Siddhartha
“I wish that you, oh exalted one, would not be angry with me,” said the
young man. “I have not spoken to you like this to argue with you, to
argue about words. You are truly right, there is little to opinions.
But let me say this one more thing: I have not doubted in you for a
single moment. I have not doubted for a single moment that you are
Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal towards which
so many thousands of Brahmans and sons of Brahmans are on their way.
You have found salvation from death. It has come to you in the course
of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through
meditation, through realizations, through enlightenment. It has not
come to you by means of teachings! And—thus is my thought, oh exalted
one,—nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! You will not
be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and
through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of
enlightenment! The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it
teaches many to live righteously, to avoid evil. But there is one thing
which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they
do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for
himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands. This is what I have
thought and realized, when I have heard the teachings. This is why I am
continuing my travels—not to seek other, better teachings, for I know
there are none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and
to reach my goal by myself or to die. But often, I’ll think of this
day, oh exalted one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a holy man.”
The Buddha’s eyes quietly looked to the ground; quietly, in perfect
equanimity his inscrutable face was smiling.
“I wish,” the venerable one spoke slowly, “that your thoughts shall not
be in error, that you shall reach the goal! But tell me: Have you seen
the multitude of my Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in
the teachings? And do you believe, oh stranger, oh Samana, do you
believe that it would be better for them all the abandon the teachings
and to return into the life the world and of desires?”
“Far is such a thought from my mind,” exclaimed Siddhartha. “I wish
that they shall all stay with the teachings, that they shall reach
their goal! It is not my place to judge another person’s life. Only for
myself, for myself alone, I must decide, I must chose, I must refuse.
Salvation from the self is what we Samanas search for, oh exalted one.
If I merely were one of your disciples, oh venerable one, I’d fear that
it might happen to me that only seemingly, only deceptively my self
would be calm and be redeemed, but that in truth it would live on and
grow, for then I had replaced my self with the teachings, my duty to
follow you, my love for you, and the community of the monks!”
With half of a smile, with an unwavering openness and kindness, Gotama
looked into the stranger’s eyes and bid him to leave with a hardly
noticeable gesture.
“You are wise, oh Samana,” the venerable one spoke. “You know how to
talk wisely, my friend. Be aware of too much wisdom!”
The Buddha turned away, and his glance and half of a smile remained
forever etched in Siddhartha’s memory.
I have never before seen a person glance and smile, sit and walk this
way, he thought; truly, I wish to be able to glance and smile, sit and
walk this way, too, thus free, thus venerable, thus concealed, thus
open, thus childlike and mysterious. Truly, only a person who has
succeeded in reaching the innermost part of his self would glance and
walk this way. Well so, I also will seek to reach the innermost part of
my self.
I saw a man, Siddhartha thought, a single man, before whom I would have
to lower my glance. I do not want to lower my glance before any other,
not before any other. No teachings will entice me any more, since this
man’s teachings have not enticed me.
I am deprived by the Buddha, thought Siddhartha, I am deprived, and
even more he has given to me. He has deprived me of my friend, the one
who had believed in me and now believes in him, who had been my shadow
and is now Gotama’s shadow. But he has given me Siddhartha, myself.
AWAKENING
When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one,
stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this
grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered
about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly
walking along. He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let
himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place
where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to
him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn
into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to
emit like rays of light what is inside of them.
Slowly walking along, Siddhartha pondered. He realized that he was no
youth any more, but had turned into a man. He realized that one thing
had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no
longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth
and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen
to teachings. He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his
path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one,
Buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept
his teachings.
Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: “But what is
this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers,
and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach
you?” And he found: “It was the self, the purpose and essence of which
I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which
I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only
deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing
in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self,
this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and
isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing
in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!”
Having been pondering while slowly walking along, he now stopped as
these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought
sprang forth from these, a new thought, which was: “That I know nothing
about myself, that Siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to
me, stems from one cause, a single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was
fleeing from myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was
willing to dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the
core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine
part, the ultimate part. But I have lost myself in the process.”
Siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around, a smile filled his face
and a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his
head down to his toes. And it was not long before he walked again,
walked quickly like a man who knows what he has got to do.
“Oh,” he thought, taking a deep breath, “now I would not let Siddhartha
escape from me again! No longer, I want to begin my thoughts and my
life with Atman and with the suffering of the world. I do not want to
kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins.
Neither Yoga-Veda shall teach me any more, nor Atharva-Veda, nor the
ascetics, nor any kind of teachings. I want to learn from myself, want
to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of
Siddhartha.”
He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time.
Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and
mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was
green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were
rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical,
and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to
himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest,
entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a
spell of Mara, was no longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a
pointless and coincidental diversity of mere appearances, despicable to
the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity, who seeks unity.
Blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river,
in Siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, so it was still
that very divinity’s way and purpose, to be here yellow, here blue,
there sky, there forest, and here Siddhartha. The purpose and the
essential properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in
them, in everything.
“How deaf and stupid have I been!” he thought, walking swiftly along.
“When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not
scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence,
and worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them,
letter by letter. But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and
the book of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had
anticipated before I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called
the visible world a deception, called my eyes and my tongue
coincidental and worthless forms without substance. No, this is over, I
have awakened, I have indeed awakened and have not been born before
this very day.”
In thinking these thoughts, Siddhartha stopped once again, suddenly, as
if there was a snake lying in front of him on the path.
Because suddenly, he had also become aware of this: He, who was indeed
like someone who had just woken up or like a new-born baby, he had to
start his life anew and start again at the very beginning. When he had
left in this very morning from the grove Jetavana, the grove of that
exalted one, already awakening, already on the path towards himself, he
had every intention, regarded as natural and took for granted, that he,
after years as an ascetic, would return to his home and his father. But
now, only in this moment, when he stopped as if a snake was lying on
his path, he also awoke to this realization: “But I am no longer the
one I was, I am no ascetic any more, I am not a priest any more, I am
no Brahman any more. Whatever should I do at home and at my father’s
place? Study? Make offerings? Practise meditation? But all this is
over, all of this is no longer alongside my path.”
Motionless, Siddhartha remained standing there, and for the time of one
moment and breath, his heart felt cold, he felt a cold in his chest, as
a small animal, a bird or a rabbit, would when seeing how alone he was.
For many years, he had been without home and had felt nothing. Now, he
felt it. Still, even in the deepest meditation, he had been his
father’s son, had been a Brahman, of a high caste, a cleric. Now, he
was nothing but Siddhartha, the awoken one, nothing else was left.
Deeply, he inhaled, and for a moment, he felt cold and shivered. Nobody
was thus alone as he was. There was no nobleman who did not belong to
the noblemen, no worker that did not belong to the workers, and found
refuge with them, shared their life, spoke their language. No Brahman,
who would not be regarded as Brahmans and lived with them, no ascetic
who would not find his refuge in the caste of the Samanas, and even the
most forlorn hermit in the forest was not just one and alone, he was
also surrounded by a place he belonged to, he also belonged to a caste,
in which he was at home. Govinda had become a monk, and a thousand
monks were his brothers, wore the same robe as he, believed in his
faith, spoke his language. But he, Siddhartha, where did he belong to?