My understanding of Siddhartha's turning away from the buddha is that this reflects a sort of 'individualism' in hesse. Towards the end of the book when he and his companion help people across the river, it seems to me that hesse is wanting to provide a symbolism of bodhisattvas, those who delay their entry into nirvana so as to assist others in their passage to enlightenment. At the end siddhartha's companion goes off and this may be to 'paranirvana' the highest stage of salvation. Such is my imperfect memory of a book read a long time ago and cradled in fragments of buddhist philosophy i've scraped up from life. What i loved about the book was that it had such a beautiful clarity. It is on my bookshelves waiting to be read again and someday hopefully it will be...
