Siddhartha

Author(s): Hermann Hesse, Hilda Rosner
Publisher: Macmillan India

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learned each exercise quickly. The old Samanas have often praised you. Some day you will be a holy man, Sidd
hartha.'
Siddhartha said: 'It does not appear so to me, my friend. What I have so far learned from the Samanas I could have learned more quickly and easily in every inn in a prostitutes' quarter, amongst the carriers and dice players.'
Govinda said: 'Siddhartha is joking. How could you have learned meditation, holding of the breath and insensibility towards hunger and pain, with those wretches?'
And Siddhartha said softly, as if speaking to himself: 'What is meditation? What is abandonment of the body? What is fasting? What is the holding of breath? It is a flight from the Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life. The driver of oxen makes this same flight, takes this temporary drug when he drinks a few bowls of rice wine or coconut milk in the inn. He then no longer feels his Self, no longer feels the pain of life; he then experiences temporary escape. Falling asleep over his bowl of rice wine, he finds what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape from their bodies by long exercises and dwell in the non-Self.'
Govinda said: 'You speak thus, my friend, and yet you know that Siddhartha is no driver of oxen and a Samana is no drunkard. The drinker does indeed find escape, he does indeed find a short respite and rest, but he returns from the illusion and finds everything as it was before. He has not grown wiser, he has not gained knowledge, he has not climbed any higher.'
Siddhartha answered with a smile on his face: 'I do not know. I have never been a drunkard. But that I, Siddhartha, only find a short respite in my exercises and meditation, and am as remote from wisdom, from salvation, as a child in the womb, that, Govinda, I do know.'
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On another occasion when Siddhartha left the wood with Govinda in order to beg for food for their brothers and teachers, Siddhartha began to speak and said: 'Well, Govinda, are we on the right road? Are we gaining knowledge? Are we approaching salvation? Or are we perhaps going in circles we who thought to escape from the cycle?'
Govinda said: 'We have learned much, Siddhartha. There. still remains much to learn. We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.'
Siddhartha replied: 'How old, do you think, is our oldest Samana, our worthy teacher?"
Govinda said: 'I think the eldest will be about sixty years old.'
And Siddhartha said: 'He is sixty years old and has not attained Nirvana. He will be seventy and eighty years old, and you and I, we shall grow as old as he, and do exercises and fast and meditate, but we will not attain Nirvana, neither he nor we. Govinda, I believe that amongst all the Samanas, probably not even one will attain Nirvana. We find consolations, we learn tricks with which we deceive ourselves, but the essential thing-the way - we do not find.'
'Do not utter such dreadful words, Siddhartha,' said Govinda. 'How could it be that amongst so many learned men, amongst so many Brahmins, amongst so many austere and worthy Samanas, amongst so many seekers, so many devoted to the inner life, so many holy men, none will find the right way?'
Siddhartha, however, said in a voice which contained as much grief as mockery, in a soft, somewhat sad, somewhat jesting voice: 'Soon, Govinda, your friend will leave the path of the Samanas along which he has travelled with you so long. I suffer thirst, Govinda, and on this long Samana path my thirst has not grown less. I have always thirsted for
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