Theme Of Empathy In Siddhartha

For one to become a Buddha they must first develop the six perfections, and the Buddha’s dharma would have you follow the eightfold path so you could attain enlightenment. Both of these have similar aspects and ways of cultivation, such as it is extremely difficult to focus on only one perfection or noble truth without also improving in another area as well, and that without a proper base nothing will come of this process. This also applies to the development of empathy, when a reader is developing empathy they are also cultivating other key aspects to utilizing the empathy they are developing. Books allow the reader a chance to gain experience without actually having that had that experience in the real world. Empathy can be developed through
Siddhartha, after living a life of trying to rid himself of Samsara realizes that he must feel what others in the “real” world experience. He is looking for away to empathize with the common people and he does until becomes just another common person. So after years of being a rich and successful merchant Siddhartha has a mental brake down where both body and mind suffer from over indulgence. He then runs away from the city and is in such distress he almost commits suicide, but the river that he was going to jump into saves him because it produces the sound of Om allowing him to ground himself back in
This can be seen in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, his characters are well read and draw upon this knowledge when in need, but not always for the benefit of others. There are points in the book that you do not empathize with the main characters, instead they leave the reader with a feeling of disdain and you end up empathizing with a side character, most notably during interactions with Princess. She is manipulated by the men to think that by consenting to those sex acts she will be a bodhisattva and you empathize with her and start to despise the males fro what they are doing to her for their own personal gain. Kerouac shows that a character can both generate empathy and disdain depending on the situations that they are put into. In the beginning of The Dharma Bums Ray Smith is cast in the light of a man who wants to follow the dharma quite closely and is extremely generous and patient with his fellow bum on the