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12 - Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse · Adventure Books Library

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Chapter twelve Govinda, together with other monks. Govinda used to spend the time
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of rest between pilgrimages in the pleasure grove which the courtazan Kamala had given to
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the followers of Gautama for a gift. He heard talk of an old ferryman
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who lived one day's journey away by the river, and who was regarded as
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a wise man by many. When Govinda went back on his way, he
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chose the path to the ferry, eager to see the ferryman because although he
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had lived his entire life by the rules, though he was also looked upon
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with veneration by the younger monks on account of his age and modesty, the
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restlessness and the searching still had not perished from his heart. He came to
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the river and asked the old man to ferry him over, And when they
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got off the boat on the other side, he said to the old man,
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you're very good to us monks and pilgrims. You've already ferried many of
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us across the river, aren't you too, ferryman, A searcher for the
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right path, quoth said Arthur, smiling from his old eyes. Do you
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call yourself a searcher, oh venerable one, though you are already old in
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years and are wearing the robe of Gautama's monks. It's true, I'm old,
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spoke Govinda. But I haven't stopped searching. Never I'll stop searching.
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This seems to be my destiny. You too, so it seems to me
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have been searching. Would you like to tell me something, O, honorable
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one, quote, said Arthur. What should I possibly have to tell you,
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oh venerable one, Perhaps that you're searching far too much, that in
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all that searching, you don't find the time for finding. How come,
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asked Govinda. When someone is searching, said said Arthur, then it might
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easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that which he searches
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for. That he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his
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mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search,
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because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal. Searching
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means having a goal, but finding means being free, being open, having
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no goal. You, oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a searcher,
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because striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see which are
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directly in front of your eyes. I don't quite understand yet, said Govinda.
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What do you mean by this, quoth said Arthur, A long time
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ago, oh venerable one, many years ago, you've once before been at
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this river and have found a sleeping man by the river, and have sat
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down with him to guard his sleep. But, oh, Govinda, you
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did not recognize the sleeping man, Astonished as if he had been the object
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of a magic spell. The monk looked into the ferry man's eyes. Are
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you, said Arthur, He asked with a timid voice. I wouldn't have
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recognized you this time as well. From my heart, I'm greeting you,
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said Arthur. From my heart, I'm happy to see you once again.
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You've changed a lot, my friend, and so you've now become a ferryman
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in a friendly manner, said Arthur, laughed a fairy man. Yes,
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many people, Govinda, have to change a lot, have to wear many
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a robe. I am one of those, my dear. Be welcome Govinda,
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and spend the night in my hart. Govinda stayed the night in the
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hut and slept on the bed which used to be Vasudeva's bed. Many questions
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he posed to the friend of his youth, many things, said Arthur had
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to tell him from his life. When in the next morning the time had
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come to start the day's journey, Govinda said, not without hesitation these words
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before I'll continue my path, said Arthur. Permit me to ask one more
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question. Do you have a teaching? Do you have a faith or a
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knowledge you follow which helps you to live and to do right? Quoth said
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Arthur. You know, my dear, that I, already, as a
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young man, in those days when we lived with the penitents in the forest,
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started to distrust teachers and teachings and to turn my back to them.
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I have stuck with this. Nevertheless, I have had many teachers since then.
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A beautiful courtesan has been my teacher for a long time, and a
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rich merchant was my teacher. And some gamblers with dice once. Even a
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follower of Buddha traveling on foot has been my teacher. He sat with me
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while I had fallen asleep in the forest on the pilgrimage. I've also learned
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from him. I'm also grateful to him, very grateful. But most of
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all I have learned here from this river and from my predecessor, the ferryman
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Vasudeva. He was a very simple person. Vasudiva, he was no thinker,
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but he knew what is necessary just as well as Gautama. He was
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a perfect man, a saint. Govinda said, still, oh, Siddhartha,
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you love a bit to mock people, as it seems to me.
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I believe in you and know that you have followed a teacher. But haven't
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you found something by yourself? Though you found no teachings, you still found
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certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you to
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live. If you would like to tell me some of these, you would
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delight my heart, quoth said Arthur. I've had thoughts, yes, and
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insight, again and again, sometimes for an hour or for an entire day.
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I have felt knowledge in me as one would feel life in one's heart.
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There have been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to
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convey them to you. Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of
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my thoughts which I have found. Wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which
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a wise man tries to pass on to some one always sounds like foolishness.
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Are you kidding, asked Govinda. I'm not kidding. I'm telling you what
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I've found. Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be
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found, it can be lived, It is possible to be carried by it.
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Miracles can be performed with it. But it cannot be expressed in words
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and taught. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes
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suspected what has driven me away from the teachers. I have found a thought,
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Govinda, which you'll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which
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is my best thought. It says, the opposite of every truth is just
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as true. That's like this. Every truth can only be expressed and put
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into words when it is one sided. Everything is one sided, which can
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be thought with thoughts and said with words. It's all one sided, All
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just one half. All lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted
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Gautamas spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into
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sansara and nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It
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cannot be done differently. There is no other way for him who wants to
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teach, but the world itself, what exists around us, in inside of
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us, is never one sided. A person or an act is never entirely
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sansara or entirely nirvana. A person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.
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It does really seem like this because we are subject to deception, as if
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time were something real. Time is not real, Govinda. I have experienced
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this often and often again. And if time is not real, then the
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gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and
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blissfulness, between good and evil is also a deception. How come, asked
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Govinda timidly, listen well, my dear, listen well. The sinner which
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I am and which you are, is a sinner. But in times to
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come he will be Brahma again. He will reach the nirvana, will be
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Buddha. And now see these times to come, our a deception are only
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a parable. The sinner is not on his way to become a Buddha.
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He is not in the process of developing, though our capacity for thinking does
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not know how else to picture these things. No, within the sinner is
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now and to day already the future Buddha. His future is already all there.
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You have to worship in him, in you, in every one,
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the Buddha which is coming into being the possible, the hidden Buddha. The
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world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect or on a slow path towards
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perfection. No, it is perfect in every moment. All sin already carries
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the divine forgiveness in itself. All small children already have the old person in
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themselves, All infants already have death, all dying people the eternal life.
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It is not possible for any person to see how far another one has already
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progressed on his path. In the robber and the dice gambler, the Buddha
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is waiting. In the Brahman, the robber is waiting. In deep meditation,
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there is the possibility to put time out of existence, to see all
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life which was, is and will be, as if it were simultaneous.
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And there everything is good, everything is perfect, Every thing is Brahman.
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Therefore I see whatever exists as good. Death is to me like life,
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sin, like holiness, wisdom, like foolishness. Everything has to be as
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it is. Everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving
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agreement to be good for me to do nothing but work for my benefit,
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to be unable to ever harm me. I have experienced on my body and
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on my soul that I needed sin very much. I needed lust, the
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desire for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair in order to
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learn how to give up all resistance, in order to learn how to love
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the world, in order to stop comparing it to some world I wished I
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imagined some kind of perfection I had made up. But to leave it as
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it is, and to love it, and to enjoy being a part of
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it. These, o Govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come
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into my mind, said Arthur bent Down picked up a stone from the ground
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and weighed it in his hand. This, here, he said, playing
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with it, is a stone, and will after a certain time perhaps turn
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into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or an animal or
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human being. In the past, I would have said, this stone is
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just a stone, it is worthless. It belongs to the world of the
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Maya. But because it might be able to become also a human being and
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a spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it importance.
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Thus I would perhaps have thought in the past. But to day I think
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this stone is a stone, it is also animal, It is also God.
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It is also, Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because
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it could turn into this or that, but rather because it is already and
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always everything. And it is this very fact that it is a stone,
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that it appears to me now and today as a stone. This is why
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I love it and see worth and purpose in each of its veins and cavities,
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in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the
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sound it makes when I knock at it, in the dryness or wetness of
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its surface. There are stones which feel like oil or soap, and others
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like leaves, others like sand. And everyone is special, and praise the
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Olm in its own way. Each one is Brahman. But simultaneously and just
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as much it is a stone, it is oily or juicy. And this
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is this very fact which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship.
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But let me speak no more of this. The words are not good
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for the secret meaning. Everything always becomes a bit different as soon as it
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is put into words, gets distorted, a bit, a bit silly.
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Yes, And this is also very good, and I like it a lot.
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I also very much agree with this that this what is one man's treasure
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and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another person. Govinda listened silently. Why
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have you told me this about the stone, he asked hesitantly, after a
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pause. I did it without a specific intention. Or perhaps what I meant
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was that love this very stone and the river and all these things we are
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looking at and from and which we can learn. I can love a stone,
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Govinda, and also a tree or a piece of bark. These are
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things, and things can be loved. But I cannot love words. Therefore
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teachings are no good for me. They have no hardness, no softness,
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no colors, no edges, no smell, no taste. They have nothing
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but words. Perhaps it is these which keep you from finding peace. Perhaps
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it is the many words, because salvation and virtue, as well sansara and
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nirvana as well are mere words, Govinda. There is no thing which would
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be nirvana. There is just the word nirvana, quoth Govinda. Not just
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a word, my friend, is nirvana. It is a thought. Sid
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Arthur continued, per thought. It might be so, I must confess to
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you, my dear, I don't differentiate much between thoughts and words. To
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be honest, I also have no high opinion of thoughts. I have a
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better opinion of things here on this ferryboat. For instance, a man has
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been my predecessor and teacher, a holy man who has for many years simply
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believed in the river, nothing else. He had noticed that the river spoke
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to him, He learned from it, It educated and taught him. The
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river seemed to be a god to him. For many years he did not
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know that every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle was just
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as divine and knows just as much and can teach just as much as the
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worshiped a river. But when this holy man went into the forests, he
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knew everything, knew more than you and me, without teachers, without books,
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only because he had believed in the river. Govinda said, but is
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that which you call things actually something real, something which has existence? Isn't
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it just a to say option of the maya just an image and illusion?
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Your stone, your tree, your river? Are they actually a reality?
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This too, spoke said Arthur. I do not care very much about let
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the things be illusions or not. After all, I would then also be
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an illusion. And thus they are always like me. This is what makes
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them so dear and worthy of veneration for me, they are like me.
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Therefore I can love them. And this is now a teaching. You will
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laugh about love, oh, Govinda, seems to me the most important thing
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of all to thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it.
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Maybe the thing great thinkers do. But I'm only interested in being able
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to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it,
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and me to be able to look upon it and me and all beings with
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love and admiration and great respect. This I understand, spoke Govinda. But
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this very thing was discovered by the Exalted One to be a deception. He
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commands benevolence, clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love. He forbade
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us to tie our heart in love to earthly things. I know it,
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said said Arthur. His smile shone golden. I know it, Govinda.
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And behold with this, we are right in the middle of the thicket of
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opinions, in the dispute about words. For I cannot deny my words of
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love are in a contradiction, a seeming contradiction, with Gatarma's words. For
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this very reason I distrust in words so much, for I know This contradiction
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is a deception. I know that I am in agreement with Gattarma. How
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should he not know love? He who has discovered all elements of human existence
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in their train ansatoriness, in their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much
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to use a long laborious life only to help them to teach them. Even
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with him, even with your great teacher, I prefer the thing over the
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words. Place more importance on his acts and life than on his speeches,
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more on the gestures of his hand than his opinions, not his speech,
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not in his thoughts. I see his greatness only in his actions, in
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his life. For a long time, the two old men said nothing.
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Then spoke Govinda, while bowing for a farewell, I thank you, sir
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Arthur, for telling me some of your thoughts. They are partially strange thoughts,
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not all have been instantly understandable to me. This being as it may,
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I thank you and wish you to have calm days. But he thought
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to himself, this Siddartha is a bizarre person. He expresses bizarre thoughts.
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His teachings sound foolish. How differently sound the Exalted One's pure teachings clearer purer,
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more comprehensible, nothing strange, foolish or silly as contained in them.
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But different from his thoughts seemed to me, said Arthur's hands and feet,
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his eyes, his forehead, his breath, his smile, his greeting,
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his walk. Never again, after our Exalted Gautama has become one with the
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Nirvana, Never since then have I met a person of whom I felt this
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is a holy man. Only him, this Siddartha, I have found to
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be like this. May his teachings be strange, May his words sound foolish.
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Out of his gaze and his hand, his skin, and his hair,
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out of every part of him shines a purity, shines, a calmness,
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shines a cheerfulness and mildness and holiness, which I have seen in no
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other person since the final death of our exalted teacher. As Govinda thought like
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this, and there was a conflict in his heart, he once again bowed
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to said Arthur. Drawn by love deeply, he bowed to him, who
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was calmly sitting, said Arthur. He spoke, we have become old men.
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It is unlikely for one of us to see the other again in this
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incarnation. I see, beloved, that you have found peace. I confess
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that I haven't found it. Tell me, oh, honorable, one one
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more word. Give me something on my way which I can grasp, which
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I can understand. Give me something to be with me on my path.
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It is often hard, my path, often dark, said Arthur. Sir
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Arthur said nothing and looked at him with the ever unchanged quiet smile. Govinda
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stared at his face with fear, with yearning, suffering, and the eternal
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search was visible in his look, eternal not finding. Sir Arthur saw it
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and smiled. Bend down to me, he whispered quietly in Govinda's ear.
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Bend down to me like this, even closer, very closer, kiss my
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forehead, Govinda. But while Govinda, with astonishment and yet drawn by great
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love and expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched
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his forehead with his lips. Something miraculous happened to him while his thoughts were
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still dwelling on, said Arthur's wondrous word words, while he was still struggling
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in vain and with reluctance to think away, time to ignore Nirvana and Sansara
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as one while even a certain contempt for the words of his friend was fighting
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in him against an immense love and veneration. This happened to him. He
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no longer saw the face of his friend, said Arthur. Instead he saw
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other faces, many a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of
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hundreds of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to
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be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which was
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still all, said Arthur. He saw the face of a fish, a
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carp with infinitely painful opened mouth, the face of a dying fish with fading
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eyes. He saw the face of a newborn child, red and full of
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wrinkles, distorted from crying. He saw the face of a murderer. He
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saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person. He saw in
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the same second this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off
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by the executioner with one blow of his sword. He saw the bodies of
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men and women naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love. He saw corpses
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stretched out, motionless, cold void. He saw the heads of animals,
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of bores, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls of birds, He
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saw gods, he saw Krishna, he saw Ugny. He saw all of
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these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping
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the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving rebirth to
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it. Each one was a will to die, a passionate, painful confession
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of transitoriness. And yet none of them died. Each one only transformed,
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was always reborne, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed
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between the wine and the other face. And all of these figures and faces
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rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other,
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and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own,
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but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent
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skin, a shell or mold, or mask of water. And this mask
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was smiling, And this mask was saird Arthur's smiling face, which he Govinda,
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in this very same moment touched with his lips. And Govinda saw it
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like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness, above
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the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness, above the thousand births and deaths,
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the smile of Siddartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same
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kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking wise,
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thousandfold smile of Gattama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself
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with great respect a hundred times like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones
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are smiling, not knowing any more whether the time existed, whether the vision
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had lasted a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there
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existed a Siddhartha, a Gattama Ami, and a you. Feeling in his
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innermost self, as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the
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injury of which tasted sweet, Being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self,
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Govinda stood still for a little while, bent over said Arthur's quiet face,
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which he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations,
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all transformations, all existence. The face was unchanged, after under its
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surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again. He smiled sweetly,
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smiled quietly and softly, perhaps benevolently, perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he
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used to smile the exalted one. Deeply. Govinda bowed. Tears he knew
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nothing of ran down his old face like a fire burnt, the feeling of
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the most intimate love, the humblest veneration in his heart. Deeply he bowed,
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touching the ground before him, who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded
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him of everything he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been
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valuable and holy to him in his life. End of Chapter twelve and end
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of Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse