Siddhartha (3 page)

Often he recited to himself the words of a Chandogya Upanishad: “Verily, the name of the Brahman is Satyam; truly, he who knows this enters each day into the heavenly world.” It often seemed near at hand, this heavenly world, but never once had he succeeded in reaching it, in quenching that final thirst. And of all the wise and wisest men he knew and whose teachings he enjoyed, not a single one had succeeded in reaching it, this heavenly world; not one had fully quenched that eternal thirst.

“Govinda,” Siddhartha said to his friend. “Govinda, beloved one, come under the banyan tree with me; let us practice
samadhi
.”

To the banyan they went and sat down beneath it, Siddhartha here and Govinda at a distance of twenty paces. As he sat down, ready to speak the
Om
, Siddhartha murmured this verse:

When the usual time for the meditation exercise had passed, Govinda arose. Evening had come; it was time to begin the ablutions of the eventide. He called Siddhartha’s name; Siddhartha gave no answer. Siddhartha sat rapt, his eyes fixed unmoving upon a far distant point; the tip of his tongue stuck out from between his teeth; he seemed not to be breathing. Thus he sat, cloaked in
samadhi
, thinking
Om
, his soul an arrow on its way to Brahman.

One day, Samanas passed through Siddhartha’s town: ascetic pilgrims, three gaunt lifeless men, neither old nor young, with bloody, dust-covered shoulders, all but naked, singed by the sun, shrouded in isolation, foreign to the world and hostile to it, strangers and wizened jackals among men. The hot breath of air that followed them bore the scent of silent passion, a duty that meant destruction, the merciless eradication of ego.

In the evening, when the hour of contemplation had passed, Siddhartha said to Govinda, “Tomorrow morning, my friend, Siddhartha will go to the Samanas. He will become a Samana.”

Govinda turned pale when he heard these words and saw in his friend’s impassive face a resolve as unwavering as an arrow shot from the bow. At once, with a single glance, Govinda realized: Now it is beginning, now Siddhartha is on his way, now his destiny is beginning to bud and, along with it, mine as well. And he turned as pale as a dried-out banana peel.

“Oh, Siddhartha,” he cried, “will your father permit this?”

Siddhartha glanced over at him like a man awakening. Swift as an arrow he read Govinda’s soul, read the fear, read the devotion.

“Oh, Govinda,” he said softly, “let us not squander words. Tomorrow at daybreak I begin the life of a Samana. Speak no more of it.”

Siddhartha went into the room where his father was seated upon a mat made of bast fiber; he came up behind him and remained standing there until his father felt there was someone behind him. “Is that you, Siddhartha?” the Brahmin said. “Then say what you have come here to say.”

Said Siddhartha, “With your permission, my father. I have come to tell you that it is my wish to leave your house tomorrow and join the ascetics. I must become a Samana. May my father not be opposed to my wish.”

The Brahmin was silent and remained silent so long that the stars drifted in the small window and changed their shape before the silence in the room reached its end. Mute and motionless stood the son with his arms crossed, mute and motionless upon his mat sat the father, and the stars moved across the sky. Then the father said, “It is not fitting for a Brahmin to utter sharp, angry words. But my heart is filled with displeasure. I do not wish to hear this request from your lips a second time.”

Slowly the Brahmin rose to his feet. Siddhartha stood in silence with his arms crossed.

“Why do you wait here?” the father asked.

“You know why I wait,” Siddhartha replied.

Full of displeasure, the father left the room; full of displeasure, he went to his bed and lay down.

An hour later, as no sleep would enter his eyes, the Brahmin got up, paced back and forth, and went out of the house. He looked through the small window of the room and saw Siddhartha standing there, his arms crossed, unmoving. The light cloth of his tunic was shimmering pale. His heart full of disquiet, the father went back to bed.

An hour later, as no sleep would yet enter his eyes, the Brahmin got up once more, paced back and forth, and went out of the house. The moon had risen. He looked through the window into the room; there stood Siddhartha, unmoving, his
arms crossed, moonlight gleaming on his bare shins. His heart full of apprehension, the father returned to bed.

An hour later, and again two hours later, he went out and looked through the small window to see Siddhartha standing there: in the moonlight, in the starlight, in the darkness. He went again from hour to hour, in silence, looked into the room, and saw his son standing there unmoving, and his heart filled with anger, with disquiet, with trepidation, with sorrow.

And in the last hour of night before day began, he got up once more, went into the room, and saw the youth standing there; he looked tall to him and like a stranger.

“Siddhartha,” he said, “why do you wait here?”

“You know why.”

“Will you remain standing here, waiting, until day comes, noon comes, evening comes?”

“I will remain standing here, waiting.”

“You will grow tired, Siddhartha.”

“I will grow tired.”

“You will fall asleep, Siddhartha.”

“I will not fall asleep.”

“You will die, Siddhartha.”

“I will die.”

“And you would rather die than obey your father?”

“Siddhartha has always obeyed his father.”

“So you will give up your plan?”

“Siddhartha will do as his father instructs him.”

The first light of day fell into the room. The Brahmin saw that Siddhartha’s knees were trembling quietly. In Siddhartha’s face he saw no trembling; his eyes gazed into the distance straight before him. The father realized then that Siddhartha was no longer with him in the place of his birth. His son had already left him behind.

The father touched Siddhartha’s shoulder.

“You will go,” he said. “Go to the forest and be a Samana. If
you find bliss in the forest, come and teach it to me. If you find disappointment, return to me and we will once more sacrifice to the gods side by side. Now go and kiss your mother; tell her where you are going. It is time for me to go to the river and begin my first ablutions.”

He took his hand from his son’s shoulder and went out. Siddhartha lurched to one side when he tried to walk. Forcing his limbs into submission, he bowed before his father and went to find his mother to do as his father had instructed.

In the first light of dawn, as he was slowly leaving the town on his stiff legs, a shadow rose up beside the last hut, a shadow that had been crouching there and now joined the pilgrim: Govinda.

“You came,” said Siddhartha, and smiled.

“I came,” Govinda said.

In the evening of this day they caught up with the ascetics, the gaunt Samanas, and offered to accompany them, promising obedience. They were accepted.

Siddhartha gave his robe to a poor Brahmin on the road. He now wore only his loincloth and an earth-hued wrap that had been cut but not sewn. He ate only once a day, and only food that had not been cooked. He fasted for fifteen days. He fasted for twenty-eight days. The flesh vanished from his thighs and cheeks. Hot tears flickered in his enlarged eyes, the nails grew long on his withering fingers, and from his chin grew a dry, patchy beard. His gaze was like ice when he came upon women; his mouth twitched with contempt when he walked through a town full of elegantly clothed people. He observed merchants doing business, princes on their way to hunt, the bereaved mourning their dead, whores soliciting, doctors tending to patients, priests choosing the day when the seeds would be sown, lovers making love, mothers nursing their infants—and all these things were unworthy of being looked upon by him; it was all a lie, it all stank, stank of lies, it all gave the illusion of meaning and happiness and beauty,
and all of it was just putrefaction that no one would admit to. Bitter was the taste of the world. Life was a torment.

Before him, Siddhartha saw a single goal: to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of want, empty of dream, empty of joy and sorrow. To let the ego perish, to be “I” no longer, to find peace with an empty heart and await the miraculous with thoughts free of Self. This was his goal. When all ego had been overcome, had perished, when every longing and every drive in his heart had fallen silent, only then could the Utmost awaken, the great secret, that innermost core of being that is no longer Self.

Silent, Siddhartha stood beneath the sun’s vertical rays, glowing with pain, glowing with thirst—stood there until he no longer felt pain or thirst. Silent, he stood in monsoon season; water trickled from his hair onto freezing shoulders, over freezing hips and legs, but the penitent stood until shoulders and legs no longer froze, until they fell silent and were still. Silent, he crouched among thornbushes while blood dripped from his burning skin and pus dripped from open wounds; Siddhartha remained there unyielding, remained motionless until no more blood flowed, nothing pricked any longer, nothing burned.

Siddhartha sat upright and learned to conserve his breath, learned to get by with little air, learned to shut off his breathing. He learned, beginning with his breath, to slow the beating of his heart, learned to decrease his heartbeats until there were few of them, almost none at all.

Instructed by the eldest of the Samanas, Siddhartha practiced the eradication of ego, practiced
samadhi
according to new Samana rules. A heron flew over the bamboo forest—and Siddhartha received the heron into his soul, flew over forests and mountains, was heron, ate fish, felt the pangs of heron hunger, spoke in heron squawks, died a heron death. A dead jackal lay on the sandy bank—and Siddhartha’s soul slipped
into the corpse, was dead jackal, lay on the beach, grew bloated, stank, decayed, was torn apart by hyenas and flayed by vultures, became a skeleton, became dust, blew into the fields. And Siddhartha’s soul returned—it had died, had decayed, become dust, it had tasted the bleak euphoria of the cyclical journey, and then, freshly thirsty, it waited, crouching like a hunter for the gap in the cycle where escape was possible, where the end of causality began, an eternity free of sorrow. He killed off his senses, he killed off his memory, he slipped from his Self to enter a thousand new shapes—was animal, was cadaver, was stone, was wood, was water—and each time he awakened he found himself once more. The sun would be shining, or else the moon, and he was once more a Self oscillating in the cycle; he felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new thirst.

Siddhartha learned many things from the Samanas; he learned to walk many paths leading away from the Self. He walked the path of eradication of ego through pain, through the voluntary suffering and overcoming of pain, of hunger, of thirst, of weariness. He walked the path of eradication of ego through meditation, using thought to empty the mind of all its notions. These and other paths he learned to walk. A thousand times he left his Self behind, spent hours and days at a time liberated from it. But just as all these paths led away from the Self, the end of each of them returned him to it. Even if Siddhartha fled the Self a thousand times, lingering in nothingness, in the animal, in stone, his return was unavoidable, the hour inescapable when he found himself once more, in sunlight or moonlight, in shade or rain, and once more he was Self, was Siddhartha, and once more he felt the torments of the cycle imposed on him.

Beside him lived Govinda, his shadow, walking the same paths, subjecting himself to the same exertions. Rarely did they speak of anything beyond what duty and their exercises
required. Sometimes they walked together through the villages to beg food for themselves and their teachers.

“What say you, Govinda,” Siddhartha inquired on one such excursion, “what say you: Are we now farther than we were? Have we reached goals?”

Govinda replied, “We have learned and we are learning. You will be a great Samana, Siddhartha. You have mastered each exercise swiftly and have often been admired by the elder Samanas. You will be a holy man one day, O Siddhartha.”

Said Siddhartha, “This is not how matters appear to me, my friend. Everything I have learned to this day from the Samanas, O Govinda, I might have learned more quickly and simply. In some bar in a street full of whores, my friend, among the cart drivers and dice players, I might have learned these things.”

Govinda said, “Siddhartha is joking with me. How could you have learned
samadhi
, the holding of the breath, the insensibility to hunger and pain among such miserable creatures?”

But Siddhartha spoke softly, as if speaking to himself. “What is meditation? What is leaving the body? What is fasting? What is holding the breath? It is all an escape from Self, it is a brief respite from the torment of being Self, a brief numbing of the pain and senselessness of life. This is the same escape, the same numbness the ox driver finds at the inn when he drinks a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut milk. Then he no longer feels his Self, he no longer feels the pain of life; he briefly finds numbness. Dozing off over his bowl of rice wine, he finds just the same thing that Siddhartha and Govinda find when they manage to flee their bodies with the help of lengthy exercises so as to linger in that-which-is-not-Self This is how it is, Govinda.”

Govinda replied, “So you say, O friend, and yet you know
that Siddhartha is no driver of oxen and a Samana is no drunkard. It is surely true that a drinker finds numbness, surely true that he briefly finds respite and escape, but then he returns from this delusion and finds all as it was. He has not grown wiser, has not gathered wisdom, has not ascended to a higher rung.”

And Siddhartha, smiling, replied, “This I do not know; I have never been a drinker. But that I, Siddhartha, find numbness only briefly in my exercises and my
samadhi
and am just as far removed from wisdom, from redemption, as when I was a child in my mother’s womb, this I do know, Govinda, and know it well.”