Siddhartha Read online

  Siddhartha listened. He was now completely and utterly immersed in his listening, utterly empty, utterly receptive; he felt he had now succeeded in learning how to listen. He had heard all these things often now, these many voices in the river; today it sounded new. Already he could no longer distinguish the many voices, could not distinguish the gay from the weeping, the childish from the virile; they all belonged together, the yearning laments and the wise man's laughter, the cry of anger and the moans of the dying; they were all one, all of them interlinked and interwoven, bound together in a thousand ways. And all of this together--all the voices, all the goals, all the longing, all the suffering, all the pleasure, everything good and everything bad--all of it together was the world. All of it together was the river of occurrences, the music of life. And when Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this thousand-voiced song, when he listened neither for the sorrow nor for the laughter, when he did not attach his soul to any one voice and enter into it with his ego but rather heard all of them, heard the whole, the oneness--then the great song of the thousand voices consisted only of a single word: Om, perfection.

  Do you hear? Vasudeva's gaze asked once more.

  Vasudeva's smile gleamed brightly; over the furrows of his aged countenance floated a luminous radiance, just as the Om floated radiant above all the voices of the river. His smile gleamed as he regarded his friend, and now Siddhartha's face too gleamed brightly with the same smile. His wound blossomed; his sorrow shone; his Self had flowed into the Oneness.

  In this hour Siddhartha ceased to do battle with fate, ceased to suffer. Upon his face blossomed the gaiety of knowledge that is no longer opposed by any will, that knows perfection, that is in agreement with the river of occurrences, with the current of life, full of empathy, full of fellow feeling, given over to the current, part of the Oneness.

  When Vasudeva arose from his seat on the riverbank, when he looked into Siddhartha's eyes and saw the gaiety of knowledge gleaming in them, he touched his friend's shoulder quietly with his hand in his careful and tender way and said, "I have waited for this hour, dearest friend. Now that it has come, let me go. For a long time I have waited, for a long time I have been the ferryman Vasudeva. Now it is enough. Farewell, hut; farewell, river; farewell, Siddhartha!"

  Siddhartha bowed deeply before the one taking his leave.

  "I knew this," he said softly. "You will go into the forest?" "I am going into the forest; I am going into Oneness," said Vasudeva, radiant.

  Radiant, he departed; Siddhartha watched him go. With deep joy, with deep solemnity he watched him go: saw each of his steps full of peace, saw his head full of splendor, saw his figure full of light.

  GOVINDA

  In the company of other monks, Govinda once rested on one of his journeys in the pleasure grove that the courtesan Kamala had given to the disciples of Gautama. There he heard tell of an old ferryman who lived a day's journey away beside the river and was considered by many to be a wise man. When it was time for Govinda to continue on his way, he chose the path to the ferry, eager to see this ferryman. For although he had lived all his life according to the rules and was regarded with reverence by the younger monks on account of his age and his modesty, the restlessness and searching had not yet been extinguished in his heart.

  He went to the river and asked the old man to take him across, and when they got out of the boat on the opposite shore, he said, "You have shown us monks and pilgrims much kindness; many of us have been ferried across the river by you. Are you not also, ferryman, a seeker in search of the right path?"

  Siddhartha, his old eyes smiling, said, "You call yourself a seeker, O Venerable One, and yet are advanced in years and wear the robe of the monks of Gautama?"

  "Indeed, I am old," Govinda said, "but I have not stopped searching Never will I cease to search; this seems to be my destiny. You too, it seems to me, have done some searching. Will you speak a word to me, Revered One?"

  Siddhartha said, "What could I have to say to you, Venerable One? Perhaps this, that you are seeking all too much? That all your seeking is making you unable to find?"

  "How is this?" Govinda asked.

  "When a person seeks," Siddhartha said, "it can easily happen that his eye sees only the thing he is seeking; he is incapable of finding anything, of allowing anything to enter into him, because he is always thinking only of what he is looking for, because he has a goal, because he is possessed by his goal. Seeking means having a goal. Finding means being free, being open, having no goal. You, Venerable One, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for, striving to reach your goal, you overlook many things that lie close before your eyes."

  "I don't quite understand yet," Govinda said. "How do you mean this?"

  Siddhartha replied, "Once, O Venerable One, many years ago, you came to this river, and beside the river found a sleeping man, and you sat down beside him to watch over his sleep. But you did not, O Govinda, recognize the sleeper."

  Astonished, like a man bewitched, the monk looked into the ferryman's eyes.

  "Are you Siddhartha?" he asked, his voice shy. "I would not have recognized you this time, either! With all my heart I greet you, Siddhartha, and am delighted to see you once more! You have changed a great deal, my friend. And so now you have become a ferryman?"

  Siddhartha gave a friendly laugh. "A ferryman, yes. Some people, Govinda, have to change a great deal, have to wear all sorts of garments, and I am one of these, my dear friend. I welcome you, Govinda; come spend the night in my hut."

  Govinda spent the night in the hut and slept upon the bed that had once belonged to Vasudeva. He had many questions for the friend of his youth; Siddhartha had to tell him many things.

  When, the next morning, it was time for Govinda to set off again on his day's journey, he said these words, not without hesitation: "Before I set off on my way again, Siddhartha, allow me one last question. Do you have a doctrine? Is there a belief or some knowledge that guides you, that helps you to live and do what is right?"

  Said Siddhartha, "As you know, my dear friend, I began to distrust doctrines and teachers already as a young man, in the days when we were living among the penitents in the forest, and I turned my back on them. I have stuck to this. Nonetheless I have had many teachers since then. A beautiful courtesan was my teacher for a long time, and a wealthy merchant was my teacher, and a few dice players. Once, even an itinerant disciple of the Buddha was my teacher; he sat beside me when I had fallen asleep in the forest on a pilgrimage. From him as well I learned; to him as well I am grateful, very grateful. Most of all, however, I learned here, from this river, and from my predecessor, the ferryman Vasudeva. He was a very simple man, Vasudeva. He was not a thinker, but he knew what is necessary to know; just as much as Gautama he was a Perfect One, a saint."

  Govinda said, "Even now, Siddhartha, you retain some fondness for mockery, it seems to me. I believe you and know that you never followed a teacher. But have you not yourself found, if not a doctrine, then at least certain thoughts, certain insights that belong to you and help you to live? If you were able to tell me something of them, you would fill my heart with joy"

  Said Siddhartha, "I have had thoughts, yes, and insights, now and again. Sometimes, for an hour or a day, I have felt knowledge within me, just as one feels life within one's heart. There were several thoughts, but it would be difficult for me to hand them on to you. You see, my Govinda, here is one of the thoughts I have found: Wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to pass on always sounds like foolishness."

  "Do you speak in jest?" Govinda asked.

  "It is no jest. I am saying what I have found. One can pass on knowledge but not wisdom. One can find wisdom, one can live it, one can be supported by it, one can work wonders with it, but one cannot speak it or teach it. I sometimes suspected this even as a youth; it is what drove me from my teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, that you will think neither a joke nor foolishness; it is my best thought. It says: The opposite o
f every truth is just as true! For this is so: A truth can always only be uttered and cloaked in words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided that can be thought in thoughts and said with words, everything one-sided, everything half, everything is lacking wholeness, roundness, oneness. When the sublime Gautama spoke of the world in his doctrine, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into illusion and truth, into suffering and redemption. This is the only way to go about it; there is no other way for a person who would teach. The world itself, however, the Being all around us and within us, is never one-sided. Never is a person, or a deed, purely Sansara or purely Nirvana, never is a person utterly holy or utterly sinful. It only seems so because we are subject to the illusion that time exists as something real. Time is not real, Govinda. I have experienced this again and again. And if time is not real, then the distance that appears to lie between world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between evil and good, is also an illusion."

  "How can this be?" Govinda asked anxiously.

  "Listen well, my dear friend, listen well! The sinner who I am and who you are is a sinner, but one day he will again be Brahman, he will one day reach Nirvana, will be a Buddha--and now behold: This one day is an illusion, it is only an allegory! The sinner is not on his way to the state of Buddhahood, he is not caught up in a process of developing, although our thought cannot imagine things in any other way. No, in this sinner the future Buddha already exists--now, today--all his future is already there. In him, in yourself, in everyone you must worship the future Buddha, the potential Buddha, the hidden Buddha. The world, friend Govinda, is not imperfect, nor is it in the middle of a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect in every moment; every sin already carries forgiveness within it, all little children already carry their aged forms within them, all infants death, all dying men eternal life. It is not possible for anyone to see how far any other person has come along his path. Buddha waits within the robber and the dice player, and the robber waits in the Brahmin. In the deepest meditation we have the possibility of negating time, of seeing all life, all having-been, being, and becoming, as simultaneous, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman. Therefore everything that is appears good to me. Death appears to me like life, sin like holiness, cleverness like folly; everything must be just as it is, everything requires only my assent, only my willingness, my loving approval, and for me it is good and can never harm me. I experienced by observing my own body and my own soul that I sorely needed sin, sorely needed concupiscence, needed greed, vanity, and the most shameful despair to learn to stop resisting, to learn to love the world and stop comparing it to some world I only wished for and imagined, some sort of perfection I myself had dreamed up, but instead to let it be as it was and to love it and be happy to belong to it.

  "These, O Govinda, are a few of the thoughts that have come into my mind."

  Siddhartha bent down, picked up a stone from the ground, and weighed it in his hand.

  "This here," he said, playing with it, "is a stone, and in a certain amount of time it will perhaps be earth and from earth it will become a plant or an animal or man. Earlier I would have said, 'This stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of Maya; but since in the cycle of transformations it might even become human and spirit, I must give it due consideration.' This is how I might have thought once. Today, however, I think, This stone is a stone; it is also animal, it is also God, it is also Buddha. I do not honor it and love it because it might one day become this or that, but because it already and always is all things--and precisely this--that it is a stone, that it appears to me now and today as a stone--precisely this is the reason I love it and see value and meaning in each of its veins and hollows, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it gives off when I knock on it, in the dryness or moistness of its surface. There are stones that feel like oil or soap, others that feel like leaves, others like sand, and each one is special and prays Om in its own way, each is Brahman, but at the same time and to just as great an extent, each one is a stone, is oily or soapy, and precisely this pleases me and seems to me wondrous and deserving of worship.

  "But let me speak no more of this. Words are not good for the secret meaning; everything always becomes a little bit different the moment one speaks it aloud, a bit falsified, a bit foolish--yes, and this too is also very good and pleases me greatly: that one person's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to others."

  Without a word, Govinda listened. "Why did you tell me all that about the stone?" he asked hesitantly, after a pause.

  "This happened unintentionally. Or perhaps what was meant was this: For the stone and the river, for all these things that we contemplate and from which we can learn, I feel love. I can love a stone, Govinda, and also a tree or a piece of bark. These are things and things can be loved. Words, however, I cannot love. This is why doctrines are not for me. They have no hardness, no softness, no colors, no edges, no smell, no taste; they have nothing but words. Perhaps it is this that has hindered you in finding peace; perhaps it is all these words. For even redemption and virtue, even Sansara and Nirvana, are just words, Govinda. There is no thing that could be Nirvana; there is only the word Nirvana."

  Govinda said, "Nirvana is not only a word, friend. It is a thought."

  Siddhartha continued. "A thought--this may be true. I have to confess to you, my dear friend, I do not see much difference between thoughts and words. To speak plainly, I do not have such a high regard for thoughts, either. I have a much higher regard for things. Here on this ferryboat, for example, my predecessor and teacher was a man, a holy man, who for many years believed only in the river, nothing else. He noticed that the river's voice was speaking to him, and from this voice he learned; it taught and educated him. The river seemed to him a god, and for many years he did not know that every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle is just as divine and knows just as much and can teach just as much as the river he so revered. But when this holy man went into the forest, he knew everything, knew more than you or I, without teachers, without books, only because he had believed in the river."

  Govinda said, "But what is it you are calling things if not real things, things that have being? Is this not merely an illusion of Maya, merely image and semblance? Your stone, your tree, your river--are they realities?"

  "This too," Siddhartha said, "concerns me little. Let the things be semblances or not; then I too am only semblance, and so they will always be like me. This is what makes them so dear to me, makes me so admire them: They are like me. This is why I can love them. And here now is a bit of doctrine that will make you laugh: Love, O Govinda, appears to me more important than all other matters. To see through the world, to explain it, to scorn it--this may be the business of great thinkers. But what interests me is being able to love the world, not scorn it, not to hate it and hate myself, but to look at it and myself and all beings with love and admiration and reverence."

  "This I understand," Govinda said. "But it is precisely this that he, the Sublime One, recognized as illusion. He commands benevolence, gentleness, pity, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to bind our heart with love for earthly things."

  "I know," Siddhartha said; his smile was radiant, golden. "I know, Govinda. And behold: Here we are in the middle of the thicket of opinions, in a battle over words. For I cannot deny that my words about love stand in opposition, in apparent opposition to Gautama's words. This is precisely why I distrust words so much, for I know this opposition is an illusion. I know I am in agreement with Gautama. How could he not know love, he who recognized all humanity in its transitoriness, its insignificance, and nonetheless loved human beings so much that he devoted a long, laborious life to the sole purpose of helping them, teaching them? Even with regard to him, your great teacher, things are dearer to me than words, his actions and life more important than his speeches, the gestures of his hand more important than his opinions. It is not in his speaking or
in his thinking that I see his greatness, only in his actions, his life."

  For a long time, the two old men were silent. Then Govinda said, bowing as he prepared to take leave of him, "Thank you, Siddhartha, for telling me something of your thoughts. They are in part strange thoughts; not all of them were immediately comprehensible to me. May this be as it will. I thank you and wish you peaceful days."

  Secretly, however, he was thinking, What an odd person this Siddhartha is! These thoughts he is uttering are odd, and his doctrine sounds silly. The pure doctrine of the Sublime One is so different from this, so much clearer, purer, more comprehensible, with nothing strange, silly, or ridiculous about it. But Siddhartha's hands and feet, his eyes, his brow, his breathing, his smiling, his way of greeting me, his gait seem to me quite different from his thoughts. Never since our sublime Gautama entered Nirvana, never since have I met a person who made me feel: This is a saint! He alone, this Siddhartha, has seemed a saint to me. His doctrine may be strange, his words may sound silly, but his gaze and his hand, his skin and his hair, everything about him radiates a purity, radiates a calm, radiates a gaiety and kindness and holiness that I have beheld in no other person since the final death of our sublime teacher.