Enlightenment In Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

Siddhartha wants enlightenment and tries too hard to find it and then goes down the opposite path. He lives the life of a Samana, nearly losing his life to starvation. And figures that he will never achieve true enlightenment, so he resorts in indulgence and sin. When Siddhartha leaves home and joins the Samana, he thinks extreme suffering will lead him to enlightenment. “Siddhartha had one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the self die” (Hesse 14). He was trying to empty himself through suffering to achieve enlightenment. And he ends up wandering around in the forest, eating only one meal a day, when he wasn’t fasting. In addition, Siddhartha would stand in the sun without water. He also stood in the rain with no umbrella and stood in a thorn-bush. He did …show more content…
He meets the two women and thinks that physical desire and intercourse are essential aspects of the material world that he must endure. When the first female invites Siddhartha to engage in a sexual act, he refuses, but is still curious about the process. This leads him to finding the courtesan named Kamala, his future lover. When he met the first girl, Siddhartha’s desire didn’t feel out of control. Now, with Kamala, his desire is very high and he struggles to control his lust. This relates to Siddartha and his sin and indulgence because he has rejected the spiritual teachings, but he will accept Kamala’s teachings of desire; he consciously decides to follow her teachings “Everything was difficult, irksome and finally hopeless when I was a Samana. Now everything is easy, as easy as the instruction in kissing which Kamala gives” (Hesse 58). At this point Siddhartha is no longer an innocent, not willing to passively accept it. He has finally taken into account his own psychical body, transforming himself in order to fit into the material