The Circle of Karma and Siddhartha

Abstract

For a long time, Herman Hesse’s celebrated Siddhartha (1922) popularized a version of Buddhism in the West. However, by comparing it to Kunzang Choden’s The Circle of Karma (2005), the first Bhutanese novel published in English, with its similar plot of a seeker, this essay finds the ways it displays a Westernized ideal of Buddhism. Unlike The Circle of Karma, Siddhartha actually relies on Western ideas of individualism and self-reliance.