The Quest of Self Understanding in the Novel Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

The quest for self-understanding is a long, enduring journey, in Siddhartha, an Indian novel by Herman Hesse, a young Brahmin goes on a quest to find Atman, one’s individual self. This Brahmin, Siddhartha, lived with other Brahmins and absorbed much of their knowledge throughout his childhood the Brahmin lifestyle, a highly revered priestly class in India, doesn’t satisfy Siddhartha‘s craving for learning. Siddhartha’s quest to find an understanding of himself leads him down the paths of the Samana, the merchant, and the ferryman.

In his quest to discover himself, Siddhartha leaves the Brahmins and joins the Samanas. The Samanas are a group of ascetics who live in the forest and give up all of their possessions in order to search for Atman, the individual self or soul Siddhartha joins the Samanas because he wants to practice self-denial and self-deprivation to get rid of his desires in order to understand his spiritual self.

Siddhartha has one single goal; he wants “to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow 7 to let the Self die.

” While with the Samanas, Siddhartha goes through many different methods and experiences in order to find Atman. Siddhartha fasts gives away his possessions and neglects his physical self to the point of self-torture. He stands in the sun with pain and thirst, and he crouches among the thorns, giving him many cuts and ulcers. At the end of Siddhartha‘s three-year period with the Samanas, he rejects them with the Samanas, he gets rid of his physical desires, but they always come back to him.

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He wants to conquer himself and find nirvana instead of experiencing these short periods of temporary escape, but he realizes that the Samanas can’t help him achieve nirvana, so he abandons this lifestyle.

After leaving the Samanas, Siddhartha continues on his search to find Atman by going to the city and becoming a merchant Siddhartha realizes that torturing himself was not the answer to conquering himself and teachers cannot help him because he has to achieve nirvana through his own experiences, not through others‘ teachings. Siddhartha plans to practice self-indulgence and self—gratification in order to better understand Atman. Siddhartha becomes a merchant in order to raise money so that he can fulfill his physical desires and learn sensual pleasures from Kamala, a courtesan, Siddhartha meets many people as a merchant feels superior to the ordinary person because he regards his/her desires as trivial. Siddhartha thinks that this lifestyle is a strange path, and “that he was doing things that were only a game, but that real life was flowing past him and did not touch him.”

After about twenty years of living as a merchant, Siddhartha changes, he starts to care for possessions and riches, begins to eat carefully prepared meals, and becomes lazy and impatient. The merchant life makes Siddhartha like the ordinary man, because he is now concerned with matters that would never bother a Samaria. Siddhartha now feels that he isn‘t superior to others, and is disgusted at himself for giving in to the greedy merchant lifestyle. Siddhartha dreams about Kamala‘s songbird dying and he believes that it symbolizes his losing his inner voice, or his conscience. Believing that he is on a destructive path and that he has lost his voice, Siddhartha decides to leave all of his possessions, and the merchant life behind him in an attempt to end his sinful life. After realizing that his arrogance has died while he was a merchant, Siddhartha decides to become a ferryman Siddhartha contemplates suicide near the river next to the city, but he hears OM (the sacred syllable representing the affirmation of the universe, or “perfection”).

He realizes that he is still on his quest then, Siddhartha becomes a ferryman because he wants to listen and learn from the rivers During this lifestyle, he sits next to the river for long periods during the day, listening to it. He finds that time isn’t real through deep thought, Siddhartha figures out that the river flows continuously throughout the source, middle, and mouth of the river. The river is similar to his life stages, in that “Siddhartha’s previous lives were not in the past, and his death and return to Brahman are not in the future” Siddhartha’s past present and future are all the same and come together to make himself. By listening to the river, Siddhartha also learns that every voice and all experiences have value and that there is not one way to find nirvana because all experiences come together into a harmonic voice, OMi.

He knows that everything is good he figures this because if something exists it is part of Brahma if it is part of Brahman, it is good. Siddhartha finally ends his quest by listening to the river very closely. He hears thousands of voices and recognizes the unity of all voices, all experiences, and all people. This understanding of the unity of all things helps him to understand himself, finishing his long journey Siddhartha‘s journey helps him find Atman and reach nirvana leading him down the paths of the Samana, the merchant, and the ferryman. Through the Samanas, he realized that he could not learn through the teachings of others. As a merchant, Siddhartha experienced physical pleasures and lost his arrogance, when he became a ferryman, he learned through the river and finally reached nirvana and finished his quest, the journey to finding one’s self takes many years and many different experiences.