Siddhartha | Page 5

secret.
Silently, Siddhartha exposed himself to burning rays of the sun directly above, glowing
with pain, glowing with thirst, and stood there, until he neither felt any pain nor thirst any
more. Silently, he stood there in the rainy season, from his hair the water was dripping
over freezing shoulders, over freezing hips and legs, and the penitent stood there, until he
could not feel the cold in his shoulders and legs any more, until they were silent, until
they were quiet. Silently, he cowered in the thorny bushes, blood dripped from the
burning skin, from festering wounds dripped pus, and Siddhartha stayed rigidly, stayed
motionless, until no blood flowed any more, until nothing stung any more, until nothing
burned any more.
Siddhartha sat upright and learned to breathe sparingly, learned to get along with only
few breathes, learned to stop breathing. He learned, beginning with the breath, to calm
the beat of his heart, leaned to reduce the beats of his heart, until they were only a few
and almost none.
Instructed by the oldest if the Samanas, Siddhartha practised self-denial, practised
meditation, according to a new Samana rules. A heron flew over the bamboo forest--and
Siddhartha accepted the heron into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, was a heron,
ate fish, felt the pangs of a heron's hunger, spoke the heron's croak, died a heron's death.
A dead jackal was lying on the sandy bank, and Siddhartha's soul slipped inside the body,
was the dead jackal, lay on the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, was dismembered by
hyaenas, was skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown
across the fields. And Siddhartha's soul returned, had died, had decayed, was scattered as
dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter
in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an
eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped
out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was
wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon,
was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new
thirst.

Siddhartha learned a lot when he was with the Samanas, many ways leading away from
the self he learned to go. He went the way of self-denial by means of pain, through
voluntarily suffering and overcoming pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness. He went the way of
self-denial by means of meditation, through imagining the mind to be void of all
conceptions. These and other ways he learned to go, a thousand times he left his self, for
hours and days he remained in the non-self. But though the ways led away from the self,
their end nevertheless always led back to the self. Though Siddhartha fled from the self a
thousand times, stayed in nothingness, stayed in the animal, in the stone, the return was
inevitable, inescapable was the hour, when he found himself back in the sunshine or in
the moonlight, in the shade or in the rain, and was once again his self and Siddhartha, and
again felt the agony of the cycle which had been forced upon him.
By his side lived Govinda, his shadow, walked the same paths, undertook the same
efforts. They rarely spoke to one another, than the service and the exercises required.
Occasionally the two of them went through the villages, to beg for food for themselves
and their teachers.
"How do you think, Govinda," Siddhartha spoke one day while begging this way, "how
do you think did we progress? Did we reach any goals?"
Govinda answered: "We have learned, and we'll continue learning. You'll be a great
Samana, Siddhartha. Quickly, you've learned every exercise, often the old Samanas have
admired you. One day, you'll be a holy man, oh Siddhartha."
Quoth Siddhartha: "I can't help but feel that it is not like this, my friend. What I've
learned, being among the Samanas, up to this day, this, oh Govinda, I could have learned
more quickly and by simpler means. In every tavern of that part of a town where the
whorehouses are, my friend, among carters and gamblers I could have learned it."
Quoth Govinda: "Siddhartha is putting me on. How could you have learned meditation,
holding your breath, insensitivity against hunger and pain there among these wretched
people?"
And Siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself: "What is meditation? What
is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from
the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a