Entry One: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Passage from the Text:

Siddhartha said: "...What I have so far learned from the Samanas, I could have learned more quickly and easily in every inn in a prostitute's quarter, amongst the carriers and dice players."...Siddhartha said softly, as if to himself: "What is mediation? What is abandonment of the body? What is fasting? What is the holding of the breath? It is a flight from Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life. The driver of the oxen makes this same flight, takes this temporary drug when he drinks a few bowls of rice wine or cocoanut milk in the inn. He then no longer feels his Self, no longer feels the pain of life; he then experiences temporary escape."

Page 13

Comments:
Siddhartha travels with the Samanas, or wondering monks, for three years.  He practices meditation in an attempt to kill his senses,  to loose his Self, to achieve enlightenment. In this thoughtful conversation he considers leaving the monks in order to find his own path. He has found the self-denial he pledges to be a cycle that always leads back to its beginning.  He makes the comparison between meditation and the drinking of rice wine to show that both acts are only temporary solutions.  Siddhartha has left his life at home in an attempt to escape a cycle only to find himself going in circles once more. This feeling of a lack of control in the direction of ones life is also a characteristic of someone who would use alcohol in an attempt to escape life's predicaments.