Siddhartha
found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights,
which are your own and which help you to live? If you would like to
tell me some of these, you would delight my heart.”
Quoth Siddhartha: “I’ve had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and
again. Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt
knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one’s heart. There have been
many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. Look,
my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom
cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to
someone always sounds like foolishness.”
“Are you kidding?” asked Govinda.
“I’m not kidding. I’m telling you what I’ve found. Knowledge can be
conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is
possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it
cannot be expressed in words and taught. This was what I, even as a
young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the
teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you’ll again regard as
a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The
opposite of every truth is just as true! That’s like this: any truth
can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided.
Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said
with words, it’s all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks
completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his
teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana,
into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be
done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But
the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never
one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely
Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does
really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time
was something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this
often and often again. And if time is not real, then the gap which
seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and
blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception.”
“How come?” asked Govinda timidly.
“Listen well, my dear, listen well! The sinner, which I am and which
you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be Brahma again, he
will reach the Nirvana, will be Buddha—and now see: these ‘times to
come’ are a deception, are only a parable! The sinner is not on his way
to become a Buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though our
capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these things.
No, within the sinner is now and today already the future Buddha, his
future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in you, in
everyone the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible, the
hidden Buddha. The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a
slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment, all
sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small
children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already
have death, all dying people the eternal life. It is not possible for
any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his
path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the
Brahman, the robber is waiting. In deep meditation, there is the
possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was,
is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is
good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore, I see
whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness,
wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only
requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be
good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to
ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I
needed sin very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions,
vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to
give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in
order to stop comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some
kind of perfection I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love
it and to enjoy being a part of it.—These, oh Govinda, are some of the
thoughts which have come into my mind.”
Siddhartha bent down, picked up a stone from the ground, and weighed it
in his hand.
“This here,” he said playing with it, “is a stone, and will, after a
certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a
plant or animal or human being. In the past, I would have said: This
stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the
Maya; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a
spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it
importance. Thus, I would perhaps have thought in the past. But today I
think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is
also Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because it could turn into
this or that, but rather because it is already and always
everything—and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it
appears to me now and today as a stone, this is why I love it and see
worth and purpose in each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in
the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it makes when I knock at it, in
the dryness or wetness of its surface. There are stones which feel like
oil or soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is
special and prays the Om in its own way, each one is Brahman, but
simultaneously and just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and
this is the very fact which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy
of worship.—But let me speak no more of this. The words are not good
for the secret meaning, everything always becomes a bit different, as
soon as it is put into words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly—yes,
and this is also very good, and I like it a lot, I also very much agree
with this, that this what is one man’s treasure and wisdom always
sounds like foolishness to another person.”
Govinda listened silently.
“Why have you told me this about the stone?” he asked hesitantly after
a pause.
“I did it without any specific intention. Or perhaps what I meant was,
that I love this very stone, and the river, and all these things we are
looking at and from which we can learn. I can love a stone, Govinda,
and also a tree or a piece of bark. These are things, and things can be
loved. But I cannot love words. Therefore, teachings are no good for
me, they have no hardness, no softness, no colours, no edges, no smell,
no taste, they have nothing but words. Perhaps it is these which keep
you from finding peace, perhaps it is the many words. Because
salvation and virtue as well, Sansara and Nirvana as well, are mere
words, Govinda. There is no thing which would be Nirvana; there is just
the word Nirvana.”
Quoth Govinda: “Not just a word, my friend, is Nirvana. It is a
thought.”
Siddhartha continued: “A thought, it might be so. I must confess to
you, my dear: I don’t differentiate much between thoughts and words. To
be honest, I also have no high opinion of thoughts. I have a better
opinion of things. Here on this ferry-boat, for instance, a man has
been my predecessor and teacher, a holy man, who has for many years
simply believed in the river, nothing else. He had noticed that the
river spoke to him, he learned from it, it educated and taught him,
the river seemed to be a god to him, for many years he did not know
that every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle was just as
divine and knows just as much and can teach just as much as the
worshipped river. But when this holy man went into the forests, he knew
everything, knew more than you and me, without teachers, without books,
only because he had believed in the river.”
Govinda said: “But is that what you call ‘things’, actually something
real, something which has existence? Isn’t it just a deception of the
Maya, just an image and illusion? Your stone, your tree, your river—are
they actually a reality?”
“This too,” spoke Siddhartha, “I do not care very much about. Let the
things be illusions or not, after all I would then also be an illusion,
and thus they are always like me. This is what makes them so dear and
worthy of veneration for me: they are like me. Therefore, I can love
them. And this is now a teaching you will laugh about: love, oh
Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. To
thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be
the thing great thinkers do. But I’m only interested in being able to
love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to
look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great
respect.”
“This I understand,” spoke Govinda. “But this very thing was discovered
by the exalted one to be a deception. He commands benevolence,
clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our
heart in love to earthly things.”
“I know it,” said Siddhartha; his smile shone golden. “I know it,
Govinda. And behold, with this we are right in the middle of the
thicket of opinions, in the dispute about words. For I cannot deny, my
words of love are in a contradiction, a seeming contradiction with
Gotama’s words. For this very reason, I distrust in words so much, for
I know, this contradiction is a deception. I know that I am in
agreement with Gotama. How should he not know love, he, who has
discovered all elements of human existence in their transitoriness, in
their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much, to use a long,
laborious life only to help them, to teach them! Even with him, even
with your great teacher, I prefer the thing over the words, place more
importance on his acts and life than on his speeches, more on the
gestures of his hand than his opinions. Not in his speech, not in his
thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.”
For a long time, the two old men said nothing. Then spoke Govinda,
while bowing for a farewell: “I thank you, Siddhartha, for telling me
some of your thoughts. They are partially strange thoughts, not all
have been instantly understandable to me. This being as it may, I thank
you, and I wish you to have calm days.”
(But secretly he thought to himself: This Siddhartha is a bizarre
person, he expresses bizarre thoughts, his teachings sound foolish. So
differently sound the exalted one’s pure teachings, clearer, purer,
more comprehensible, nothing strange, foolish, or silly is contained in
them. But different from his thoughts seemed to me Siddhartha’s hands
and feet, his eyes, his forehead, his breath, his smile, his greeting,
his walk. Never again, after our exalted Gotama has become one with the
Nirvana, never since then have I met a person of whom I felt: this is a
holy man! Only him, this Siddhartha, I have found to be like this. May
his teachings be strange, may his words sound foolish; out of his gaze
and his hand, his skin and his hair, out of every part of him shines a
purity, shines a calmness, shines a cheerfulness and mildness and
holiness, which I have seen in no other person since the final death of
our exalted teacher.)
As Govinda thought like this, and there was a conflict in his heart, he
once again bowed to Siddhartha, drawn by love. Deeply he bowed to him
who was calmly sitting.
“Siddhartha,” he spoke, “we have become old men. It is unlikely for one
of us to see the other again in this incarnation. I see, beloved, that
you have found peace. I confess that I haven’t found it. Tell me, oh