Buddhism In Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, is a western retelling of the story of the Buddha, and different, or reimagined look at the origin story of the religion of Buddhism. I personally adopted Buddhism as a system of belief or life philosophy, last year, after careful consideration, this has helped me confirm as well as adjust my views and personal beliefs. Buddhism has several key beliefs. They include, the belief that everything is impermanent, the idea of karma, the idea that life is suffering and that there is a path to absolve the suffering, the idea that knowledge is extremely important and finally that the right mindfulness is necessary for peace. This is a very basic summary, but is the basis of what most Buddhists believe, after the basics,
“But that is just what the Illustrious One called illusion.. He preached benevolence, clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to bind ourselves to earthly love”, (Hesse 147). However, I disagree. The middle path does not forbid love and does not encourage resentment. Apathy, is not the middle path, apathy is an extreme as well. While Buddhism does preach or believe that attachment, particularly unhealthy attachments, either to material objects, or to people, that does not exclusively forbid or prohibit love. This is supported by the general Buddhist doctrine of right words, right actions and right
Siddhartha rejects the teachers and their lessons, and realizes that he has to be the one to learn these lessons, even though he could have heard them from others. He realized that he had to learn through experience. “He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one, Buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept his teachings” (Hesse 28). Siddhartha could not accept even teachings from holiest man, nor his family, he realized he had to set out to discover both himself and the universe. This has further demonstrated to me that Buddhism is a personal and individual faith or philosophy, because while there are guidelines and generally accepted values or paths, everyone has to find their own road to take and find their own destinations on the map. One of the struggles of Buddhism or even life in general is discovering the self or specifically in Buddhism, transcending the self. However, in order to move past or beyond the self, you first need to understand the self as it exists. Siddhartha realizes this early on in his journey, “ But he, Siddhartha, where did he belong to? With whom would he share his life? Whose language would he speak?” (Hesse 41). With this part of the story in particular, the author did a marvelous job of translating the Buddhist idea of self, into something that