Siddhartha Essay, Research Paper

Finding one?s ?Self?

Siddhartha vs. Heinrich

As human beings, we sometimes can not synchronize our minds and souls. When we are at our success of knowledge or intellect, we blind our mind with our ambition, which comes along in reaching the knowledge or intellect. As a young Brahmin, Siddhartha, has been taught that Brahmin is the soul of “Atman” or the ‘Only One’ (Chapter 1, page 5). It means that Brahmin is the highest position beside the Creator. This intellect alienates Siddhartha’s ‘Self’. He does not think that his superior’s ‘Self’ will give him salvation. Siddhartha thinks his ‘Self’ conquers himself. He wants his ‘Self” to die to find wisdom and spiritual knowledge.

Rather than searching for his soul, Siddhartha attempts to destroy his ‘Self’ through suffering of sermonic asceticism. He sees that Samana’s knowledge might lead him to his salvation. In page 11 chapter 2, we read:

“…had one single goal–to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow–to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought…”

Although Siddhartha does the scourge, he does not find his salvation. He discovers his torment, which is only escaped from the ‘Self’ for temporarily. Again, Siddhartha rejects and leaves the Samana ascetic knowledge.

Siddhartha ends his knowledge quests: Brahminism, Samanic asceticism, and Buddhism. He turns to the use of his senses in finding his goal. His main goal is to be his ‘Self’. His sense of ‘being’ is isolated by his knowledge. He realizes that he does not know his ‘Self’ which he has spent his life avoiding. He vows him self to explore the ‘Self’.

The second step of Siddhartha’s journey is realizing that although he has knowledge, knowledge is not enough without experience. Experience can be gained through practicing knowledge. Also he realizes that thought and sense must be used together to find the way. He meets with Kamala whose beauty and intelligence overwhelms him. Kamala’s observation and sensitiveness help Siddhartha to develop his sense of love. To pay for her lector, he has his “think, wait, and fast”(chapter 5 page 46). With Kamala’s help in another lecture, he gains the combination of the simplicity and intelligence.

As he grows older, he makes a friend with Vasudeva, the river’s man. Their life is near to the end of the harmonization of the universe. Siddhartha learns another secret with Vasudeva’s help, that if one is to listen long enough to the river, he will hear all of the voices of the universe. Another secret is that if one listens even more carefully, all the voices blend in to one sound ‘Om’. He hears the universal within the ‘Om’. When Siddhartha works as a river’s man, he learns that Kamala has a son from him. When Kamala is dying in Siddhartha’s hand, he is not ruined by the sorrow. But love for his son ruins him badly. Siddhartha learns human experience that his son is resembled of the love and the brother hood of man. His son rejection is so painful that it reduces his humanity. Again, we see the difference between the path of knowledge and wisdom.

In the last part he finds his true ‘Self’. Siddhartha says (chapter 12, page 116):

“I learned through my body, and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world…”

He discovers that all has been harmonious and unified. A man who seeks a goal is one who seeks something in the universe for the ‘Self’. Since a man has potential to be within the universe, he has potential to simulating the good, the evil and all the morals in between. Wisdom is difficult to speak.

In the autumn of 1939, Heinrich Harrer, the famous Austrian mountaineer, and a team led by his countryman Peter Aufschnaite, set out to climb Nanga Parbat, one of the highest peaks in the Himalayas.

The self-centered Harrer, whose sole preoccupation is the achievement of fame and glory, will experience an emotional awakening as he embarks on a fantastic journey. A journey that will take him from the excitement of the climb to the depths of internment in a British prisoner-of-war camp, then from escape and a harrowing two-year trek through the Himalayas to the mysterious, forbidden Tibetan city of Lhasa.

As a stranger in a strange land, which few westerners have ever visited, Harrer is befriended by the young Dalai Lama, and becomes the religious leader’s tutor in English, geography and the ways of the western world.

He will spend seven years in Tibet, during a period of tremendous political upheaval in that country, graced with the friendship and the spiritual enlightenment of the eleven year-old Dalai Lama. As the deep and abiding bond between these two isolated, lonely people evolves, the selfish and egotistical Harrer experiences an awakening of selflessness, allowing him to complete the emotional transformation which began on his way to Lhasa.

In much the same way these men are on a voyage to discover them selves. Even though their stories differ they strangely come together some how. In both stories, the main character finds them selves and starts to respect life, that is what is similar about them.

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