Throughout the novel “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha was on a journey to find enlightenment by whatever means available. He worshipped as a Brahman and a Semana; he was a merchantman, a business tycoon; he apprenticed under a wiser river man, learning from the reflective river. He spent his entire life searching for enlightenment on his own, and in the end he was satisfied. But can you be enlightened if your religious belief system is adopted from somebody else? Shouldn’t something as abstract as faith be the journey of an individual? Adhering to somebody else’s rules and ideas really takes the personal factor out of finding enlightenment or leading a peaceful happy life.
Humans are always asking questions and challenging ideas. …show more content…
For years kings oppressively ruled their people and enforced their own belief. The times were literally called the dark ages. Fear of excommunication from the king’s church was the only thing that one was concerned about. The church taxed its people, punished them for making decisions that conflicted with the church, and served as just as oppressive of a ruler as the king did. The priests who did not submit to this new system were quickly cast aside from the political scene, since, though they had charisma, the monarchs were free to utilize a significantly greater force than they. Eventually, manipulation through subtle intimidation gave way to the outright control that nobody was even going to hide. Blatantly desecrating something so sacred and holy, these monarchs and bishops ruled the dark Middle Ages. (Stolyarov) There was no separation of church and state, thus the church was slowly being fitted by the monarchy for the means of controlling every aspect of citizen life. What was the most efficient way for a king to carry out swift cleansing routines against potential opponents? To declare their views to be opposite the will of God and the heavenly scheme of things. Wars over a proclaimed holy land have killed countless soldiers ever since the holy lands “location.” Who was to stop the acts of "heresy" than the Church itself? All avant-garde writers, scientists, thinkers, all the suspicious nobility, anyone who stood out sufficiently to attract the attention of a monarch and challenge the system of widespread ignorance that the latter developed to govern his state with the minimum effort. People were executed for their beliefs, locked up for the rest of their lives, their houses burned, their family’s taken from them. It