Siddhartha

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful book about a life's journey
Review: This book tells the life story of Siddhartha and of his childhood friend, Govinda. Siddhartha, a brahmin (the highest caste), leaves his home in search of happiness, nirvana, enlightenment, peace...you name it. Through the book you'll go through his up and downs, learn what he learns, and travel on his search for peace of mind. To read this book and not get a lesson from it is next to impossible. I reccomend this book to everyone.

Rating:
Summary: Siddhartha
Review: SIDDHARTHA is an amazing story about a man in search of perfection. This book is riddled with philisophical ideas and lessons. I am thrilled that I found this book, and I think anyone who is searching should read Siddhartha.

Rating:
Summary: How then shall we live?
Review: I read this in college. I read it again recently and realized just how much this book had affected the way I think about my life and priorities.

Most books do not address such issues, even obliquely. Certainly, a book can be enjoyable, even sublime, without such proscriptions. But because of its lyrical relevance to the practice of living, I have found that Siddhartha has become a part of me in a way which few other books have.

Siddhartha is an inquiry into the "good life" and reifies the contours of the many paths that purport to lead there. I certainly haven't adopted the lifestyle of this book's ascetic protagonist, but I have come to see the darker side of a life lived for consumption. As with Siddhartha, I have become aware of the ability of possessions to enslave as well as liberate.

It's a lesson that I don't think I would have learned didactically, and, of course. I learned it while following the life of someone who let himself become enslaved, and I continue to learn as I find myself being similarly enslaved.

Hesse has a knack for bring a western reader, like myself, to the world of Eastern mysticism. It is a world I would otherwise have difficulty observing. Wisdom is a rare commodity and it surfaces in far flung locales. Hesse has mined distant shores for a few precious nuggets and puts them on glorious display.

This rural midwesterner is grateful for the the view.

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable, life altering novel.
Review: Herman Hesse's "Siddhartha" is one of the greatest tales of self-discovery, love and the meaning of life. "Siddhartha" is loosely based on the lives of Gotama Buddha and the author, and describes the journey of Siddhartha as he looks for the meaning of life, hoping to achieve a greater state of being known as nirvana. What makes "Siddhartha" such a remarkable story is that it is not like a novel, but rather a manual to find your soul It is not simply the story of one man, but the story of all men for eternity and their quest to find eternal happiness and the answer to the question: What is my purpose in the world?

This was a remarkable novel because Hesse is able to tell a tale about a character living hundreds of years ago, and make it relevant today. This book should be read by high school students around the world because it can teach people to listen to themselves. It is not relevant only in Indian culture but in every culture around the world. It can show students that knowledge and wisdom are completely different. Knowledge is something that can be obtained by listening to teachers and parents. Wisdom however, can only be obtained by living life for you, though experience.

Rating:
Summary: The secret of Siddhartha.
Review: "A path lies before you which you are called to follow," Hesse writes in this story of enlightenment. "The gods await you." Hesse's 1922 novel opens with Siddhartha (not to be confused with Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha) beginning "to feel the seeds of discontent within him." For the young man, "the world tasted bitter. Life was pain." Because of his unhappiness, Siddhartha abandons the comforts of his home and family, and joins the Samanas, "wandering ascetics . . . lean jackals in the world of men," with the goal of "becoming empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow." After travelling with the Samanas for three years, Siddhartha encounters the Buddha, and decides "to strike a new path" by following the Buddha's teachings on suffering: Life is pain. The world is full of suffering. There is a path to escape pain. However, always the wanderer, Siddhartha eventually rejects the Buddha's teachings--or so he believes--as he sets out to discover the truth from his own experience instead.

In time, Siddhartha finds himself "deeply entangled in Samsara," caught in the empty prosperity, possessions, and riches of the world, like "a shipwrecked man on the shore." In the spiritual poverty of his material wealth, Siddhartha's inner voice becomes silent. In his despair, Siddhartha again renounces the comforts of his life by becoming a ferryman. He ultimately learns from the river. "Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions." Throughout Siddhartha's wanderings and enlightenment, Hesse offers up profound insights into the human predicament.

This is one of my all-time favorite novels. It teaches us that "your soul is your whole world." SIDDHARTHA had a profound impact on me when I first read it more than twenty five years ago, and now it has spoken to my soul again as I travel through my middle years. Wherever you are on your path through life, you will find SIDDHARTHA a meaningful novel.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: short, beautiful, book. economically written for maximum payoff

Rating:
Summary: Revolutionary
Review: Hesse tells the story of a young man, Siddhartha, who is set on finding enlightenment and thus happiness. Initially, Siddhartha adheres to the teachings of his father, but after years of meditation and adulation, he was unhappy. No one had shown him the way to enlightenment. Set on finding it, he embarks on a new journey, with his friend, Govinda, and joins the Samanas. After awhile, Siddhartha feels the same discontent. His teachers, the Samanas, still have not shown him the way to enlightenment, and at this point, he parts with his friend and teachers and attempts to live the life of ordinary people. Although, at first, Siddhartha learns a great deal about business and the art of lovemaking, he again becomes bored and unhappy. He is caught in Samsara, the ways of the world, and once he realizes this, he is disgusted with himself. He leaves all of his riches behind and commences a new journey.

The book is a treat to read. In addition, it has profound wisdom to impart to the reader. In a sense, a revolutionary message permeates the book; this message goes hand and hand with Siddhartha's desire to find enlightenment. Every time Siddhartha attempts to gain enlightenment by following the paths of others, he fails. At one point, he says, "No, a true seeker could not accept any teachings, not if he sincerely wished to find something." The message it sends to the reader is that one can only find enlightenment by listening to the wisdom deep within one. The teachings of others will not necessarily help one achieve true happiness because, according to Siddhartha, "wisdom is not communicable." For instance, Siddhartha believed that the illustrious Gotama, the Buddha, achieved enlightenment, while the followers of Buddha, such as Govinda, may never find it by adhering to the Buddha's teachings. Nevertheless, although Siddhartha's path was arduous, he eventually attained enlightenment by listening to himself and to the wisdom of nature.

Rating:
Summary: Possibly the greatest book I have ever read
Review: The ancient religion, Buddhism, focuses on the search for salvation. In Hesse's classic novel, Siddhartha, a young Indian sets out on a lifelong quest for "Nirvana." Spending periods of his life in diverse settings, the main character, Siddhartha, continually grows with experience. This story demonstrates man's natural tendency to persevere through hardship, and preaches the worthlessness of money and lust in finding happiness. These themes are part of an archetypal pattern, in that they recur throughout literature, both historical and modern. Anyone uneducated about the concepts of Buddhism stands to benefit greatly from reading Siddhartha. While it remains concise and free of superfluous detail, it conveys perfectly the beliefs of Nirvana and the values held by Buddhists. The novel concerns a religion which originated centuries ago and still thrives today. Therefore, through its popularization, Buddhism will likely continue to flourish for years to come. I personally enjoyed Siddhartha immensely. While I did not expect to appreciate the novel at all, I found its vivid explanations of thought fascinating, and at times I had trouble putting the book down. I recommend this to anyone, either interested or uninterested in Buddhism.

Rating:
Summary: The best short novel I have read
Review: I read Siddhartha in high school and picked it up 10 years later finding much more appreciation for Hesse and his simple yet lyrical meditation on eastern mysticism/buddhism. The novel is wonderfully accessible to readers of all ages. If you have read any of other Hesse's novels, the prose in this work is strikingly clean. He would eventually win the Nobel Prize for Literature for a later novel, The Glass Bead, but this work is more widely read and for good reason. I have not read the other translations of Siddhartha, but I give my highest recommendation to this one.

Rating:
Summary: Epiphany for Sale
Review: Books can be magical things. This is one of them. For ten bucks or so you can buy a short read that has proven its ability literally millions of times over many decades to produce epiphanies in readers of all ages. This makes it one of the best values of all time.

Siddhartha is poetic prose, a literary masterpiece about a man's search for his place in the universe and the meaning of life. These are tall topics--something each of ponders at some length--and not easily conquered. Hesse accomplishes it with amazingly few pages. The book touches all the senses, like a brain massage. It would be easy to skip this book, to brush it off as mushy, hippy text. Don't make that mistake.

I first read it as a teen about the same time that Kung Fu was a hit on TV. The two combined for a mind-expanding experience. I began looking at life in a different and better way. It's hard for me to imagine an adult who has read Siddhartha at some point in their life committing violent crime. Cause and effect? I strongly recommend Siddhartha to the open-minded and idealistic youth of the world, and all others who continue the search for their own identity. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.