"It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end," U. This is the concept behind the path to discovery, taken by the protagonist of Herman Hesse's epic novel, Siddhartha. The tale of spiritual awakening and self-discovery begins early in Young Siddhartha's life, at the origin of his journey. From his humble home, Siddhartha travels to the Samanas to live a life of poverty and meditation. When he finds this stop to be off the beaten path, he decides it is time to move on. He found himself enraptured in the plight of the common man. He began to experience the world through the eyes of someone he thought he could never be. As he finds himself suffering the flaws fatal to every man, he begins to realize the necessity for another change. As he departs he ventures back to the river that once intrigued him before. Siddhartha finds that the river is responsible for delivering the inner-peace which he so avidly desired. The road to self-discovery was not as simple as completing a physical journey with the perils and pitfalls faced by a strong-arm hero. Instead Siddhartha's expedition was completely spiritual with problems dealt with by the mind and not the sword. Siddhartha's Journey to inner-peace can best be mapped through his spiritual encounter with the Samanas, his downward spiral into the oblivion of the common man, and his ultimate encounter with the river and its mellifluous fountain of knowledge. .
Siddhartha left his house On the path of knowledge, looking to discover the one thing most holy, The Self, and separate himself from it. "Siddhartha had one single goal- to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow- to let the self die"(14). In order to do so, He felt it necessary to join the Samanas, a group of monks devoted to the search for one's self. He learned how to escape his Self in many different ways, but each time he would always regain consciousness.
