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Herman Hesse's Siddhartha

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Have you ever felt like you were lost in the world? If you have you may be able to relate to Siddhartha. Siddhartha is a character from Herman Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha”. It is about a young boy named Siddhartha to is trying to find himself by taking many paths to achieve his goal of Enlightenment. Many of these groups (Brahmins, Samanas, and Buddhist monks) were said to have you reach Enlightenment but no one who went through the full training achieved Enlightenment. Siddhartha believed that someone couldn't be taught Enlightenment but instead you had to achieve the experiences that come with being Enlightened, just like the Buddha. Some of these experiences can be falling in love, losing someone,and having many different setbacks. After leaving the Samanas, Siddhartha embarked on a journey to find the Buddha. He had heard rumors of the Buddha coming to a town near him and …show more content…

Siddhartha now felt as if he was reborn and saw the world through a child’s eye.He was also beginning the indulge in worldly experiences such as looking at the beautiful flowers, seeing different kinds of animals, and even having sex. Hesse describes Siddhartha’s first experience of sex as this, “Looking up he saw her face smiling, full of desire and her half closed eyes pleading with longing. Siddhartha also felt the longing and the stir of sex in him; but he had never yet touched a women…” (Hesse 41-42). Siddhartha eventually leaves this women heads towards the town again where he meets Kamala, a beautiful woman with lips like a freshly cut fig. After his first encounter with the lovely Kamala, he would stay with her and impregnate her. Having sex, and falling in love were some of the flaws that Siddhartha had saw in the Buddha’s teachings. These were worldly experiences that the Buddha, or any other teacher, could not supply Siddhartha with and it would led to Siddhartha never becoming

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