Siddhartha (5 page)

Thus did Gautama stroll toward the town to collect alms, and the two Samanas recognized him solely by his perfect calm, the stillness of his figure, in which there was no searching, no desire, no imitation, no effort to be discerned, only light and peace.

“Today we shall hear the doctrine from his lips,” Govinda said.

Siddhartha gave no reply. He felt no great curiosity to hear this doctrine. He did not think it would teach him anything new; after all, he, like Govinda, had already heard the substance of the Buddha’s teachings over and over again, if only from second- and thirdhand reports. Nonetheless he scrutinized
Gautama’s head, his shoulders, his feet, his quietly dangling hand, and it seemed to him that every joint of every finger on this hand was doctrine; it spoke, breathed, wafted, and glinted Truth. This man, this Buddha, was genuine down to the gestures of his littlest finger. This man was holy. Never had Siddhartha revered a man like this, never had he loved a man as he loved this one.

The two of them followed the Buddha into town and then returned in silence, for they intended to abstain from food that day. They saw Gautama return, saw him take his meal in the circle of his disciples—what he ate would not have satisfied a bird—and saw him withdraw into the shade of the mango trees.

And in the evening, when the day’s heat had abated and everyone around the camp came to life and gathered together, they heard the Buddha teach. They heard his voice, and it too was flawless, flawlessly calm and full of peace. Gautama preached the doctrine of suffering, of the origins of suffering, of the path to the cessation of suffering. His words flowed quiet and clear. Suffering was life, the world was full of sorrow, but redemption from sorrow had been found: He who trod the path of the Buddha would find redemption.

With a soft yet firm voice, the Sublime One spoke, preaching the four basic principles, preaching the eightfold path. Patiently he trod the familiar path of his doctrine, of the examples, the repetitions, his high clear voice floating above his listeners like a light, like a starry sky.

When the Buddha—night had already fallen—completed his speech, a number of pilgrims stepped forward and asked to be accepted into his fellowship; they wished to take refuge in his doctrine. And Gautama took them in, saying, “You have heard the doctrine; it has been preached to you. Join our number, then, and walk in holiness, that an end may be put to all sorrow.”

And lo! Govinda too stepped forward, shy Govinda, and said, “I too take refuge in the Sublime One and his doctrine,” and asked that he be taken in as a disciple, and he was taken in.

Directly afterward, when the Buddha had retired for the night, Govinda turned to Siddhartha and spoke earnestly. “Siddhartha, it is not fitting for me to reproach you. Both of us heard the Sublime One; both of us heard his teachings. Govinda heard the doctrine and has taken refuge in it. But you, my revered friend, will you not also tread the path of redemption? Must you hesitate, must you persist in waiting?”

Siddhartha awoke as if from slumber when he heard Govinda’s words. For a long time he gazed into Govinda’s face. Then he said softly, in a voice free of mockery, “Govinda, my friend, now you have taken the step, now you have chosen the path. Always, O Govinda, you have been my friend, and always you have walked one step behind me. Often I have thought, Will not Govinda one day take a step on his own without me, as his own soul commands? And behold, now you have become a man and are choosing your own path. May you follow it to its end, O my friend! May you find redemption!”

Govinda, who did not yet fully comprehend, repeated his question with a touch of impatience. “Tell me, I beg you, my friend! Tell me, as it cannot be otherwise, that you too, my learned companion, will take your refuge in the sublime Buddha!”

Siddhartha placed his hand on Govinda’s shoulder. “You did not hear my blessing, Govinda. I shall repeat it: May you follow this path to its end! May you find redemption!”

At this moment Govinda realized that his friend had left him, and he began to weep. “Siddhartha!” he cried out mournfully.

Siddhartha said to him in a kind voice, “Do not forget, Govinda, that you now belong to the Samanas of the Buddha! You have renounced your birthplace and parents, renounced
your origins and property, renounced your own will, renounced friendship. This is what the doctrine instructs; this is the will of the Sublime One and it is what you yourself have chosen. Tomorrow, Govinda, I shall take leave of you.”

The friends continued their stroll through the coppice for a long time; for a long time they lay and could not find sleep. Again and again Govinda pressed his friend to tell him why he would not take refuge in Gautama’s teachings, what errors he saw in his doctrine. But Siddhartha turned him away each time, saying, “Be satisfied, Govinda! The teachings of the Sublime One are excellent; how could I find an error in them?”

Very early the next morning, a follower of the Buddha, one of his oldest monks, walked through the garden summoning all the new arrivals who had taken refuge in the doctrine of the Buddha, so as to give them their yellow robes and instruct them in the first lessons and duties of their state. Govinda broke away from them, embraced the friend of his youth one last time, then joined the procession of novices.

Siddhartha wandered through the grove, deep in thought.

There he came upon Gautama, the Sublime One, and as he greeted him with reverence and found the gaze of the Buddha so full of kindness and peace, the youth plucked up the courage to ask the Venerable One’s leave to address him. Silently the Sublime One nodded his consent.

Said Siddhartha, “Yesterday, O Sublime One, I had the privilege of hearing your marvelous teachings. Together with my friend I came from far away to hear this doctrine. And now my friend will remain among your followers; he has taken refuge in you, while I am once more embarking on my pilgrimage.”

“As you please,” the Sublime One said courteously.

“My words are all too bold,” Siddhartha went on, “but I wish not to leave the Sublime One without having shared my
thoughts with him frankly. Would the Venerable One honor me with his audience a moment longer?”

Silently the Buddha nodded his consent.

Said Siddhartha, “There is one thing in particular, O Most Venerable One, that I have admired in your teachings. Everything in your doctrine is utterly clear, is proven; you show the world as a perfect chain, a chain never and nowhere interrupted, an eternal chain forged of causes and effects. Never has this been so clearly beheld, never so irrefutably presented. In truth, it must make the heart of any Brahmin beat faster when, through your teachings, he is able to glimpse the world as a perfect continuum, free of gaps, clear as a crystal, not dependent on chance, not dependent on gods. Whether this world be good or evil, and life in it sorrow or joy—let us set this question aside, for it is quite possibly not essential. But the oneness of the world, the continuum of all occurrences, the enfolding of all things great and small within a single stream, a single law of causes, of becoming and of death, this shines brightly forth from your sublime doctrine, O Perfect One. But now, according to your very same doctrine, this oneness and logical consistency of all things is nevertheless interrupted at one point; there is a tiny hole through which something strange is flowing into this world of oneness, something new, something that wasn’t there before and that cannot be shown and cannot be proven: This is your doctrine of the overcoming of the world, of redemption. With this tiny hole, this tiny gap, the entire eternal unified law of the world is smashed to pieces, rendered invalid. May you forgive me for giving voice to this objection.”

Silently, Gautama had heard him out, unmoved. In his kind, courteous, and clear voice, the Perfect One now spoke. “You have heard my teachings, O Brahmin’s son, and it is well for you that you have thought so deeply about them. You have found a gap in them, an error. May you continue to contemplate
it. But allow me to warn you, O inquisitive one, about the thicket of opinions and quibbling over words. Opinions are of little account; be they lovely or displeasing, clever or foolish, anyone can subscribe to or dismiss them. But the doctrine you heard from me is not my opinion, and its goal is not to explain the world to the inquisitive. It has a different goal; its goal is redemption from suffering. It is this redemption Gautama teaches, nothing else.”

“May you not be angry with me, O Sublime One,” the youth replied. “It is not to quarrel, to quibble over words, that I spoke to you thus. Truly you are right; opinions are of little account. But let me say this as well: Never for a moment have I doubted you. I never doubted for a moment that you are the Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal, toward which so many thousands of Brahmins and Brahmins’ sons are striving. You have found redemption from death. It came to you as you were engaged in a search of your own, upon a path of your own; it came to you through thinking, through meditation, through knowledge, through enlightenment. Not through doctrine did it come to you. And this is my thought, O Sublime One: No one will ever attain redemption through doctrine! Never, O Venerable One, will you be able to convey in words and show and say through your teachings what happened to you in the hour of your enlightenment. Much is contained in the doctrine of the enlightened Buddha; many are taught by it to live in an upright way, to shun evil. But there is one thing this so clear and venerable doctrine does not contain: It does not contain the secret of what the Sublime One himself experienced, he alone among the hundreds of thousands. This is what I thought and realized when I heard the doctrine. This is why I am continuing my journey—not in order to seek a different, better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave behind me all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal alone or perish. But often
will I remember this day, O Sublime One, and this hour when my eyes beheld a holy man.”

The eyes of the Buddha gazed in stillness at the ground; his unfathomable face shone in stillness and perfect equanimity.

“May your thoughts,” the Venerable One said slowly, “not be in error! May you reach your goal! But tell me: Have you seen the horde of Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in the doctrine? And do you believe, unknown Samana, do you believe they would all be better off if they abandoned the doctrine and returned to the life of the world and its pleasures?”

“Far be it from me to entertain such a thought!” Siddhartha cried. “May they all remain faithful to the doctrine, may they reach their goal! It is not fitting for me to pass judgment on another’s life! Only for myself, for myself alone, must I judge, must I choose, must I reject. Redemption from Self is what we Samanas seek, O Sublime One. If I were one of your disciples, O Venerable One, what I fear might happen is that my Self would only apparently, deceptively find peace and be redeemed, but that in truth it would live on and become huge, for I would have made the doctrine and my adherence to it and my love for you and the fellowship of the monks my Self!”

With a half smile, with imperturbable brightness and amicability, Gautama looked directly into the face of the stranger and bade him farewell with a scarcely visible gesture.

“You are clever, O Samana,” said the Venerable One. “You speak cleverly, my friend. Be on your guard against too much cleverness!”

The Buddha wandered off, but his gaze and his half smile remained forever engraved in Siddhartha’s memory.

Never have I seen a man gaze and smile like this, sit and walk like this, he thought; I myself would like to be able to gaze and smile, sit and walk in just such a way, so freely, so
venerably, so secretly, so openly, so childishly and mysteriously. Truly, only a man who has penetrated the innermost core of his being can gaze and walk like that. Very well, I too will seek to penetrate the innermost core of my being.

I have seen one man, thought Siddhartha, just a single man before whom I have had to cast down my eyes. I do not wish to cast my eyes down before another ever again. Never will I be tempted by any other doctrine, for the doctrine of this man did not tempt me.

The Buddha has robbed me, Siddhartha thought, he has robbed me, and yet he has given me so much more. He has robbed me of my friend, the friend who believed in me and now believes in him, who was my shadow and is now Gautama’s shadow. But he has given me Siddhartha, given me myself.

When Siddhartha left the grove in which the Buddha, the Perfect One, remained behind, in which Govinda remained behind, he felt that his former life, too, was remaining behind him in this grove. Immersed in deep contemplation of this feeling, which had taken hold of him completely, he walked slowly away, allowing himself to sink to the bottom of this feeling as if through deep water, down to where the causes lay. Recognizing the causes, it seemed to him, was just what thought was; it was only in this way that feelings gave rise to insights and, rather than being lost, took on substance and began to radiate what was within them.

Walking slowly away, Siddhartha realized he was a youth no longer; he had become a man. He realized that something had left him, the way a snake’s old skin leaves it. Something that had accompanied him throughout his youth and been a part of him was no longer present: the desire to have teachers and hear doctrine. He had left behind the last teacher to appear to him on his path, this highest and wisest of teachers, the holiest one, Buddha; he’d had to part even from him, unable to accept his doctrine.

Thinking, he walked ever more slowly and asked himself, What is it now that you were hoping to learn from doctrines and teachers, and what is it that they—who taught you so much—were unable to teach you? And, he decided, It was the Self whose meaning and nature I wished to learn. It was the Self I wished to escape from, wished to overcome. But I was unable to overcome it, I could only trick it, could only run away from it and hide. Truly, not a single thing in all the world has so occupied my thoughts as this Self of mine, this riddle: that I am alive and that I am One, am different and separate from all others, that I am Siddhartha! And there is not a thing in the world about which I know less than about myself, about Siddhartha!