Siddhartha (11 page)

“I believe you, my Govinda. But now, today, you
have
met just such a pilgrim, in such shoes, with such garments. Remember, my friend: The world of shapes is transitory, and transitory—highly transitory—are our clothes, the way we wear our hair, and our hair and bodies themselves. I wear the garments of a rich man; you discerned this quite correctly. I wear them because I
was
rich, and I wear my hair like one of the worldly creatures, the lechers, for I was one of them.”

“And now, Siddhartha, what are you now?”

“This I do not know. I have as little an idea as you do. I am on a journey I was a rich man and am rich no longer, and what I will be tomorrow I do not know.”

“You have lost your riches?”

“I have lost them, or they have lost me. They are no longer mine. Swiftly does the wheel of shapes turn, Govinda. Where is the Brahmin Siddhartha? Where is the Samana Siddhartha? Where is the rich man Siddhartha? The transitory changes swiftly, Govinda, as you know.”

Govinda gazed at the friend of his youth for a long time, his eyes full of doubt. Then he took leave of him in the way one takes leave of a distinguished gentleman and went on his way.

With a smiling face, Siddhartha watched him walk off; he still loved him, this faithful friend, this apprehensive one. How, at this moment, in this glorious hour after his wonderful sleep, suffused with
Om
, could he have failed to love anyone or anything? This was precisely the form of the enchantment that the
Om
had wrought within him as he slept: He loved everything and was filled with joyous love for all he saw, and he realized that what had so ailed him before was that he had been able to love nothing and no one.

With a smiling face, Siddhartha gazed after the departing monk. His sleep had restored him, but he was still tormented by hunger, for he had eaten nothing for two days and the time when he had been impervious to hunger was now long past. With sorrow, yet also with laughter, he thought of this time. Back then, he recalled, he had boasted of three things before Kamala, the three noble and unassailable arts he had mastered: fasting—waiting—thinking. These had been his possessions, his power and strength, his sturdy staff; it was these three arts he had studied in the assiduous, laborious years of his youth, to the exclusion of all else. And now they had abandoned him; not one of them remained, not fasting, not waiting, not thinking. He had sacrificed them for the most miserable of things, the most transitory: for sensual pleasure, for luxury, for wealth! How strangely things had gone with him. And now, it appeared, he had truly become one of the child people.

Siddhartha considered his circumstances. Thinking did not come easily to him. He didn’t really feel like it, but he forced himself.

Now that all these utterly transitory things have slipped away from me, he thought, I am left under the sun just as I stood here once as a small child; I own nothing, know nothing, can do nothing, have learned nothing. How curious this is! Now that I am no longer young, now that my hair is already half gray and my strength is beginning to wane, I am starting over again from the beginning, from childhood! Again he had to smile. Yes, it certainly was strange, this fate of his! Things were going downhill with him, and now he was once more standing in the world, empty and naked and foolish. But he could not quite bring himself to feel sorrowful on this account. Indeed, he felt a tremendous urge to burst out laughing: laughter at himself, laughter at this strange, foolish world.

Things are going downhill with you! he said to himself, laughing, and as he said this his eyes came to rest upon the river, and he saw the river too going downhill, wandering always downhill and singing gaily all the while. This pleased him greatly, and he gave the river a friendly smile. Was this not the river in which he had wished to drown once, a hundred years before, or had it only been a dream?

Curious indeed this life of mine has been, he thought, it has taken such strange detours. As a boy I was concerned only with gods and sacrifices. As a youth I was concerned only with asceticism, with thinking and
samadhi;
I went searching for Brahman, revered the eternal in Atman. But as a young man I set off after the penitents, lived in the forest, suffered heat and frost, learned to go without food, taught my body to feel nothing. How glorious it was then when realization came to me in the doctrine of the great Buddha; I felt knowledge of the Oneness of the world coursing through me like my own blood. But even the Buddha and his great knowledge had to
be left behind. I went off and learned the pleasures of love from Kamala, learned to conduct business from Kamaswami, accumulated money, squandered money, learned to love my stomach, learned to indulge my senses. I had to spend many years losing my spirit, unlearning how to think, forgetting the great Oneness. Is it not as if I were slowly and circuitously turning from a man into a child, from a thinker into one of the child people? And still this path has been very good, and still the bird in my breast has not died. But what a path it has been! I have had to pass through so much foolishness, so much vice, so much error, so much nausea and disillusionment and wretchedness, merely in order to become a child again and be able to start over. But all of this was just and proper; my heart is saying yes, and my eyes are laughing. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the most foolish of all thoughts, the thought of suicide, to be able to experience grace, to hear
Om
again, to be able to sleep well and awaken well. I had to become a fool to find Atman within me once more. I had to sin to be able to live again. Where else may my path be taking me? How stupid it is, this path of mine; it goes in loops. For all I know it’s going in a circle. Let it lead where it will, I shall follow it.

He felt joy welling up gloriously within his breast.

Tell me, he asked his heart, what is the source of all this gladness? Might it come from this long, good slumber that has so restored me? Or from the word
Om
that I uttered? Or because I have escaped, because my flight was successful, because I am finally free again and standing like a child beneath the sky? Oh, how good it is to have fled, to have become free! How pure and beautiful the air is here, how good it is to breathe it! In the place I ran from, everything smelled of lotions, of spices, of wine, of excess, of lethargy. How I hated the world of rich men, of gluttons, of gamblers! How I hated myself for having remained so long in that hideous world!
How I hated myself; how I robbed myself, poisoned and tormented myself; how I made myself old and wicked! No, never again will I imagine, as I once enjoyed doing, that Siddhartha was a wise man! But one thing I did do well, one thing pleases me, which I must praise: All my self-hatred has now come to an end, along with that idiotic, desolate existence! I praise you, Siddhartha. After all these years of idiocy, you for once had a good idea; you did something; you heard the bird singing in your breast and followed it!

In this way he praised himself and felt pleased with himself, listening with curiosity to his stomach, which was rumbling with hunger. He had tasted his share of sorrow and misery these past days and times, tasted them and spit them out, eaten of them till he had reached the point of despair, of death. All was well. He might have remained a great while longer at Kamaswami’s side, earning money, squandering money, stuffing his belly and letting his soul thirst; he might have gone on living a great while longer in this cozy well-upholstered hell if that moment had not come: that moment of utter despondency and despair, that extreme moment when he was hanging above the flowing water, ready to destroy himself. That he had felt this despair, this deepest nausea, and yet had not succumbed to it, that the bird, the happy fountainhead and voice within him, had remained alive after all—it was because of all these things that he now felt such joy, that he laughed, that his face was beaming beneath his gray hair.

It is good, he thought, to taste for oneself all that it is necessary to know. Already as a child I learned that worldly desires and wealth were not good things. I have known this for a long time but have only now experienced it. And now I do know it, know it not only with my memory but with my eyes, with my heart, and with my stomach. How glad I am to know it!

For a long time he contemplated his transformation, listening
as the bird sang with joy Had this bird not died within him, had he not felt its death? No, something else had died within him, something that had desired death for a long time. Was it not the very thing that he had once, in his ardent years as a penitent, wanted to kill? Was it not his Self, his nervous, proud little ego that he had done battle with for so many years, that had bested him again and again, that was always back again each time he killed it off, forbidding joy and feeling fear? Was it not this that had finally met its death today, here in the forest beside this lovely river? Was it not because of this death that he was now like a child, so full of trust, so devoid of fear, so full of joy?

And now it dawned on Siddhartha why, as a Brahmin and as a penitent, he had struggled in vain to subdue this ego. A surfeit of knowledge had hindered him, too many holy verses, too many rules for the sacrifices, too much self-castigation, too much activity and striving! He had been full of pride—always the cleverest, always the most eager, always a step ahead of all the others, always the knowledgeable spiritual one, always the priest or wise man. His Self had crept into this priesthood, this pride, this spirituality, and made itself at home there, growing plump, all the while he thought he was killing it off with his fasting and penitence. Now he could see it, and he saw that the secret voice had been right: No teacher would ever have been able to deliver him. This is why he’d had to go out into the world and lose himself in pleasure and power, in women and money, why he’d had to become a tradesman, a gambler, a drinker, an avaricious creature, until the priest and the Samana within him were dead. This is why he’d had to go on enduring these hateful years, enduring the nausea, the emptiness, the senselessness of a desolate, lost existence, enduring to the end, to the point of bitter despair, until even the lecher Siddhartha, the greedy Siddhartha, could die. He
had
died, and a new Siddhartha had awoken
from sleep. He too would grow old; he too would have to die someday. Siddhartha was transitory, every shape was transitory. Today, though, he was young; he was a child, the new Siddhartha, and was full of joy.

Thinking these thoughts, he listened with a smile to his stomach, listened with gratitude to a buzzing bee. Gaily he looked into the flowing river: Never had a body of water so pleased him, never had he perceived the voice and the allegory of the moving water so powerfully and beautifully. It seemed to him that the river had something special to say to him, something he did not yet know, something still awaiting him. In this river Siddhartha had wished to drown, and in it the old, weary, despairing Siddhartha did indeed drown this day. The new Siddhartha, however, felt a deep love for this flowing water and resolved not to leave it again so soon.

I shall remain here beside this river, Siddhartha thought; it is the river I once crossed on my way to the child people. A kind ferryman took me across; I shall go to see him. From his hut he once sent me on my path to a new life that has now grown old and died. Let the path and the life I am embarking on now have their start here as well!

Lovingly he gazed into the flowing water, into the transparent green, into the crystal lines of its mysterious patterning. He saw bright pearls rising from its depths, silent bubbles floating on its surface, the blue of the sky reproduced in it. With a thousand eyes the river gazed at him: with green eyes, white eyes, crystal eyes, sky-blue eyes. How he loved this water, how it enchanted him, how grateful he was to it! In his heart he heard the voice that was awakening once more, and it said to him, Love this water! Remain beside it! Learn from it! Oh, yes, he wanted to learn from it; he wanted to listen to it. One who understood this water and its secrets, it seemed to him, would understand many other things as well, many secrets, all secrets.

But of all the water’s secrets, he saw today only a single
one—one that struck his soul. He saw that this water flowed and flowed, it was constantly flowing, and yet it was always there; it was always eternally the same and yet new at every moment! Oh, to be able to grasp this, to understand it! He did not understand it, did not grasp it; he felt only an inkling stirring within him, distant memory, divine voices.

Siddhartha got to his feet; the gnawing hunger in his mid-section was becoming unbearable. Lost in thought, he wandered farther along the riverbank, walking upstream, listening to the current and to the growling hunger in his belly.

When he reached the ferry, the boat was lying ready, and the very same ferryman who had once transported the young Samana across the river was standing in the boat. Siddhartha recognized him; he too had greatly aged.

“Will you ferry me across the river?” Siddhartha asked.

The ferryman, astonished to see so elegant a gentleman alone and journeying on foot, took him into the boat and pushed off from shore.

“What a beautiful life you have chosen,” the passenger said. “It must be lovely to live each day beside this water and ply your oar upon it.”

Smiling, the ferryman rocked with the boat as he rowed. “It is lovely, master, as you say. But is not every life, every work, lovely?”

“That may be. But I envy you yours.”

“Oh, you might quickly lose your taste for it. It is nothing for people who wear fine clothes.”

Siddhartha laughed. “This is not the first time I have been scrutinized this day on account of my clothing, scrutinized with distrust. Ferryman, would you accept these clothes, which are a burden to me? For you should know that I have no money with which to pay your fare.”

“The gentleman is jesting.” The ferryman laughed.

“It is no jest, friend. You see, this is not the first time you
have ferried me across these waters in your boat out of charity. Show me the same kindness today, and accept my clothing for your troubles.”