neo reviewed Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse wrote Siddhartha after he traveled to India in the 1910s. It tells the …
How should I live my life anyway?
4 stars
Warning: These are my unfiltered, unedited thoughts on the book as I set a 5 minute timer and wrote without stopping.
At a core, what I take from Siddharta is that everything is transitory. While something Hesse brings up in the book is the idea that there is no such thing as good and evil, no such thing as time, I also take the idea that you have to live hell before you can truly appreciate what you have. You have to learn to live with both the things that you might consider bad and the things you consider good and see them as one and the same. Destruction leading to construction. Basically, you only truly learn to live once you've had these "worldly" things. If you grew up following some sort of doctrine that claimed there's a right or wrong way to go about life, and you followed it …
Warning: These are my unfiltered, unedited thoughts on the book as I set a 5 minute timer and wrote without stopping.
At a core, what I take from Siddharta is that everything is transitory. While something Hesse brings up in the book is the idea that there is no such thing as good and evil, no such thing as time, I also take the idea that you have to live hell before you can truly appreciate what you have. You have to learn to live with both the things that you might consider bad and the things you consider good and see them as one and the same. Destruction leading to construction. Basically, you only truly learn to live once you've had these "worldly" things. If you grew up following some sort of doctrine that claimed there's a right or wrong way to go about life, and you followed it closely, you might feel in some way or another superior to those who live going against your beliefs, those who do things you would consider unpure, usually things that relate to the human instincts of greed and lust. But these things are human, and by denying them and repressing them you risk becoming prideful and falling into the same pitfalls these people would have. It's through experiencing greed and lust than a person can fully understand the human condition. Living your worst times so that when you finally find peace, it's not peace out of believing you're richeous but because you've gone through all these things, you've learnt from them, know you would rather stay away from them and therefore you don't feel that temptation anymore, which can bring peace. There's also the concept of time denial, which relates to how he talks about life as an endless, repeating cycle. The son leaves his father, when Siddharta left his he did not feel remorse. Yet when his own son left him, only then did he understand that's the natural cycle of life. That everyone will eventually follow their own path, whether they wish to or not. That by learning how to follow and listen to your own will you can truly master yourself. By the end, Siddharta realizes that doctrines require at least some kind of black and white thinking, and for that reason alone, he dismisses them and instead preaches for people to follow their will and path. Instead of following what other wise people do, he talks about learning from them while still doing what you believe you should. While thematically similar to Demian, I think both books have dramatically different conclusions. While Demian relates more to the finding, and nurturing of the Self, Siddharta talks about accepting that the Self, and everything else in the world are one and the same.