With The Shramanas

Physically: Physically, Siddhartha had left his hometown to move on to learn more about the ascetics. He had given up his robe to a poor man and was left only in a loincloth. Upon practicing with the Shramans, he ate once a day and never cooked any food. At times he fasted for twenty-eight days or more, and he began to lose a lot of weight in response to this. Around him the people in the city were dressed in their highest finery, and the town functioned and moved just as any normal city should at the time.  


Mentally: Mentally, Siddhartha had changed the way that he was thinking and what he had believed. He changed himself to be empty of joy and pain, and to find peace of the emptied heart by thinking away from the self to stand open to the miraculous things around him. Siddhartha still had in him the desire to continue learning, and he believed that even those people of the Shramanas could not answer all of the questions that he had. He entrusted many different groups of people to answer his endless questions and try to teach him what he really wanted to know, but that was never fulfilled. 


Spiritually: Spiritually, Siddhartha was forced to learn, preach, and show the teachings of the Shramanas. He had to look within himself to find the deeper meanings of the things around him, and forget about all that was going on in his life. Siddhartha caught on quickly to learning new things of the soul, and about the Shramanas. He believed that his life was going in a circle, and he was contemplating leaving the cycle he thought that he was stuck within. 


Socially: Socially, Siddhartha did not have many friends and was not able to speak very often. His dear friend Govinda had followed him through the journey that he was taking with the Shramanas. Along this journey that he was taking, the old Shramanas were often marveling in him, and were fascinated by how quickly he was learning all of the exercises. They believed that one day he would become a saint.  


Quote: "We have learned much, Siddhartha, there is still much to learn. We are not going in a circle, we are going upward, the circle is a spiral, we have already ascended many steps" (16). This quote, said by Govinda to Sidhartha, has a special significance to their journey, and to Siddhartha's journey in the rest of the book. The spiral represents how their experiences are constantly changing and none of them are the same. It's a continual, never ending journey and they will not know what is ahead of them until it is to come. They will learn new things along the way and be able to put them into their lives.