Siddhartha (Barnes & Noble Classics)

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2007 Trade paperback Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 160 p. Contains: Illustrations. Barnes & Noble Classics (Paperback). Audience: ... General/trade. new book Read more Show Less

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Overview

Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

 

One of the most widely read novels of the twentieth century, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha explores the struggle of the soul to see beyond the illusions of humankind and achieve a deeper wisdom through spirituality.

 

Born into wealth and privilege, Siddhartha renounces his place among India’s nobility to wander the countryside in search of meaning. He learns suffering and self-denial among a group of ascetics before meeting the Buddha and coming to realize that true peace cannot be taught: It must be experienced. Changing his path yet again, Siddhartha reenters human society and earns a great fortune. Yet over time this life leaves Siddhartha restless and empty. He achieves enlightenment only when he stops searching and surrenders to the oneness of all.

 

Rika Lesser’s new translation deftly evokes the lyricism and quiet beauty of Hesse’s novel, which first appeared in German in 1922. At once personal and universal, Siddhartha stands outside of time, resonating in the hearts of truth-seekers everywhere.

 

Robert A. F. Thurman holds the first endowed chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the United States, the Jey Tsong Khapa Chair at Columbia University. The first American to be ordained a Tibetan monk, he has been a student and friend of His Holiness the Dalai Lama for forty years. Thurman is the author of numerous books, most recently Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well.

 

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781593083793
  • Publisher: Barnes & Noble
  • Publication date: 11/1/2007
  • Edition description: New Edition
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 160
  • Sales rank: 28,908
  • Series: Barnes & Noble Classics Series
  • Product dimensions: 5.75 (w) x 8.44 (h) x 0.44 (d)

Read an Excerpt

From Robert A. F. Thurman’s Introduction to Siddhartha

 

I first read Siddhartha at the very start of the 1960s, and I can still remember the powerful inspiration it gave me. Why would a young person seeking to escape from wasp-hood at Harvard turn to India as the mother of inner exploration, when nothing in Western education would indicate that India was a source of great explorations in the quest for some transcendent truth? Clearly, Siddhartha was a model for my own journeys, for my own development of his vaunted skills at “fasting—waiting—thinking.”

Looking into Hesse’s personal life, I was astonished to discover many parallels between the troubled youth of this great psychic explorer, poet, critic, novelist, painter, and gardener who wandered the world before World War I and finally fled from the Rhineland down to southern Switzerland, and that of my own more humble and less accomplished self, hailing from Manhattan and traveling more or less on foot to India my first time out in 1961. At fifteen Hesse began to rebel against his strict Pietistic father and mother and the mission school they placed him in; he never felt comfortable in conventional German society of the time. Some of us—certainly myself, and I think Hesse, too—though born in the West, tend to wander as if doomed to exile and always feel like “a stranger in a strange land.” For both of us, forty-plus years and another World War apart, “Mother India” was a salve, a home, for our wandering spirits. Why? Is it because India’s civilization alone has had the wisdom to open itself up truly to embrace the naturally homeless? Hesse himself had this to say about India:

 

For example, with my Indian journey I had an unforgettable experience. At first it was a real disappointment, I returned completely downcast. But almost ten years later, as I was writing Siddhartha, suddenly the Indian memories were extremely precious and positive, and the little disappointment of earlier on was extinguished.1

 

Siddhartha was published in German in 1922. Its first English translation was published in 1951. Siddhartha’s quest was an important model for the whole postwar generation’s seeking of “Enlightenment in the East.” For Hesse himself, the book articulates a complex of strands in his character. It shows his rich appreciation for India conceived in a specific Western way, inherited from his missionary grandfather and parents. He says:

 

And this learned and wise grandfather had not only Indian books and scrolls, but also shelves full of exotic wonders, not only coconut shells and strange birds’ eggs, but also wooden and bronze idols and animals, silken paintings and a whole cabinet stuffed with Indian cloths and robes in all materials and colors. . . . All this was part of my childhood, not less than the fir-trees of the Black Forest, the Nagold river, or the Gothic chapel on the bridge.

 

Siddhartha is distinguished by Hesse’s consummate artistic, spiritual, and poetic sense of the high transcendent experiences and values accessible through the Indian “inner sciences” and “mind yogas.” At the same time, the book contains a certain European, world-weary cynicism and a sense of the inevitable faultiness of all religious paths. Hesse again: “At the age of thirty, I was a Buddhist, of course not in the church-sense of the word.” The book hums with Hesse’s pursuit of Christian, Tolstoyan nonviolence and the inner kingdom, all the while roiled from within by its opposite: his own driving inner violence, his volcanic sensuality, and his deep despair of fulfilling human relations—a despair that stemmed from his ambivalent struggles with his parents and his ups and downs with his first wife and three sons.

Rereading Siddhartha now, I can clearly see its influence on my decision at twenty to leave college and the study of Western literature, philosophy, and psychology, and seek a higher enlightenment in India. More than forty years later, I have gone back and forth from “the West” to “the East” so many times I can hardly tell the difference anymore, though I observe certain groups still struggling to maintain the “never the twain shall meet” sort of attitude. Having trod a little bit in both of the Siddharthas’ footprints in my own small way, I appreciate the book even more. I can now unravel the tangled threads of Hesse’s mixing of Hindu and Buddhist worldviews, his entrapment in some of the stereotyped views of “the East” that were almost inescapable for a man of his time and culture, and his romantic depiction of Buddhist/Hindu enlightenment as a kind of return to nature, a resignation to the flow of the great river of life. In spite of this creative Hindu/Buddhist mixing, I enjoy the book much more now than I ever could have in my youth.

Hesse seems to have been haunted by a keen insight into the human condition, and his work seems to mark a great turning point in the growth of a genuine European respect for the civilization of enlightenment that developed in ancient India. He himself loved nothing more than to leave hearth and home and wander south to Italy with artistic friends, the European version of a sadhu (Hindu ascetic). He slept in bed-and-breakfasts or camped alfresco, contemplated nature and art, and took a break from the routine chores of householding in northern Europe (very likely overburdening his high-strung wife with their three sons). But it was hard to wander with open mind and heart and intellect in the Europe of that time, so he also went to India and southeast Asia. His keen artist’s perception saw there that the complex fabric of the culture of India was rich enough and its weave loose enough to accommodate all manner of eccentrics, wandering here and there, always on some spiritual pilgrimage or other, seeking beauty or peace, magical energy or complete transcendence.

At this moment in my journey, I am very pleased to have the chance to introduce Siddhartha to a new generation, since I think it still has the power to inspire the seeker of higher truth. I do not pretend to evaluate Hesse’s great achievement from some higher vantage of supposed enlightenment, which I do not claim for myself. But I have put in a bit of study of enlightenment’s various forms and levels, the institutions and cultural orientations it has supported in various countries, and the high civilizations it ultimately created. And following Siddhartha’s inspiration more than forty years ago, I did make a bit of progress—just enough to know that, as elusive as it continues to be, enlightenment is still highly worth pursuing.

Customer Reviews
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  • Posted July 21, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    2nd time around

    I had to read this book for a literature class in high school. Lately, I've been returning to some of my high school assignment books to see how they read now that I'm older and in a different mind-set. The first time I read this, I wouldn't say that I hated it, just rather indifferent to it. I just re-read it and......wow! What a great story about the search for wisdom and enlightenment. It makes the very valid point that while knowledge can be taught from one person to another, wisdom simply cannot. It is acquired through one's own experiences. No truer words were ever spoken and I think it is a point that not everyone recognizes.
    A wonderful and relatively easy reader, Siddhartha contains messages that can be appreciated by anyone who questions the hardships and meaning of life.

    6 out of 7 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 15, 2008

    Siddhartha Book Review

    Herman Hesses' novel depicts the journey of a boy who seeks knowledge and wisdom and quickly finds himself in times of love, devotion, and wisdom. Determined to find his path to enlightenment he witnesses and encounters the hardships which include the path of addiction and trials of his runaway son consumed by greed. Even through all his heartache he is lead by his guide, a mysterious ferryman, through his losses and recuperates by finally achieving his greatest wishes. Siddhartha shows us that the real goal in life is to be complete and always accept your hardships because in the end it is all worth it.

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted April 18, 2010

    Amazing

    This is an amazing little treat, that you don`t want to miss out on. I like Herman Hesse anyway and it was by complete accident that I found this book. It is short, but you get immersed.
    A few things about the author: Hesse is a Nobel Prize laureate, born in Germany, but a Swiss writer.He wrote Siddharta in 1922. He had previously, back in the 1910s, visited India.The story focuses on Siddharta, the son of a Brahmin, who leaves his home (the story takes place in Nepal around the time of Gautama Buddha) in search of enlightenment and it recounts the experiences, the events that lead him to reach nirvana. The stories, the people, the events that he encounters all add up to him reaching a deeper understanding of the universe. In the beginning of the story, he actually meets Gautama (Gotama) Buddha, who by then reached the perfect state and listens to his teaching, but decides that he should learn to reach enlightment through his own experiences, not someone else`s teachings.
    The style is quite simple, yet at times it reaches almost poetic heights. As I mentioned earlier, this is a very short novel, but it took a long time (and surely a long spiritual journey) for the author to write.
    I highly recommend Siddharta, and other works of Herman Hesse as well.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 1, 2008

    The most beautiful book I've ever read.

    This book is short, but packed with so much power. Its prose is simple, but it's what's written between the lines that is so thought provoking. I would actually say that this book changed my life every time I am going through a rough time, I think back to Siddhartha and I'm calmed a bit. Pure wisdom.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted September 5, 2010

    more from this reviewer

    Interesting, But...

    This is a classic for anyone interested in Eastern religions/ways of life, but don't expect a real epic adventure. The book is as slow moving as its characters. I was more excited to start reading it than I was actually reading it. However, it holds multiple life-long messages, all extracted from an author who has respectfully learned them first-hand. It's short & precise, and reminds us how cool monks are, even if it's not original (it's nearly identical to the acclaimed story of the Buddha). Read it, learn from it, move on!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 11, 2005

    Therapeutic

    I read this recently during a painful break-up/separation from my wife. At the time I was convinced we were getting divorced. Reading this book made me realize that I was going to be fine whatever the outcome. Once I stopped pouting around and enjoyed life with or without my wife, she came back. I credit this book with saving my marriage.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 5, 2012

    A Book Worth Reading

    I picked up this Hesse classic on my Nook after a recommendation from a friend. I had never read Hesse and knew nothing of the book's history before reading although I had studied some basic Buddhism in college. In a sense the college work gave me a nice base from which to think a little deeper about some of the concepts Hesse presents through this wonderful story. But, I think one with no prior knowledge of Buddhist beliefs could still stand to gain much from this book. The book is a nice read, well written and just the right length I think for Hesse to present his story. Not too complex and yet not too simple. I highly recommend it.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 2, 2012

    Alright

    Its more of a adult read than a high school read

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 5, 2011

    Great

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  • Anonymous

    Posted October 13, 2011

    Spiritual adventure.

    One of my top 5 favorite books of all time.

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  • Posted September 24, 2011

    AP World History Review: a description of my opinion of the book

    "Siddhartha" was a great book. My favorite part about this book is how the author used symbolism. The author used symbolism to express greater thoughts. An example of this is the river that Siddhartha reflects in his own life. Siddhartha learns to understand through the rivers' "om". Om is a representation of meditation and when Siddhartha finds om in the river then he finds unity in his self. The river also represents the flowing of Siddhartha's life. The river is always moving and doesn't stop for anything, like life. Another example is the songbird. When Siddhartha travels to the sinful city of Samsara, he meets Kamala. Kamala has a rare song bird that she keeps caged up. After 20 years, Siddhartha has a dream that the song bird dies and sees it as his inner self dieing. He decides to leave the city. After he leaves, Kamala sets the bird free because she is heart broken. After leaving and being away for awhile, Siddhartha realizes that the "song bird" within his self is still alive. After seeing the affect that symbolism had on the book, I think the author completed his purpose well. The authors' purpose was to show how the world altered the mind of Siddhartha. The author expresses this by symbolism and conflict. Throughout the book Siddhartha is going through different kinds of conflict, internal and external. By going through different kinds of conflict, Siddhartha realizes the struggles within himself and the world. After realizing how difficult the world is, Siddhartha realizes that he must make himself happy to reach Nirvana. He must keep himself happy by moving on and never stopping or allowing someone to stop him in his path, like the river. He realizes that he must be free and not have anyone hold him back, like the songbird in the cage. This book was a good book and I would recommend it to anyone who is not just learning about the life of Siddhartha, but to anyone who is learning about life itself.

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  • Posted August 8, 2011

    Enlightening.

    A wonderful enlightening journey.

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  • Posted August 7, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    Life changing

    This is on my Top 10 Best Books of All Time list. You will reexamine the way you view life. It's is crushing and uplifting in the same breath. It's a shorter book, but don't be tempted to read it all in one sitting. Savor every sentence, let it marinate in your psyche, you will wonder how you never thought like that before.

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  • Posted July 25, 2011

    Oh

    You need to be high to understand it. Unfortunately, I do not do drugs.

    0 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted July 18, 2011

    So-So LL

    This book was neither easy nor fun to read. It did not provoke any thoughts in me. Why? Maybe I am not a deep person. Maybe I have already seen in my forebearers Siddhartha's journey through life. Maybe his journey was flawed by his own hand. A million things to ponder. Nah, I am just not a deep person.

    0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted June 30, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    Pure Wisdom

    Siddhartha is a book written about the journey of a young Brahmin to a wise old man.It is a book written for anyone interested in Middle Eastern religion and ways of life. Although this topic may sound extremely intriguing to some people, this was not the case for me. I only began reading this book because there was nothing else to read at the time.
    At first, the plot was slow-moving and I didn't really see the point. This book was boring me so much that I had to stop reading it and find something more interesting.
    Weeks later, with a new mindset, I gave the book another try. I paid attention to the life-long messages that the author was portraying in between the lines. These small details in the plot were what I found most thought-provoking.
    As Siddhartha continued his journey to understand perfection, to understand Om, I began to understand the story. It was not about Siddhartha finding Nirvana, but about Siddhartha realizing the perfection of life and why the good and bad aspects of it are both important.
    After finishing this book I realized that it had left a huge impression on me. It had influenced my ways of thinking about and seeing the world around me. I can actually say that this book, Siddhartha, changed my life. Herman Hesse's writing is what I would define as pure wisdom.

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  • Posted March 22, 2011

    a favorite

    i have read this book twice and i highly recommend it. the depth and meaning is great. it is a truly amazing book.

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  • Posted March 11, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    Excellent...I highly recommend

    This is an enlightening and thought provoking book about a man who is on a path to discovering what the purpose of life is..On his path to finding this out he realizes that the path he originally thought was not the correct one,And upon realizing this continues to search and ends up going through different trials and tribulations..It is a book that will make you think, that will quite possibly alter the way that you perceive things.

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  • Posted February 20, 2011

    very good

    The opening is one of the best in all of literature... the story is a simple and rich one...and there is a lot to get you thinking for weeks after you've read it.

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  • Posted January 2, 2011

    Don't bother.

    go to amazon and find the free ebooks link, there you can get all the classic books at no cost unlike barnes and noble who like to charge and promote it as a steal. Don't get suckered into paying $1-5 for any of the classic books when its offered for free.

    0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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