Trent Heath
Blog #8
December 4, 2009
Siddhartha
I have read Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, twice in my life, once my senior year in high school and then again this year. This book, in my opinion, represents everything that man searches for in life, the journey that we experience. Siddhartha is searching for enlightenment, or Nirvana, and he tries various methods and all of them leave him wanting more. Eventually he gets caught up in samsara, the cycle of poor decisions and bad habits. Siddhartha has a few encounters with the Ferryman, who is actually enlightened and eventually Siddhartha comes to realize this. The river in this book symbolizes life, the path to enlightenment, and Nirvana in itself, and Siddhartha comes to possess this knowledge. It took Siddhartha a large part of his life to become enlightened but every experience contributed to his enlightenment. This book was the first literary work that I actually connected with.
In Siddhartha, the wilderness, and the river are important because they help Siddhartha reach enlightenment, but they also represent the importance of the wilderness. Siddhartha’s quest for knowledge allowed him to be persistent in his path to enlightenment, shouldn’t we all be as persistent as Siddhartha? I would like to think that there is an experience in my future similar to the one that Siddhartha experienced. The fact that we are unable to control our religious experiences, we do not know what the future holds for us, but that is part of the excitement. I believe we should continuously search for answers concerning faith, but we should not attempt to force a religious experiences. Our spiritual faith is only limited to the parameters we create for it, therefore we should all explore, research and travel to places that are unfamiliar for our own spiritual growth
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