Siddhartha

by Hermann Hesse

  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!

  Gripped by this thought, the slowly walking thinker stopped short, and at once a further thought sprang from the first one, a thought that was new to him.

  That I know nothing of myself, that Siddhartha has remained such a stranger to me, such an unknown, comes from one cause, from a single cause: I was afraid of myself, was running away from myself! I was searching for Atman, searching for Brahman; I was prepared to chop my ego into little pieces and peel off its layers so as to find, in its unknown innermost core, the kernel that lies at the heart of every husk: Atman, Life, the Divine, that final utmost thing. But I myself got lost in the process.

  Siddhartha raised his eyes and looked about. A smile filled his face, and a profound sense of awakening from a long dream coursed through him down to his toes. At once he began to walk again, now taking hurried steps like a man who knows what he must do.

  Oh, he thought, breathing a deep sigh of relief, I won't let Siddhartha slip away from me again. I won't let my life and my thought begin with Atman and the world's sorrows. No more killing myself, no more chopping myself into bits in the hope of finding some secret hidden among the debris. I will no longer follow Yoga-Veda, or Atharva-Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine. I'll be my own teacher, my own pupil. I'll study myself, learn the secret that is Siddhartha.

  He looked around as if seeing the world for the first time. How beautiful it was, how colorful, how strange and mysterious! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green; sky and river were flowing; forests and mountains stood fixed: Everything was beautiful, everything mysterious and magical, and in the midst of all this was he, Siddhartha, in the moment of his awakening, on the path to himself. All these things, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, passed through Siddhartha's eye and entered him for the first time; they were no longer the illusion of Mara, no longer the veil of Maya, no longer the meaningless random multiplicity of the world of appearances, contemptible to any deep thinker among Brahmins, any thinker who scoffed at multiplicity and sought oneness. Blue was blue, river was river, and even if the One, the Divine, lay hidden in the blue and the river within Siddhartha, it was still the nature and intention of the Divine to be yellow here, blue here, sky over there, forest there, and here Siddhartha. Meaning and being did not lie somewhere behind things; they lay within them, within everything.

  How deaf I have been, how unfeeling! he thought, walking ever more swiftly. When a person reads something and wishes to grasp its meaning, he does not scorn the characters and letters and call them illusory, random, and worthless husks; he reads them, studies them, and loves them, letter for letter. But I--I who set out to read the book of the world and the book of my own being--I scorned the characters and letters in deference to a meaning I assumed in advance, I called the world of appearances illusory, called my own eye and my own tongue random and worthless illusions. Enough of all this. I have awoken, have truly awoken, and this day is the day of my birth.

  As Siddhartha was thinking this thought, he stopped short once more, as though a snake were lying on the path before him.

  For all at once this too had dawned on him: He, who truly was like a person freshly awakened or like a newborn, would have to begin his life anew, starting from nothing. When he had departed from Jetavana Grove this morning, the grove of the Sublime One, already awakening, already on the path to himself, it had been his intention and had appeared to him only natural, a matter of course, to return to the place of his birth and his father now that his years as an ascetic had ended. But just at the moment when he stopped short, as though a snake were lying across his path, he awoke also to this insight: I am no longer who I was; I am no longer an ascetic, I am no longer a priest, I am no longer a Brahmin. What would I do at home with my father, study? Sacrifice? Practice samadhi? All these things are now over; they no longer lie along my path.

  Motionless, Siddhartha remained standing there, and for a moment, for the space of a single breath, his heart was freezing cold; he could feel it freezing in his breast like a small animal, a bird or a rabbit, when he saw how alone he was. For years he had been without a home and had not felt it. Now he felt it. Always, even in the most distant depths of samadhi, he had been his father's son, a Brahmin, a person of high birth, a thinker. Now he was no longer anything but Siddhartha; he was the one who had awoken and nothing more. He drew in a deep breath and for a moment he shivered, freezing. No one was as alone as he was. Every nobleman had his place among noblemen, every craftsman had his place among craftsmen and found refuge with them, sharing their life and speaking in their tongue. Every Brahmin belonged among Brahmins and lived with them. Every ascetic could find refuge among the Samanas. Even the most obscure hermit in the forest was not utterly alone; he too was enfolded in belonging, he too belonged to a class that was his home. Govinda had become a monk, and a thousand monks were his brothers, wore his habit, believed his beliefs, spoke his tongue. But he, Siddhartha: Where did he belong? Whose life would he share? Whose tongue would he speak?

  From this moment when the world around him melted away and left him as solitary as a star in the sky, from this moment of cold and despondency, Siddhartha emerged, more firmly Self than before, solidified. This, he felt, had been the final shiver of awakening, the final pangs of birth. And at once he began to walk again, striding quickly and impatiently, no longer in the direction of home, no longer toward his father, no longer back.

  KAMALA

  Siddhartha learned new things with every step along his path, for the world was transformed and his heart was enchanted. He watched the sun rise above wooded mountains and set above the distant palm-lined shore. At night he saw the stars arranged in formation on the sky and the crescent moon drifting like a boat on a sea of blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, cliffs, herbs and flowers, stream and river, the flash of dew in morning bushes, distant high mountains blue and pale; birds were singing, so were bees, and wind blew silvery through the rice paddies. All these things, various and many-hued, had always been there--the sun and moon had always shone, rivers had always rushed, and bees had always buzzed--but all of it had formerly been nothing for Siddhartha but a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, to be regarded with distrust, penetrated by thought, and destroyed, since it was not true Being: Being lay beyond the visible. But now his liberated eye dwelled in this realm, saw and recognized the visible, and was searching for a home in this world; no longer was it in search of Being, no longer were its efforts directed toward the Beyond. How beautiful the world was when one looked at it without searching, just looked, simply and innocently. How lovely the moon and stars were, how lovely the stream and its bank, forest and cliff, nanny goat and jewel beetle, flower and butterfly. How beautiful, how lovely it was to walk through the world like this, like a child, so awake, so open to what was near at hand, so free of distrust. The sun burned differently upon his head, the shade of the forest cooled him differently, stream and cistern tasted different, different were the flavors of pumpkin and banana. The days were brief; the nights were brief. Each hour flew quickly past like a sail upon the sea, and beneath this sail lay a ship filled with treasures, filled with joys. Siddhartha saw a band of monkeys traveling in the high-up vault of the forest, in the uppermost branches, and heard a wild, lustful singing. Siddhartha saw a ram pursue a ewe and mate with her
. In a lake thick with reeds he saw a pike hunting to still his evening hunger. Entire schools of young fish shot anxiously out of the water before him, flickering and flashing; strength and passion scented the air above the urgent whirlpools this indefatigable hunter left in his wake.

  All these things had always been there, and yet he had not seen them; he had not been present. Now he was present, he belonged. Light and shade passed through his eyes, star and moon passed through his heart.

  As he walked, Siddhartha also thought back on everything he had experienced in the garden of Jetavana: the doctrine he had heard there, the divine Buddha, bidding farewell to Govinda, his conversation with the Sublime One. He thought back on the words he had spoken to the Sublime One, on each of them, and with astonishment he realized he had said things that he had not yet really known. What he had said to Gautama--that his, the Buddha's, treasure and secret was not his doctrine but rather the inexpressible, unteachable things he had experienced in the hour of his enlightenment--was precisely what he, Siddhartha, was now setting off to experience, was now beginning to experience. It was he himself he now had to experience. To be sure, he had known for a long time that his Self was Atman, of the same eternal essence as Brahman. But never had he truly found this Self, for he had been trying to capture it with a net made of thought. While certainly body was not Self--nor was it the play of the senses--this Self was also not thought, was not mind, was not the wisdom amassed through learning, not the learned art of drawing conclusions and spinning new thoughts out of old. No, even thought was still in this world; no goal could be reached by killing off the happenstance Self of the senses while continuing to fatten the happenstance Self of thought and learnedness. Thought and senses were both fine things. Ultimate meaning lay hidden behind them; both should be listened to, played with, neither scorned nor overvalued, for in each of them the secret voice of the innermost core might be discerned. He would aspire to nothing but what this voice commanded him, occupy himself with nothing but what the voice advised. Why had Gautama once, in the hour of hours, sat down beneath the bo tree where enlightenment struck him? He had heard a voice, a voice in his own heart, commanding him to rest beneath this tree, and he had not chosen to devote himself instead to self-castigation, sacrifice, ablution, or prayer, nor to eating or drinking, nor to sleeping or dreaming; he had obeyed the voice. To obey like this, to obey not a command from the outside but only the voice, to be in readiness--this was good, this was necessary. Nothing else was necessary.

  During the night as he slept in the straw hut of a ferryman beside the river, Siddhartha had a dream. Govinda was standing before him clad in the yellow robe of an ascetic. He looked sad, and sadly he asked, Why have you forsaken me? Siddhartha embraced Govinda, he flung his arms about him, but when he drew him to his breast and kissed him, it was no longer Govinda he held but a woman, and beneath the woman's robe a full breast was swelling. Siddhartha lay at this breast and drank; sweet and strong was the taste of this breast milk. It tasted of woman and man, of sun and forest, of animal and flower, of every fruit and every pleasure. It made him drunk, robbed him of his senses.... When Siddhartha awoke, the pale river was shimmering through the doorway of the hut, and from the forest came the dark hoot of an owl, deep and melodious.

  At daybreak, Siddhartha asked his host, the ferryman, to take him across the river. The ferryman took him across the river on his bamboo raft; the broad expanse of water shimmered red in the dawn light.

  "The river is beautiful," he said to his companion.

  "Yes," the ferryman said, "it is a very beautiful river. I love it above all else. Often I have listened to it, often gazed into its eyes, and always I have learned from it. You can learn a great deal from a river."

  "I thank you, my benefactor," Siddhartha said, stepping onto the opposite bank. "I have no gift to give you, dear friend, no wages to pay. I am a man without a home, a Brahmin's son and Samana."

  "This I saw myself," said the ferryman, "and I expected neither payment nor gift from you. You will give me a gift some other time."

  "Do you think so?" Siddhartha asked, amused.

  "Certainly. This too I have learned from the river: Everything comes back again! You too, Samana, will come back again. And now farewell! May your friendship be my wages. May you remember me when you are sacrificing to the gods."

  Smiling, they parted. Smiling, Siddhartha felt happiness at the friendship and friendliness of the ferryman. He is like Govinda, he thought, smiling. All the people I meet upon my way are like Govinda. All of them are grateful, though they themselves have cause to expect gratitude. All of them are deferential, all are eager to be a friend, to obey and think little. People are children.

  Around noon he passed through a village. In front of the mud huts, children were rolling about in the street, playing with pumpkin seeds and shells, shouting and scrapping, but all of them ran away, shy before the unknown Samana. At the end of the village the path led through a stream, and at the edge of the stream a young woman knelt, washing clothes. When Siddhartha greeted her, she raised her head and looked up at him with a smile that made the whites of her eyes flash. He called out a blessing to her, as is customary among travelers, and asked how much farther it was to the city. She stood up and came over to him, her moist lips shimmering and beautiful in her young face. She engaged him in banter, asking if he had eaten yet and if it was true that the Samanas slept alone in the forest at night and were not allowed to have women with them. As she spoke, she placed her left foot upon his right and made the gesture a woman makes when she is inviting a man to indulge in the sort of love pleasure the instructional books call "climbing the tree." Siddhartha felt his blood grow warm, and as his dream returned to him at this moment, he bent down before the woman and kissed the brown tip of her breast. Looking up, he saw desire in her smiling face, and her half-closed eyes beseeched him longingly.

  Siddhartha too was filled with longing and felt the source of his sex stir, but as he had never before touched a woman, he hesitated for a moment while his hands were already preparing to reach out for her. And in this moment he heard something that made him tremble: It was his inner voice, and the voice said no. At once the charm vanished from the smiling face of the young woman; all he saw now was the dewy gaze of a beast in heat. With a friendly gesture he stroked her cheek, turned away from her, and with a light step disappeared into the bamboo thicket, leaving the disappointed woman behind.

  Before evening he came to a large city and was happy, for he felt the desire to be among people. He'd lived a long time in the forest, and the straw hut of the ferryman in which he'd spent the night was the first roof he'd had over his head in quite a while.

  Just outside the city, near a lovely fenced-in grove, the wanderer encountered a small company of maids and menservants laden with baskets. In their midst, an ornate sedan chair with four bearers held a woman seated upon red cushions beneath a brightly colored canopy: their mistress. Siddhartha remained standing at the entrance to the pleasure garden and observed this procession; saw the servants, the maids, the baskets, the sedan chair, and the lady seated in it. Beneath black hair piled high upon her head, he saw a very fair, very delicate, very clever face, a bright red mouth like a fig split in two, eyebrows groomed and painted in high arches, dark eyes clever and watchful, a long pale throat rising out of a green and gold outer garment, fair hands in repose, long and narrow, with thick golden bracelets about the wrists.

  Siddhartha saw how beautiful she was, and his heart rejoiced. Deeply he bowed before her as the sedan chair approached, and as he straightened up again he looked into her pale, lovely face, read for a moment her clever eyes beneath their high arches, caught a whiff of a perfume he did not know. Smiling, the beautiful woman nodded, just for an instant; then she disappeared into the grove with her servants behind her.

  Siddhartha thought, What a fine omen marks my arrival in this city! He felt an urge to hurry into the grove straightaway but then thought better of it; only now did i
t occur to him how the servants and maids standing at its entrance had looked at him, with what contempt, what suspicion, what displeasure.

  Even now, I am a Samana, he thought, an ascetic and mendicant. I will not be able to remain as I am, will not be able to enter the grove in this guise. He gave a laugh.

  He asked the next person to come along what this grove was and the name of the woman, and learned that this was the grove of Kamala, the famous courtesan, and that in addition to the grove she owned a house in town.

  Then he entered the city. He now had a goal.

  In pursuit of this goal, he allowed the city to suck him in, drifted with the current down its streets, paused in its squares, rested upon the stone steps along the river. Toward evening he made the acquaintance of a barber's assistant he had observed working in the shadow of an archway and encountered again praying in a temple of Vishnu; he regaled him with tales of Vishnu and Lakshmi. He slept that night beside the river where the boats were moored, and early the next morning, before the first customers arrived at the shop, he had the barber's assistant shave off his beard, cut and comb his hair, and anoint it with precious oil. Then he went to the river to bathe.

  When, late in the afternoon, the beautiful Kamala approached her grove in her sedan chair, Siddhartha was standing at the entrance; he bowed and received the courtesan's greeting. Then he signaled to the last of the servants following in her train and asked him to tell his mistress a young Brahmin wished to speak with her. After a while the servant returned and instructed the waiting youth to follow him; without another word, he led Siddhartha to a pavilion where Kamala was reclining upon a daybed and left him alone with her.

  "Was it not you standing there yesterday greeting me?" Kamala asked.