"Siddhartha" is not about the Buddha

Editors, Wisdom Quarterly; LibriVox Recording (Greatest Audiobooks)

Herman Hesse wrote a great novel about a guy named Siddhartha, echoing the trials and travails of the Buddha, who's in the background.

The Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama, the Scythian Sage or Shakyamuni. But he is not the Siddhartha in the title. Anyone who read it without assuming would know that.

No one knows that. A former girlfriend, who learned about Buddhism from me said she was already "kind of a Buddhist" because her Seventh Day Adventist (Christian) dad read Siddhartha and really liked it.

I laughed and mentioned that the eponymous title character is not Sid the Buddha. She insisted it is because her dad said so. How closely did he read the book?

Lots of hippies in the Sixties read Herman Hesse, who was a great Buddhist scholar, and missed that the novel's Sid is a guy who, like the Buddha, goes on a heroic journey of self-discovery.

But he's in India, and the Buddha is there to consult. If only we had that. Fiction is fiction, and this fiction is rooted in truth, like most good fiction is.

Fortunately, there was a great Bollywood movie made from the book. Unfortunately, it's rarely shown in the States. Los Angeles has the special kind of arthouse/alternative theater that once screened it. Look for an Indian production. Better yet, let's listen to the original.

Siddhartha (FULL AudioBook)

(Greatest AudioBooks) Siddhartha is one of the great philosophical novels. Profoundly insightful, it is also a beautifully written story that begins as Siddhartha, son of an Indian Brahmin, leaves his family and begins a lifelong journey towards enlightenment. On the way he faces the entire range of human experience and emotion: He lives with ascetics, meets Gautama the Buddha, learns the art of love from Kamala the courtesan, and is transformed by the simple philosophy of the ferryman Vasudeva whose wisdom comes not from learned teachings but from observing the river.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was a German-Swiss novelist, poet, and painter. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis). 🌟SPECIAL OFFER🌟► Try Audiobooks.com 🎧 for FREE at affiliates.audiobooks.com/trac... ► Shop for books & gifts: amazon.com/shop/GreatestA... (Greatest AudioBooks earns money from affiliate links).