Siddhartha

[Anonymous No.17762369]

I loved the first half but I felt the switch in the second half to be quite jarring. I didn't really get the second half at all to be honest.
Anyone care to explain?

[Anonymous No.17762426]

bump

[Anonymous No.17762438]

>>17762369
In what way OP?

[Anonymous No.17762444]

>>17762438
Like I genuinely didn't follow the second half and what it's trying to convey very well.

[Anonymous No.17762462]

>>17762444
enlightenment can never be reached, your identity and values just develop over time and your grasp on whatever your purposing can easily be lost but I haven't read it in a decade so idk

[Anonymous No.17762494]

>>17762369
He (Siddartha) basically tries abandoning ascetism, become rich, fucks around for a while and has a kid, then goes back to the boat dude who helped him cross a river much earlier. The boat guy tells him to focus on the river until he can see every perfect part of it and he does. Then his (now teen) kid comes back and Siddartha tries not being a deadbeat dad but fails horribly and deals with emotionally abandoning his son. Then the boat guy achieves enlightenment by finding the perfection he found in the river in everything and goes off into the forest to starve or some shit. Siddartha keeps looking at the pretty river. The end.

[Anonymous No.17762511]

While we are at it.
I'm reading The Glass Bead Game from the same author.
I've read first 100 pages. It's kinda plain. Does it get better?

[Anonymous No.17762515]

>>17762494
So what's the meaning here?

[Anonymous No.17763950]

>>17762494
didn't he confront buddha somewhere in the second half of the book? I forgot how the conversation went.

[Anonymous No.17763969]

>I loved the first half but I felt the switch in the second half to be quite jarring.

Babby's first Hesse?

[Anonymous No.17763986]

>>17763950
What? Siddhartha IS the Buddha.

[Anonymous No.17763992]

>>17763986
not in this book, siddartha is a fictional character here

[Anonymous No.17764022]

Keep reading it throughout your life, periodically, OP. My interpretations changes and develops as I get older, personally.
>>17763986
You haven't read the book
>>17763969
>pain.

[Anonymous No.17764035]

>>17762515
>>So what's the meaning here?
That atheists cant into buddhism, which is why they prefer hinduism and mahayana, but hinduism has a caste system so they only have mahayana to feel enlightened while still enjoying life.

[Anonymous No.17764065]

>>17764022
I read it, just not in over 10 years. Because, you know, this is junior high level reading.

[Anonymous No.17764262]

>>17763969
umm yea.
>>17764065
bad attitude

[Anonymous No.17764652]

>>17762511
The Glass Bead Game is strange because it is structured like a biography rather than a novel. Everything has a sort of distance to it, with the reader essentially feeling the protagonist's growth secondhand. To me, the best part of the book is the trio of "lives" in the appendix, which are more conventional Hesse stories written from the perspective of Knecht-as-author. But I also really like the very end of the main text, though I'm a bit iffy on how Knecht just fucking drops dead.
I would say it's essentially Hesse's masterpiece, but I personally prefer Demian, Siddhartha, and Narcissus and Goldmund.

[Anonymous No.17764995]

>>17762369
Yeah despite the first half being kinda weird as someone unfamiliar with Hindu culture, the second half goes over the deep end with the whole river thing. I really enjoyed it though. When I read it I thought of the river as an external manifestation of Siddhartha’s ego. When he gained everything: his wealth, possessions, power, and a son, he also gained a huge ego. This ego blinded him from his original goal of enlightenment. It wasn’t until he completely lost everything, marked by losing his son and realizing he had also lost his father in a similar way, that he turned away from the river and looked out to the world. This parallels with when he rejected the Samanas earlier in the book and switched his focus from his inner world to the external world. The difference was that at that time he hadn’t even developed an ego yet so it was like jumping down from small box. Later in the book when he does this he has a much larger ego so it’s more like jumping off a cliff. Idk if any of that made sense lol

[Anonymous No.17765229]

I would describe the river as the endless loop of eternity we humans have inside ourself, the awareness thats everything and which makes us one. The river always flows and it never stops to anything, it moves throught every object infront of it, it changes as it sees fit. Once it reaches it endpoint, which it never does, the water goes into the ground and turns more or less into life forces for everything. The river doesn't care, it just is. Our awareness doesn't care either, it simply is too.

[Anonymous No.17765297]

>>17763950
He confronts his former friend, Govinda, who actually dedicated his life to a cause and shits all over him in his mind.

[Anonymous No.17765307]

>>17764995
Makes sense.

[Anonymous No.17765642]

>>17764995
That was pretty good.
So what was the overall message in your mind?

[Anonymous No.17766088]

>>17762515
yes, what is the takeaway? what can we glean from this? what is the moral?

[Anonymous No.17766154]

I took the point of the book to be that it is human to always be in your own way, especially when you are convinced you are not. It is arrogant to assume to be correct, or that you are heading in the right direction, and you will only find peace when you surrender over to this.

You are but a drop in a river.

[Anonymous No.17766619]

Am I the only one who felt like Siddhartha's explanation of his findings to Govinda in the last chapter to be a pretty good summary of his newfound beliefs?

The river is always flowing, always changing but the same at every point. Just like how Siddhartha told Govinda that the stone will become dirt which will become which will become animal, yet the stone holds all of these things within it at once. Just like how the river is everywhere at once too.

Biased as it may be, I found his philosophy to be similar to Stoicism. I felt a very similar "take things as they are according to nature, and respect it all" vibe from it.

[Anonymous No.17768038]

>>17765642
I think the overall message was about the paradox that to reach a goal such as finding a purpose or meaning in life, you must have an ego that wants to pursue that goal. Yet it’s that same ego that hinders itself from attaining that goal at every step of the way. Throughout the entire book, Siddhartha went through great lengths to pursue the goal of enlightenment. Even when he was wealthy he initially viewed the process of attaining wealth only as a tool to further his ultimate goal, and explicitly showed a disdain for those who pursued wealth for material reasons. This phase, his Samana phase, and his phase in the beginning where he grew up studying religious texts were all characterized by Siddhartha’s ego chasing enlightenment but at the same time preventing him from reaching it. It was only when he let go of his ego completely at the end that he became enlightened. I thought it was cool how Hesse subtly painted Siddhartha’s ego. For example, Siddhartha always referred to himself in third person and not only was outwardly described as handsome, intelligent, etc. but also was implicitly described as arrogant through his actions such as rejecting even the Illustrious One as a suitable teacher. In contrast, the river man did not even have a name, hardly had any physical description other than his age, and humbly accepted all people and things. I believe that the fact that Siddhartha was hailed as a spiritual prodigy and yet had great difficulty attaining what came naturally to a “nobody” like the river man was the most important aspect of the book.

[Anonymous No.17768288]

>>17762369
to put it simply, you got filtered. First half was story, second half was spirit.

[Anonymous No.17768308]

People really get filtered by the river sage enlightenment? That was the best part wtf

[Anonymous No.17768387]

>>17768288
responding to myself here since I got distracted and forgot to mention that overall the book is very overrated. It's good but people hail this as a masterpiece. I thought the parts that teach about hinduism and buddhism were one of the best parts of the book.

[Anonymous No.17769761]

bump

[Anonymous No.17769802]

i haven't read all of hesse only steppenwolf and siddartha, but both books have that radical transition. both characters also desire such a transformation, to enter into new modes of being. i believe they succeed at it, but the ultimate implications are ambiguous, that is why, in the case of siddartha we conclude the book from the perspective of his childhood friend. there's something amazing and holy about this transformation, but also sorrowful and alien. i'm not sure what it means, and i'm not sure if i even ought to know what it means.

[Anonymous No.17771164]

>>17762462
I don’t agree at all. It’s that it can’t be communicated/taught.