Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Rating: 4 out of 5

ISBN(edition I've read): 9780141189574

Review:


About the author:
Hermann Hesse is a German poet, novelist and a painter. He also won Nobel Prize for literature in 1946. Siddhatha is his most acclaimed novel.

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." Is from his novel, Demian. This quote is one reason I like him. It portrays his deep-style of thinking and quantity of knowledge, he possesses, on the human beings.

Plot:
In the shade of a banyan tree, a grizzled ferryman sits listening to the river. Some say he's a sage. He was once a wandering shramana &, briefly, like thousands of others, he followed Gotama the Buddha, enraptured by his sermons. But this man, Siddhartha, wasn't a follower of any but his own soul. Born the son of a Brahmin, Siddhartha was blessed in appearance, intelligence & charisma. In order to find meaning in life, he discarded his promising future for the life of a wandering ascetic. Still, true happiness evaded him. Then a life of pleasure & titillation merely eroded away his spiritual gains until he was just like all the other "child people" dragged around by his desires. Like Hesse's other creations of struggling young men, Siddhartha has a good dose of European angst & stubborn individualism. His final epiphany challenges both the Buddhist & Hindu ideals of enlightenment. Neither a practitioner nor a devotee, neither meditating nor reciting, Siddhartha comes to blend in with the world, resonating with the rhythms of nature, bending the reader's ear down to hear answers from the river.

My take on the book:
I came across this book in a bookstore, which sold old second-hand books. When I first looked at the name of the book and the picture on the cover, I was sure it was about spirituality and the story is of Goutama Buddha.

I read the description on the back of the book and from what I could make out, it was about Siddharatha. There is a terrible misconception in we, people, that Siddhartha is one of the various names of Buddha. Actually, it is not.

I asked many people, whom I came across, "Who is Siddhartha?" Except for few people who pointed towards the actors and other famous persons with that name, most of them said, it is Buddha. At first, even I mistook the name to Buddha and picked up the book thinking it must be his biography or something.

I was awed by the fact that the book is Buddha's biography and is so thin. There were only few pages more than 100. That was another reason I picked up the book.

There were parts of the story which were pretty lame. Not many - if any - kids in India - if anywhere - are so much into spirituality. Kids tend to play. They don't give up their family and friends, to go and live with ascetics, in the forest, to attain nirvana.

But the story which was followed was amazing. After completing the book, I was amazed at how much the thin book held. I felt like enlightened. Not that I know how enlightenment feels. But there was something calm I felt.

Recommendation:
I would recommend to those people who would love and understand spiritual stuff. Not everyone can understand spirituality and ultimately, this book...