Siddhartha’s Road to Enlightenment free essay sample

Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, is a novel about a man’s journey to finding his inner self, to be enlightened. Siddhartha was born a Brahmin, the highest of the caste system in Hinduism, but he felt that he had to find his own path to enlightenment. As a Brahmin, he was expected to reach Nirvana. He joined the Samanas, listened to the Buddha, lost himself in riches and pleasures, and found himself again at the brink of suicide. Siddhartha finds himself when he looks into the river he is about to jump in. The river awakens him. The novel centers on Siddhartha’s journey through experiencing the extremes of deprivation and excess and leads the reader to understand how he found peace. Hermann Hesse uses the river symbolically to represent Siddhartha’s final understanding of the meaning of life; he lived through the extremes and found the middle path, which put him at peace with himself. We will write a custom essay sample on Siddhartha’s Road to Enlightenment or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Through Siddhartha’s journey, he experienced the extremes in order to find the middle path. One of the extremes he went through was depriving himself of all desires and pleasures. Siddhartha became a Samana, which are groups of people who roam around trying to attain non-attachment. This represents one of the extreme experiences because Siddhartha deprived himself of everything in order to reach non-attachment because he tried to be at peace at with himself by getting rid of suffering and desires. â€Å"’Well, Govinda, are we on the right road? Are we gaining any knowledge? Are we approaching salvation? Or are we perhaps going in circle – we who thought to escape from the cycle? ’† (17-18). Siddhartha is trying hard to get to enlightenment so he goes to extremes and joins the Samana’s to get rid of his desires. Siddhartha wants to find his way to enlightenment so he can live in peace. He wants to break the cycle of Samsara and reach Nirvana. Siddhartha is starting to see that the way of the Samana’s might not take him to enlightenment as quick as he had hoped. He wants to get rid of his desires so he can be free minded and not have suffering. Being a Samana made him grow impatient and desired to be at peace with himself. Siddhartha learns from being a Samana to fast, wait, and think. He uses these tools to help him come closer to conquering his inner Self and reaching Nirvana. Siddhartha crosses a river, physically and spiritually. He leaves his past life of a Samana to be a Brahmin again and spoil himself in riches and pleasures. He crosses the river into a town where he meets people who help him become a merchant. He left one extreme for another extreme. Another extreme he had to experience to be able to find the middle path is physical pleasures and desires. He loses his state of being in riches and pleasures. â€Å"†¦the world and inertia creep into Siddhartha’s soul; it slowly filled his soul, made it heavy, made it tired, sent it to sleep. But on the other hand his senses became more awakened, they learned a great deal, experienced a great deal. (Page 76-77). Siddhartha left being a Samana and became rich, in wealth and in desires. He started to suffer, almost to the brink of suicide. Siddhartha forgot a little about trying to be at peace with himself and instead started doing the polar opposite of what he did as a Samana. Siddhartha learned to work with business affairs, to use his power ove r people, to wear rich clothes, to smell nice and he learned how to eat rich and sweet foods. Siddhartha became irritable; he started to feel the suffering that came with all his desires and pleasures. From this extreme experience his senses awoke after being suppressed when he was a Samana. His new use for his senses helped him to become awakened and find the middle path. After being through two extremes, he sat by a river, the same river he had crossed to become a Brahmin again, and he awakened. He felt himself be born again; he became a new Siddhartha. Siddhartha, overcome with suffering, leaves the town and goes stumbling through the forest. He comes across the river and starts thinking of suicide. As he is staring into the water he starts to hear, from deep inside of himself, the word â€Å"Om. The word opens his eyes to the world again and he remembers every thing that he learned from his experiences. â€Å"Then from a remote part of his soul, from the past of his tired life, he heard a sound†¦ †¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Om,’ he pronounced inwardly, and he was conscious of Brahman, of the indestructibleness of life; he remembered all that he had forgotten, all that was divi ne. † (89-90). Siddhartha was lost, th en found his way. He realized that his wish to find peace would not happen by destroying his body. He realized that all the despair and disillusionment had not brought him closer to finding peace. Siddhartha realizes that in order to be at peace and to find enlightenment he couldn’t do it by doing either one of the extremes but by using the skills and tools he learned from his experiences. By using the things he learned he could go right in the middle of the two extremes and still be able to find enlightenment. Siddhartha had just found the middle path, the shortcut to be at peace. Hermann Hesse uses the symbolism of the river, and the way Siddhartha crosses it, to represent Siddhartha’s final understanding of the meaning of life. On one side of the river, Siddhartha is a Samana and learns to fast, wait, and to think. On the other side of the river he loses him self in physical pleasures, desires and suffering, but he awakens his senses again. Using the experiences and his newfound tools he created him self a middle path between the extremes and a shortcut to finding enlightenment. I don’t think Siddhartha could have found the middle path and enlightenment with out the experiences he went through. Siddhartha’s journey resulted in enlightenment and it shows that your experiences in life shape who you are as a person.