. In the novel, Siddhartha is described as ‘strong, handsome man with lofty brow and king like eyes.’ The author uses the adjective modifiers to describe his high standard of status and reputation in people’s eyes. However, with his entire well being, Siddhartha is not pleased with the worldly life he owns. He thirsts for more knowledge of wisdom to improve his maturity. He wants to be enlightened with the teaching of wisdoms from Buddhism. There are a variety of wealthy and high status people in a society, often times, they feel that money does not own everything in this world such as health and love. This is when people start to believe in religion and want to find the true meaning of existence in life.

Siddhartha’s dissatisfied life is full of restlessness; he does not feel valued for his existence in the world, so his soul wonders for true meaning of reality. The “seeds of discontent” lies in his inner soul. Thus, he wishes to start a self-denial journey to search for his innermost beliefs. The usage of figurative language as in a metaphoric content is applied when Siddhartha’s “seeds to discontent” is compared to his unsatisfying prosperous life. I believe the “seeds of discontent” directly links to the materialistic society, in which the discontentment is the feeling of insecurity and loneliness of people. Meanwhile, as their desires of greed are built up, they start to shop for goods such as bags, clothing, luxurious car, jewelries, and etc in order to fulfill and mend our holes of insecurity. In order to escape from the money-oriented world, some people may choose to meditate and join religious practices to help them understand the real purposes of being in this world.

In the novel, Siddhartha’s insatiable thirst for knowledge has led him to join the ascetics. Siddhartha discovers that ‘the world tasted bitter, life was pain,’ in which his only way to alleviate pain is to become ‘empty.’ Siddhartha wants to ‘let the self die’ in order to experience purity. Both ‘empty’ and ‘let the self die’ imply Siddhartha’s wish for absence of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure, and sorrow. By taking the path of self-denial, the mind will be appeased. Agonies will be absent when Siddhartha reaches the Nirvana. Many Buddhism practices in modern days such as mindfulness meditation has allowed us to free from all desires, wishes, and pleasures. It is a palliative way to release pain, agony and suffering in life. Other religious practices like community services projects have helped us realize how fortunate we are. By looking at an abundance of unfortunate people in this world, we learn to cherish and appreciate things and people around us. Being able to give is not what everyone can do; therefore we should feel good about having the chance to help.

When the soul and the religion overlap with each other, the inner self can experience values for life. “Your soul is the whole world,” it is vital quote that signifies the importance of connection between our internality and the world. The author creates this spiritual effect of the soul to encourage Siddhartha to be enlightened and make influences to the world. Once the soul and the self has reach Nirvana with absence of worries and sufferings, Siddhartha will be able to realize that the social issues like poverty and disasters are caused by the desires’ from every individual in the community. If we can reduce our desires, we can prevent countless social issues and natural disasters.