Siddhartha
arms folded, silent and motionless sat the father on the mat, and the
stars traced their paths in the sky. Then spoke the father: “Not proper
it is for a Brahman to speak harsh and angry words. But indignation is
in my heart. I wish not to hear this request for a second time from
your mouth.”
Slowly, the Brahman rose; Siddhartha stood silently, his arms folded.
“What are you waiting for?” asked the father.
Quoth Siddhartha: “You know what.”
Indignant, the father left the chamber; indignant, he went to his bed
and lay down.
After an hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman stood
up, paced to and fro, and left the house. Through the small window of
the chamber he looked back inside, and there he saw Siddhartha
standing, his arms folded, not moving from his spot. Pale shimmered his
bright robe. With anxiety in his heart, the father returned to his bed.
After another hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman
stood up again, paced to and fro, walked out of the house and saw that
the moon had risen. Through the window of the chamber he looked back
inside; there stood Siddhartha, not moving from his spot, his arms
folded, moonlight reflecting from his bare shins. With worry in his
heart, the father went back to bed.
And he came back after an hour, he came back after two hours, looked
through the small window, saw Siddhartha standing, in the moon light,
by the light of the stars, in the darkness. And he came back hour after
hour, silently, he looked into the chamber, saw him standing in the
same place, filled his heart with anger, filled his heart with unrest,
filled his heart with anguish, filled it with sadness.
And in the night’s last hour, before the day began, he returned,
stepped into the room, saw the young man standing there, who seemed
tall and like a stranger to him.
“Siddhartha,” he spoke, “what are you waiting for?”
“You know what.”
“Will you always stand that way and wait, until it’ll becomes morning,
noon, and evening?”
“I will stand and wait.”
“You will become tired, Siddhartha.”
“I will become tired.”
“You will fall asleep, Siddhartha.”
“I will not fall asleep.”
“You will die, Siddhartha.”
“I will die.”
“And would you rather die, than obey your father?”
“Siddhartha has always obeyed his father.”
“So will you abandon your plan?”
“Siddhartha will do what his father will tell him to do.”
The first light of day shone into the room. The Brahman saw that
Siddhartha was trembling softly in his knees. In Siddhartha’s face he
saw no trembling, his eyes were fixed on a distant spot. Then his
father realized that even now Siddhartha no longer dwelt with him in
his home, that he had already left him.
The Father touched Siddhartha’s shoulder.
“You will,” he spoke, “go into the forest and be a Samana. When you’ll
have found blissfulness in the forest, then come back and teach me to
be blissful. If you’ll find disappointment, then return and let us once
again make offerings to the gods together. Go now and kiss your mother,
tell her where you are going to. But for me it is time to go to the
river and to perform the first ablution.”
He took his hand from the shoulder of his son and went outside.
Siddhartha wavered to the side, as he tried to walk. He put his limbs
back under control, bowed to his father, and went to his mother to do
as his father had said.
As he slowly left on stiff legs in the first light of day the still
quiet town, a shadow rose near the last hut, who had crouched there,
and joined the pilgrim—Govinda.
“You have come,” said Siddhartha and smiled.
“I have come,” said Govinda.
WITH THE SAMANAS
In the evening of this day they caught up with the ascetics, the skinny
Samanas, and offered them their companionship and—obedience. They were
accepted.
Siddhartha gave his garments to a poor Brahman in the street. He wore
nothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak.
He ate only once a day, and never something cooked. He fasted for
fifteen days. He fasted for twenty-eight days. The flesh waned from his
thighs and cheeks. Feverish dreams flickered from his enlarged eyes,
long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggy beard
grew on his chin. His glance turned to ice when he encountered women;
his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a city of
nicely dressed people. He saw merchants trading, princes hunting,
mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians
trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for
seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children—and all of this
was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank, it
all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and
beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. The world tasted
bitter. Life was torture.
A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty
of thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow.
Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an
emptied heart, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was
his goal. Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every
desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part
of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my
self, the great secret.
Silently, Siddhartha exposed himself to burning rays of the sun
directly above, glowing with pain, glowing with thirst, and stood
there, until he neither felt any pain nor thirst any more. Silently, he
stood there in the rainy season, from his hair the water was dripping
over freezing shoulders, over freezing hips and legs, and the penitent
stood there, until he could not feel the cold in his shoulders and legs
any more, until they were silent, until they were quiet. Silently, he
cowered in the thorny bushes, blood dripped from the burning skin, from
festering wounds dripped pus, and Siddhartha stayed rigidly, stayed
motionless, until no blood flowed any more, until nothing stung any
more, until nothing burned any more.
Siddhartha sat upright and learned to breathe sparingly, learned to get
along with only few breathes, learned to stop breathing. He learned,
beginning with the breath, to calm the beat of his heart, learned to
reduce the beats of his heart, until they were only a few and almost
none.
Instructed by the oldest of the Samanas, Siddhartha practised
self-denial, practised meditation, according to a new Samana rules. A
heron flew over the bamboo forest—and Siddhartha accepted the heron
into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, was a heron, ate fish,
felt the pangs of a heron’s hunger, spoke the heron’s croak, died a
heron’s death. A dead jackal was lying on the sandy bank, and
Siddhartha’s soul slipped inside the body, was the dead jackal, lay on
the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyaenas, was
skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown
across the fields. And Siddhartha’s soul returned, had died, had
decayed, was scattered as dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of
the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he
could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an
eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his
memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was
an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every
time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again,
turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new
thirst.
Siddhartha learned a lot when he was with the Samanas, many ways
leading away from the self he learned to go. He went the way of
self-denial by means of pain, through voluntarily suffering and
overcoming pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness. He went the way of
self-denial by means of meditation, through imagining the mind to be
void of all conceptions. These and other ways he learned to go, a
thousand times he left his self, for hours and days he remained in the
non-self. But though the ways led away from the self, their end
nevertheless always led back to the self. Though Siddhartha fled from
the self a thousand times, stayed in nothingness, stayed in the animal,
in the stone, the return was inevitable, inescapable was the hour, when
he found himself back in the sunshine or in the moonlight, in the shade
or in the rain, and was once again his self and Siddhartha, and again
felt the agony of the cycle which had been forced upon him.
By his side lived Govinda, his shadow, walked the same paths, undertook
the same efforts. They rarely spoke to one another, than the service
and the exercises required. Occasionally the two of them went through
the villages, to beg for food for themselves and their teachers.
“How do you think, Govinda,” Siddhartha spoke one day while begging
this way, “how do you think did we progress? Did we reach any goals?”
Govinda answered: “We have learned, and we’ll continue learning. You’ll
be a great Samana, Siddhartha. Quickly, you’ve learned every exercise,
often the old Samanas have admired you. One day, you’ll be a holy man,
oh Siddhartha.”
Quoth Siddhartha: “I can’t help but feel that it is not like this, my
friend. What I’ve learned, being among the Samanas, up to this day,
this, oh Govinda, I could have learned more quickly and by simpler
means. In every tavern of that part of a town where the whorehouses
are, my friend, among carters and gamblers I could have learned it.”
Quoth Govinda: “Siddhartha is putting me on. How could you have learned
meditation, holding your breath, insensitivity against hunger and pain
there among these wretched people?”
And Siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself: “What is
meditation? What is leaving one’s body? What is fasting? What is
holding one’s breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape
of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses
against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the
same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn,
drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then he
won’t feel his self any more, then he won’t feel the pains of life any
more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep
over his bowl of rice-wine, he’ll find the same what Siddhartha and
Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises,
staying in the non-self. This is how it is, oh Govinda.”
Quoth Govinda: “You say so, oh friend, and yet you know that Siddhartha
is no driver of an ox-cart and a Samana is no drunkard. It’s true that
a drinker numbs his senses, it’s true that he briefly escapes and
rests, but he’ll return from the delusion, finds everything to be
unchanged, has not become wiser, has gathered no enlightenment,—has not
risen several steps.”
And Siddhartha spoke with a smile: “I do not know, I’ve never been a
drunkard. But that I, Siddhartha, find only a short numbing of the
senses in my exercises and meditations and that I am just as far
removed from wisdom, from salvation, as a child in the mother’s womb,
this I know, oh Govinda, this I know.”
And once again, another time, when Siddhartha left the forest together
with Govinda, to beg for some food in the village for their brothers
and teachers, Siddhartha began to speak and said: “What now, oh
Govinda, might we be on the right path? Might we get closer to
enlightenment? Might we get closer to salvation? Or do we perhaps live
in a circle—we, who have thought we were escaping the cycle?”
Quoth Govinda: “We have learned a lot, Siddhartha, there is still much