Discovering Individuality
...and ends when they die. People are all searching for their own things. Some search for things like: money, power, fame, knowledge, peace, understanding, and a sense of who they are. Some people do just for the thrill of adventure. Siddhartha wants to find his individual place in society through personal experience and follow no one else's ideas but his own.
Siddhartha's journey takes him through different worlds which are represented geographically through the three different parts of the story. In the first part of the book he travels through the world of the spirit and intellect during his time with the Brahmins, Samanas, and the meeting with the Buddha. He journeys through the land with his friend Govinda in search of peace through the intellect. He learns all about a religion and after experiencing all that it has to offer; feels unsatisfied and moves on to find something new in hopes of finding peace. His meeting with the Buddha is where he truly begins to find his way. When he was listening to the Buddha he realized, "...you have reached the highest goal which so many thousands of Brahmins and Brahmins' sons are striving to reach. You have done so by your own seeking, in your own way, through thought, through meditation, through knowledge, through enlightenment. You have learned nothing through teachings, and so I think, O Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation through teachings." (Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse 33-34). Siddhartha realizes that the Buddha found enlightenment in his own way, and so Siddhartha realizes that he too must find his own way to true peace. After departing from Govinda and the Buddha he crosses the river, which is the symbolic separator between the world of the intellect and the world of the physical, to see what a life in the city has to offer him.
While there Siddhartha thoroughly indulges himself in all that the city...
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