Originally Posted by
Christemo
Reaching Nirvana/becoming Boddhisattva just means you have blown out all the fires of suffering in yourself (Nirvana literally meaning "blown out" in the candle sense of the word in Sanskrit), which are passion, aversion and ignorance. Once all three are extinguished, you have achieved Nirvana.
Hesse, while an amazing author, doesm't really understand what the core principle of Buddhism is. It is not "becoming one with everything", it is seperating oneself from all suffering. Don't take this as me bashing his novel Siddhartha though. It's an amazingly good story, it just doesn't grasp Buddhism as a whole.