Siddhartha Blog

I have learned and observed many life-lessons through my reading of Siddhartha.  The theme that is most prominent to me is that teachers are an inferior medium through which you gain knowledge compared to your own individual actions.  Throughout the book, Siddhartha is struggling to attain his clear goal of enlightenment, mainly due to his doubtfulness of his teachers.  He realizes that these teachers are trying to teach him the ways of the world, but their teachings are confined to words and could never teach the lesson trying to be conveyed.  Siddhartha thinks to himself, "He has robbed me of my friend, who believed in me and who now believes in him; he was my shadow and is now Gotama's shadow.  But he has given to me Siddhartha, myself" (36).  Siddhartha realizes through his doubt of Gotama's teachings that he himself is the only teacher he needs and the one that will teach him the most valuable lessons.  At the end of the book, Siddhartha is ironically teaching Govinda that wisdom cannot be communicated, and that you must experience it yourself to fully understand the meaning of something.  "I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust. . . in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it s, to love it and be glad to belong to it" (144).  Siddhartha learned that he must experience these sins and actions to understand their importance.  To really learn, you must realize that you are the best teacher you will ever have and that you need to experience what you are learning to understand it.