Siddhartha became the very thing he had despised and looked down upon for so long. When he first promised to become a merchant and wear fine clothes for Kamala, he only wanted to do such a thing so he could understand love and the "ordinary" people that surrounded him. This lifestyle proved to be infectious as he grew accustomed to the luxuries that surrounded him. He dined on expensive food, took perfumed bathes every day, ordered servants around, drank wine, gambled. He did this for a very long time until one day he realized he was disgusted with himself. He was so revolted that he almost committed suicide, but at the last minute he heard the holy Om, the old voice that had once led him down a righteous path. He fell asleep, and when he awoke he was a new man.
This part of Siddhartha's life strongly reminded me of Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. Scrooge, like Siddhartha, had a happy beginning to his life. They both knew what they wanted and how to get it. The problem is, once they started achieving their goal, it turned them into greedy, selfish men. They lost the ability to love. They lost friends and family. They lost more and more until one day they rethought their lives. Once they thought things out, they both realized how unhappy they were and how they had inflicted this unhappiness upon themselves. They decided to make some major changes, and these changes helped them realize how trivial material objects are.
Both of these stories,(and others) make it pretty clear that money isn't everything, and you certainly can't buy happiness.
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