What Siddhartha gained from his encounter with the ascetics was, ironically, a lesson about how asceticism is insufficient on its own to aid the quest for enlightenment. Asceticism was for Siddhartha like a drug: a means to escape the world or a promise of inner peace. The author describes Siddhartha's asceticism like an addiction in Chapter Two, describing the intense lifestyle as a predictable, perpetual cycle that leads the practitioner nowhere (Chapter 2). Siddhartha then describes asceticism explicitly like a drug, comparing meditation and fasting to drinking and gambling. Asceticism is "a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life," (Chapter 2). Siddhartha notes that the "same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk," (Chapter...
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