Siddhartha journeys to achieve enlightenment and to discover himself. Throughout his journey, he stops and learns under many different teachers; these teachers share with the knowledge that they have obtained over the course of their lives. However during his journey, Siddhartha constantly rejects his teachers, for he treats them only as a stepping stone and not as all knowing beings. For Siddhartha, teachers are merely a gateway and a stepping stone towards further knowledge and wisdom.
Siddhartha had many teachers over the course of his life. The first of which, his father, raised him from a young age to be the ideal son. Siddhartha was the perfect son and was destined to be the perfect Brahmin. Everyday he purified himself in the river and everyday he performed listened to his father's teachings. He practised meditation, thinking the almighty Om and contemplating the Atman. However,he never felt satisfied, he felt the “restlessness of his soul. And so, he began to question his father's teachings and he started thinking about things for himself. He soon after reject his father and chose instead to join the Samanas of the forest. With the Samanas Siddhartha learned the ways of renouncement in every way; “All he now wore was the loincloth and the unstitched, earth-coloured cloak. He became completely empty as a person and with that emptiness he lost all sense of ego and desire. After many years of eating only once a day and having to beg for that food, Siddhartha begins to question the difference between his fating and forced immunity to pain and simply drinking a few cups of rice wine and playing a game of dice. He wondered whether starving in a forest was truly the path to enlightenment. He sees the Samana's way of life as circular and that the sixty year old teacher has yet to achieve Nirvana. Siddhartha then thought that maybe the way of the Gautama was the best direction. After many years with the Samana's, he left to join the mighty Buddha.
With Buddha Siddhartha learned the way of the middle path. However, when he first encountered the Sublime One, Siddhartha immediately believed that he would not learn anything new from him; for he had heard his teachings many times from secondhand accounts. After hearing the Buddha's words, Siddhartha chooses not to follow along this path because he came to a realization. Siddhartha tells Gautama, that even though his teachings are perfection, such perfection cannot be obtained from teachings, it must be obtained through experience. As he says, talking to the Buddha, “It came to you from your own seeking, on your own path, through thinking, through meditation, through knowledge, through illumination. It did not come through a teaching!” “You cannot, tell anyone in words and through teachings what happened to you in the hour of your illumination.” Siddhartha then leaves the Sublime one, knowing that enlightenment is only possible through experience and self discovery. He then travels to a town where he meets a women by the name of Kamala. She teaches him about the art of love and passion. In a way, she teaches him to indulge himself into the finer things of life, he begins to wear nice clothes and shoes and he joins with a merchant named Kamaswami. Under Kamaswami's teaching, Siddhartha learned how to do good business and how to further indulge into the pleasures of nature. However, he never accepted the merchants way of life, he works for Kmaswami purely for knowledge and cares not if a business deal goes sour. Siddhartha immersed himself in this life and he enjoyed the games of dice that blinded him from the sufferings of life. After much time with Kamaswami and Kamala, Siddhartha carried on and left his life of luxury for he realized the destructive nature of his actions. He left for a life of simple contemplation; contemplation that he rediscovered at the side of a river.
With the river, Siddhartha discovered his final teachers, the ferryman named Vasudeva and the river itself. From him Siddhartha learns much about simply listening to the river and in fact absorbing the knowledge that river imparts on those that are willing to listen. Vasudeva also shares with Siddhartha the art of ferrying people across the river as well working the rice paddy and building oars. From the river Siddhartha learns how to listen “with a silent heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinion.” This is the greatest wisdom that he will ever realize. Vasudeva and the river are the only teachers that Siddhartha does not reject, because it is with them that truly understands life, the world around him, and himself. It is next to the river that he reaches illumination, he reaches enlightenment, and he achieves Nirvana.
Siddhartha wonders the land in search of teachers, not directly for their lessons, but instead for their knowledge into how he can achieve wisdom for himself. He uses all these teachers for their knowledge. At first Siddhartha seeks these teachers for their wisdom, however he soon learns that “no one is granted deliverance through a teaching” and for him to achieve his goals of wisdom, he must do so on his own, without teachings and only with experience. This is the essence of the story. He realizes that “wisdom cannot be communicated.” and that “knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.” From all his teachers, from his father to the river, he learns only knowledge. Wisdom was something that Siddhartha learns for himself from his experiences in his life.
From the very beginning of his journey, Siddhartha is seeking to truly understand life and what it is to be alive. He sought out teachers for their knowledge, but soon rejected them in his search for wisdom. To Siddhartha, the teachers were only a stepping stone for him to use to begin to understand the world for himself on his path to enlightenment, illumination, and Nirvana.
