Teaching+&+learning

In Hesse’s novel __Siddhartha__, in his journey for search for enlightenment, Siddhartha learns love for himself and his son. During his journey he realizes that he could not have attained feel of love for another, or himself, or feel the pain of losing someone without having gone through certain experience. This understanding is affirmed when he reunites with his friend who had chosen to stay with Govana to study in order to achieve enlightenment rather than take a journey as Siddhartha had. 

P. 59 “I am like you. You cannot love either otherwise how can we practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can-that is their secret.” Here, he also hints that one can only find enlightenment after one finds true love thus he must experience this. Later on, Kamala bears him a son, and dies. Siddhartha ends up taking care of their son who first refuses Siddhartha’s love. Siddhartha waits patiently for his son to return his love who continues to reject him. He anguishes over the best way to look after him. One day, through his son, he suddenly realizes that he loves. P. 99-100 “But now, since his son was there, he, Siddhartha, had become completely like one of the people, through sorrow, through loving. He was madly in love… for once in his life, the strongest and strangest passion… He felt indeed that this love, this blind love for his son ….This emotion, this pain, these follies also had to be experienced. " This teaching and experience allows him to reach his goal to enlightenment as he learns how to love others as well as himself. One of the reasons for Sidhartha’s journey is because he is so discontented. At one point Siddhartha talks about committing suicide in a river. p80 At this point of the journey the river had symbolized death for Siddhartha as he felt very despairing and hopeless in reaching satisfaction and enlightenment. However after meeting Govinda at Gotama’s town he has self realization of how to value his life and to learn from his mistakes as trying to control his life well as realization of how much he has learnt through the journey. On page 80 he thinks to himself about the flaws and how he was learning from them and taking him one step close to enlightenment “Siddhartha now also realized why he had struggled in vain with this Self when he was a Brahmin and an ascetic. …He had been full of arrogance; he had always been the cleverest, the most eager – always a step ahead of the others …That was why he had to go into the world to lose himself in power, women and money.” p81 “Siddhartha had wanted to drown himself in this river; the old, tired, despairing Siddhartha was today drowned in it.”As well as learning about his own flaws he also learns to love this river and the river symbolizes life, and Siddhartha’s love of himself. p101 “the following morning he had disappeared. A small two-colored basket made of bast, in which the ferryman kept the copper and silver coins which they received as either payment had also disappeared” After experiencing the devastating pain of losing someone he dearly loves, he can empathize and feel compassion and sympathy towards the ordinary people. He also learns how to it is not possible to force one’s knowledge of the timeless upon one who is still subject to the limits of time, another words he can’t force his views onto young Siddhartha and he realizes that that was what his father had did and he was following similar footsteps therefore Siddhartha had let the boy go. P. 120 “I can see, my dear friend, that you have found peace. I realize that I have not found it.”In the end of the book, Siddhartha reunites with his friend Govinda. Siddhartha and Govinda had started in their search for enlightenment at the same time. While Siddhartha travelled and was immersed himself in various experiences, Govinda had stayed behind to study teachings of the Illustrious one.