The Temptation Of Mara In Siddhartha

Meditating in the forest for six years he realized that he was becoming close to full enlightenment. Siddhartha found another spot to complete his meditation under the Bodhi Tree where he wouldn’t leave until he achieved his enlightenment. While in his deep state meditation Devaputra Mara the chief of all demons tried to stop him from achieving his goal by sending nightmarish vision to him to disturb him. With none of these tactics working Mara even tried luring him away with beautiful girls, but nonetheless Siddhartha wouldn’t break his concentration. Withstanding the chief of demons, he received the name Conqueror Buddha in which the next day of meditation he could become Buddha (“About Buddha”).

As with the Brahmins, Siddhartha’s experience with the Samanas is not a fulfilling one. Hesse writes, “he slipped out of his Self in a thousand different forms. He was animal, carcass, stone, wood, water, and each time he reawakened” (Pg-15). Siddhartha learned a great deal from the Samanas, yet he was still unable to reach enlightenment. During his time with the Samanas, Siddhartha never saw or heard of a single person achieving enlightenment. Feeling disillusioned with the teachings of others, Siddhartha decided to leave the Samanas, and seek out the venerable Buddha. Siddhartha seeks out the Buddha and hears his sermon, but he ultimately decides to seek his own path to enlightenment. In leaving the Buddha, Siddhartha begins to follow a Buddhist path. Siddhartha says, “But there is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the Illustrious One himself experienced he alone among hundreds of thousands" (Pg-34). In this part of his journey, Siddhartha realizes that no one can teach him how to achieve enlightenment. As Gautama did before him, Siddhartha heads out to find his own path to enlightenment.

With every experience, there is a lesson learned. In Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, as the main character Siddhartha journeys through life, each experience he encounters teaches him a different aspect of the value of life. Through his relationship with Kamala he learns the importance of love, when he tries to commit suicide he realizes the beauty of life, and when he lives with the ferryman he is taught to listen and ultimately achieve the end goal to life, Nirvana.

enlightenment after he had given up looking for it. Siddhartha is only able to find his

“What could I say to you that would be of value except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.” (113) Siddhartha, a book written by Hermann Hesse, is about this young boy who throughout the book grows to an old man who, throughout his journey, seeks to attain enlightenment. He comes from a Brahmin family and later decides to become a samana and lives in the woods with his “shadow”,Govinda. Siddhartha is distracted with obstacles throughout his life and ultimately finds a way to conquer them.

There have been many teachers in one’s lifetime, some more important than others. These teachers and instructors affect different people in different ways, and lessons are learned that are important to prepare for real life situations. In the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, a young Brahmin named Siddhartha is not content with his current spiritual self. Siddhartha is directed to spiritual enlightenment and Nirvana because of his guidance and teaching from Kamala, Kamaswami, and Vasudeva.

Yet nothing distracted Siddhartha from his journey and after 49 days Siddhartha was transformed into the Buddha, but Mara had one more temptation for Buddha. Mara try to get Buddha not to bother teaching others the way to enlightenment because he had already reached nirvana and “why bother to play the idiot before an uncomprehending audience?” Buddha’s reply was that there would be some that would understand and thus went to teach the path to enlightenment. When Buddha went to preach he taught one the devoid of authority, devoid of ritual, skirted speculation, intense self-effort, and to devoid of the supernatural. All of these aspects have been implanted in the formation of the four noble truths.

The two boys leave the town to join the Samanas, a group of people who believe that spiritual enlightenment comes with the rejection of body and all other needs. The boys quickly realize that their ideas of the group are very different, Govinda loves the way that improvements that he has gained spiritually and morally. While Siddhartha has yet to reach the spiritual enlightenment that he wishes to achieve. “Siddhartha learned a great deal from the Samanas; he learned many ways of losing the Self. He traveled along the path of self-denial through pain, through voluntary suffering and conquering of pain, through hunger, thirst and fatigue. He traveled the way of self-denial through meditation, through the emptying of the mind through all images. Along these and other paths did he learn to travel. He lost his Self a thousand

After three years, Siddhartha realizes that he is not progressing toward his goal. He had learned all the Samanas could teach, and "he lost himself a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it" (15-16). Siddhartha discovers this was not the path he sought; escaping from one's Self did not bring one to salvation. His wisdom grew when he accepted there was another path and this short escape from Self is experienced by others in a quite different way such as people who drink numbing their senses like he did with the Samanas. He sees that in truth, there is no learning and that his questioning and thirst for knowledge could not be satisfied by teaching. Seeking another path, Siddhartha hears of a Buddha named Gotama, and with Govinda, who also chooses to leave, ventures to see him.

He also said “One can learn much from a river,” (Hesse --). The river in his extended metaphor represents one’s past self. Siddhartha, although reborn, learns from his past encounters and from himself. Buddhism is a religion based off relieving Dukkha, which is outside happiness and temporary emotion. Buddhists try to find happiness from within, which is why it is known as a selfish religion, but it is also about finding happiness for others to relieve guilt and the idea of Karma, every action and a reaction.

Seeking more knowledge, and a more competent teacher, Siddhartha follows rumors of the holy one straight to his next overseer, Gotama. When Siddhartha meets the Holy One, he begins to describe his feelings toward the peaceful man. “Never before, Siddhartha had venerated a person so much, never before he had loved a person as much as this one.” He follows Gotama for a considerable time before he becomes frustrated with his lack of progress. He leaves Govinda and Gotama, deciding that the wisdom he seeks cannot be taught, and must be experienced firsthand.

Inside of the Gautama faction in India was an honorable positioning man by the name of Siddhartha. By conventional story, Siddhartha had ended up troubled by the greater part of the anguish around him. So he surrendered his family and all his material solaces of life and set out on an existence of pondering. It was amid a period in his voyages when he was near the brink of death that he sat underneath an ecclesiastical tree and pledged not to move from the spot until Enlightenment had been acquired. It was then that Siddhartha was known to have accomplished Enlightenment. He was then referred to as "Buddha, The Enlighten One” and not to long after, his enlightenment was organized into the "Four Great Truths."

Siddhartha planned to overwhelm his senses, in which he plans to indulge in everything. Soon, Siddhartha becomes rich; yet “at times he heard within him a soft, gentle voice, which reminded him quietly, complained quietly, so that he could hardly hear it” (Hesse, 57). Despite vowing to listen to his inner voice (a synonym for an inner guide), he finds himself ignoring it, and drifting back into the pain and suffering in which he wanted to escape. He had begun to believe that the inner voice was dead, and that he was the cause of it. After Siddhartha decided to listen to his inner voice, Siddhartha felt so distressed, he realized “…that the game was finished, that he could play it no longer” (Hesse, 68). The result of Siddhartha’s obliquity concerning the inner voice was the feelings of utter despair, so powerful that he even considered committing suicide. He knew that the rich lifestyle and external teacher was not compatible with him, and had left his home to wander the forests again. Though Kamaswami taught Siddhartha many new skills, he was a failure at teaching Siddhartha how to achieve Nirvana. Thus, Kamaswami became the equivalent of an impediment to the goal in the eyes of

Buddhism’s founder was a man named Siddhartha Gautama, meaning “one who realized his goal.” Buddhists believe that when Siddhartha’s mother, Maha, was conceived she had a dream involving a white elephant carrying a lotus flower. She interpreted the dream to mean that her son would grow up to become a great spiritual leader. Just a week after Siddhartha was born, his mother died. Upon her death, he lived with his wealthy aunt and his father on a large estate. As Siddhartha grew up, his father kept him away from all suffering and anguish of the world. Unlike many of his peers, he was well educated and free from the world’s sorrows.

Siddhartha, a classic literature novel written by Hermann Hesse, focuses on Siddhartha’s spiritual journey during the Gautama Buddha time period. Siddhartha’s spiritual journey is mainly to achieve his goal to reach enlightenment or nirvana. The novel also offers a number of issues on relationships, desire, the path to enlightenment, etc. He also mentions that wisdom cannot be taught, which I agree with, since wisdom can developed but not taught, I also will compare the teaching of knowledge and the teaching of wisdom.