A Man Made for Change

This time, this article will be different to the others done about Siddhartha. The article will be about a summary of The chapters "Amongst the People" and "Samsara" but about a summary only concentrating on the main character. In part one, most of us would have never imagined Siddhartha as a person of worldly pleasures but instead as an ascetic. He started being a Brahim's son, then a Samana, then his own teacher, then an apprentice of love and now he became a business man. He is a man of change. And in this chapter we can see how he is not only a man of change in profession but also in his beliefs. If you had stopped reading this book after the end of part one you would have thought that I was crazy for saying that Siddhartha became a man of worldly pleasures.

In the beginning of the first chapter, he and Kamala continue in a relationship in which one benefits financially and the other learns the ways of love (this includes erotica). Kamaswasmi is convinced by Kamala to let Siddhartha live in his house for a while. Seeing this as an opportunity, the merchant decides to let Sidshartha help him with his business without much trust. As time passes, Siddhartha proves himself and becomes a very skilled merchant. As most of us would think, at first he stays the same and does not fall for money. His ideals remain intact and he follows what he learned with the Samanas. But like any normal person he becomes happy with all that money can bring after a long time. At the beginning when Kamaswami tried to convince him that money was good, he did not listen to him. As his skills grew his ideals diminished and he became a normal person. "Gradually, along with his growing riches, Siddhartha himself acquired some of the characteristics of the ordinary people, some of their childishness and some of their anxiety." page. 62. He now liked to eat the finest foods and wear the best clothes. He continued like this for many years and finally realized that this was not the way to enlightenment (personally I thought that a man who would later on become the Buddha would realize much faster that this way was not the one that he had to follow). One morning he decided to leave town and continue on the path that lead to enlightenment. He gave no good-bye, he just left. 

In this short summary we can see how Siddhartha lost his way again. This time it was with the thing that he despised the most, a life of pleasure. "The world had caught him; pleasure, covetousness, idleness, and finally also the vice that he had always despised and scorned as the most foolish-acquisitiveness." page 63. He stayed strong at the beginning and even mocked other merchants. But men are not perfect so he succumbed. Who would have thought the great Siddhartha would get corrupted so easily? His teachings were supposed to prevent this but they didn't. And it all was because he wanted to learn about love. It was like a cause and effect chain that in my opinion made him waste many good years of his life pursuing something that was not meant for him. But at least he found his way back. I had lost my hope in him. Thank god  I continued reading till the end of the chapter and did not throw away the book because I thought Siddhartha's  adventures to become enlightened were over. Now I am a little more motivated so let's hope that he doesn't lose his way for the fiftieth time.