Posted by: Siddhartha April 28, 2005
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WITH THE SAMANAS
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In the evening of this day they caught up with the ascetics, the skinny
Samanas, and offered them their companionship and--obedience. They
were accepted.
Siddhartha gave his garments to a poor Brahman in the street. He wore
nothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak.
He ate only once a day, and never something cooked. He fasted for
fifteen days. He fasted for twenty-eight days. The flesh waned from
his thighs and cheeks. Feverish dreams flickered from his enlarged
eyes, long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggy
beard grew on his chin. His glance turned to icy when he encountered
women; his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a city
of nicely dressed people. He saw merchants trading, princes hunting,
mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians
trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for
seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children--and all of this
was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank,
it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and
beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. The world tasted
bitter. Life was torture.
A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of
thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow.
Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an
emptied heard, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was
his goal. Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every
desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part
of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my
self, the great 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 short numbing of the
senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape,
the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the
inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then
he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life
any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls
asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha
and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises,
staying in the non-self. This is how it is, oh Govinda."