Siddhartha Hermann Hesse Link

Govinda, his childhood shadow, came wandering by years later. He was an old monk now, still seeking, still not finding. He touched Siddhartha’s forehead, hoping for a word, a secret, a final truth.

Influenced by Jungian psychology, Hesse suggests that the holy is not separate from the profane. The murderer and the saint are brothers. The flower and the corpse are the same. The river’s voice contains all voices: laughter and weeping, childhood and old age. To reject the world is to reject the divine. siddhartha hermann hesse

Now, he was the material world. He had learned it slowly, as a child learns letters. From the golden cage of the samana, he had fallen into the gilded cage of the merchant Kamaswami. He had learned the taste of money, the weight of property, the weary sigh of satiated desire. He had learned to wear fine clothes, to feel the smoothness of another’s skin, to watch the sickness of gambling and the sour dregs of wine. Govinda, his childhood shadow, came wandering by years later

Siddhartha, however, rejects the offer to join. He respects the Buddha’s enlightenment but realizes a profound truth: the Buddha attained enlightenment not through teachings, but through his own experience. Siddhartha realizes that he cannot learn wisdom from a teacher; he must live it. He tells the Buddha, "I have to experience my self... I have to be my own student, my own teacher." Influenced by Jungian psychology, Hesse suggests that the