Siddhartha | Page 2

the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and joy, he
still lacked all joy in his heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing
from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams
of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices,
breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him, drop by drop,
from the teachings of the old Brahmans.
Siddhartha had started to nurse discontent in himself, he had started to feel that the love
of his father and the love of his mother, and also the love of his friend, Govinda, would
not bring him joy for ever and ever, would not nurse him, feed him, satisfy him. He had
started to suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, that the wise Brahmans
had already revealed to him the most and best of their wisdom, that they had already
filled his expecting vessel with their richness, and the vessel was not full, the spirit was
not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied. The ablutions were good,
but they were water, they did not wash off the sin, they did not heal the spirit's thirst, they
did not relieve the fear in his heart. The sacrifices and the invocation of the gods were
excellent--but was that all? Did the sacrifices give a happy fortune? And what about the
gods? Was it really Prajapati who had created the world? Was it not the Atman, He, the
only one, the singular one? Were the gods not creations, created like me and you, subject
to time, mortal? Was it therefore good, was it right, was it meaningful and the highest
occupation to make offerings to the gods? For whom else were offerings to be made, who
else was to be worshipped but Him, the only one, the Atman? And where was Atman to
be found, where did He reside, where did his eternal heart beat, where else but in one's
own self, in its innermost part, in its indestructible part, which everyone had in himself?

But where, where was this self, this innermost part, this ultimate part? It was not flesh
and bone, it was neither thought nor consciousness, thus the wisest ones taught. So,
where, where was it? To reach this place, the self, myself, the Atman, there was another
way, which was worthwhile looking for? Alas, and nobody showed this way, nobody
knew it, not the father, and not the teachers and wise men, not the holy sacrificial songs!
They knew everything, the Brahmans and their holy books, they knew everything, they
had taken care of everything and of more than everything, the creation of the world, the
origin of speech, of food, of inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts
of the gods, they knew infinitely much--but was it valuable to know all of this, not
knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the solely important thing?
Surely, many verses of the holy books, particularly in the Upanishades of Samaveda,
spoke of this innermost and ultimate thing, wonderful verses. "Your soul is the whole
world", was written there, and it was written that man in his sleep, in his deep sleep,
would meet with his innermost part and would reside in the Atman. Marvellous wisdom
was in these verses, all knowledge of the wisest ones had been collected here in magic
words, pure as honey collected by bees. No, not to be looked down upon was the
tremendous amount of enlightenment which lay here collected and preserved by
innumerable generations of wise Brahmans.-- But where were the Brahmans, where the
priests, where the wise men or penitents, who had succeeded in not just knowing this
deepest of all knowledge but also to live it? Where was the knowledgeable one who wove
his spell to bring his familiarity with the Atman out of the sleep into the state of being
awake, into the life, into every step of the way, into word and deed? Siddhartha knew
many venerable Brahmans, chiefly his father, the pure one, the scholar, the most
venerable one. His father was to be admired, quiet and noble were his manners, pure his
life, wise his words, delicate and noble thoughts lived behind its brow --but even he, who
knew so much, did he live in blissfulness, did he have peace, was he not also just a
searching man, a thirsty man? Did he not, again and again, have to drink from holy
sources, as a thirsty man, from the offerings, from the books, from the disputes of the
Brahmans? Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins