In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the riverbank by the boats, in the shade of the sallow wood and the fig tree, Siddhartha, the beautiful Brahmin's daughter grew up with her friend Govinda. The sun browned her slender shoulders on the riverbank, while bathing at the holy ablutions, at the holy sacrifices. Shadows passed across her eyes in the mango grove during play, while her father sang, during her mother's teachings, when with the learned women. Siddhartha had already long taken part in the learned women's conversations, had engaged in debate with Govinda and had practiced the art of contemplation and meditation with her. Already she knew how to pronounce Om silently - this word of words, to say it inwardly with the intake of breath, when breathing out with all her soul, her brow radiating the glow of pure spirit. Already she knew how to recognize Atwoman within the depth of her being, indestructible, at one with the universe.
There was happiness in her mother's heart because of her daughter who was intelligent and thirsty for knowledge; she saw her growing up to be a great-learned woman, a priestess, a princess among Brahmins.
There was pride in her father's chest when he saw her walking, sitting down and rising: Siddhartha - strong, beautiful, supple-limbed, greeting him with complete grace.
Love stirred in the hearts of the young Brahmins' sons when Siddhartha walked through the streets of the town, with her lofty brow, her Queen-like eyes and her slim figure.
Govinda, her friend, the Brahmin's daughter, loved her more than anybody else. She loved Siddhartha's eyes and clear voice. She loved the way she walked, her complete grace of movement; she loved everything that Siddhartha did and said, and above all she loved her intellect, her fine ardent thoughts, her strong will, her high vocation. Govinda knew that she would not become an ordinary Brahmin, a lazy sacrificial official, an avaricious dealer in magic sayings, a conceited worthless orator, a wicked sly priestess, or just a good stupid sheep amongst a large herd. No, and she, Govinda, did not want to become any of these, not a Brahmin like ten thousand others of their kind. She wanted to follow Siddhartha, the beloved, the magnificent. And if she ever became a goddess, if she ever entered the All-Radiant, then Govinda wanted to follow her as her friend, her companion, her servant, her lance bearer, her shadow.
That was how everybody loved Siddhartha. She delighted and made everybody happy.
But Siddhartha herself was not happy. Wandering along the rosy paths of the fig garden, sitting in contemplation in the lush shade of the grove, washing her limbs in the daily bath of atonement, offering sacrifices in the depths of the shady mango wood with complete grace of manner, beloved by all, a joy to all, there was yet no joy in her own heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to her from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun's melting rays.
Dreams and a restlessness of the soul came to her, arising from the smoke of the sacrifices, emanating from the verses of the Rig-Veda, trickling through from the teachings of the old
Brahmins.
Siddhartha had begun to feel the seeds of discontent within herself. She had begun to feel that the love of her mother and father, and also the love of her friend Govinda, would not always make her happy, give her peace, satisfy and suffice her. She had begun to suspect that her worthy mother and her other teachers, the wise Brahmins, had already passed on to her the bulk and best of their wisdom, that they had already poured the sum total of their knowledge into her waiting vessel; and the vessel was not full, her intellect was not satisfied, her soul was not at peace, her heart was not still. The ablutions were good, but they were water; they did not wash sins away, they did not relieve the distressed heart. The sacrifices and the supplication of the goddesses were excellent-but were they everything? Did the sacrifices give happiness? And what about the goddesses? Was it really Prajapati who had created the world? Was it not Atwoman, she alone, who had created it? Were not the goddess's forms created like me and you, mortal, transient? Was it therefore good and right, was it a sensible and worthy act to offer sacrifices to the goddesses? To whom else should one offer sacrifices, to whom else should one pay honor, but to Her, Atwoman, the Only One? And where was Atwoman to be found, where did She dwell, where did Her eternal heartbeat, if not within the Self in the innermost, in the eternal which each person carried within her? But where was this Self, this innermost? It was not flesh and bone, it was not thought or consciousness. That was what the wise women taught. Where, then, was it? To press towards the Self, towards Atwoman - was there another way that was worth seeking? Nobody showed the way, nobody knew it - neither her mother, nor the teachers and wise women, not the holy songs. The Brahmins and their holy books knew everything, everything; they had gone into everything - the creation of the world, the origin of speech, food inhalation, exhalation, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the goddesses. They knew a tremendous number of things - but was it worthwhile knowing all these things if they did not know the one important thing, the only important thing?
Many verses of the holy books, above all the Upanishads of Sama-Veda spoke of this innermost thing. It is written: "Your soul is the whole world." It says that when a woman is asleep, she penetrates her innermost and dwells in Atwoman. There was wonderful wisdom in these verses; all the knowledge of the sages was told here in enchanting language, pure as honey collected by the bees. No, this tremendous amount of knowledge, collected and preserved by successive generations of wise Brahmins could not be easily overlooked. But where were the Brahmins, the priestesses, the wise women, who were successful not only in having this most profound knowledge, but in experiencing it? Where were the initiated who, attaining Atwoman in sleep, could retain it in consciousness, in life, everywhere, in speech and in action? Siddhartha knew many worthy Brahmins, above all her mother - holy, learned, of highest esteem. Her mother was worthy of admiration; her manner was quiet and noble. She lived a good life, her words were wise; fine and noble thoughts dwelt in her head - but even she, who knew so much, did she live in bliss, was she at peace? Was she not also a seeker, insatiable? Did she not go continually to the holy springs with an insatiable thirst, to the sacrifices, to books, to the Brahmins' discourses? Why must she, the blameless one, wash away her sins and endeavor to cleanse herself anew each day? Was Atwoman then not within her? Was not then the source within her own heart? One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking - a detour, error.
These were Siddhartha's thoughts; this was her thirst, her sorrow.
She often repeated to herself the words from one of the Chandogya-Upanishads. "In truth, the name of Brahman is Satya. Indeed, she who knows it enters the heavenly world each day."  It often seemed near - the heavenly world - but never had she quite reached it, never had she quenched the final thirst. And among the wise women that she knew and whose teachings she enjoyed, there was not one who had entirely reached it - the heavenly world - not one who had completely quenched the eternal thirst.
"Govinda." Said Siddhartha to her friend, "Govinda, come with me to the Banyan tree. We will practice meditation."
They went to the Banyan tree and sat down, twenty paces apart. As she sat down ready to pronounce the Om, Siddhartha softly recited the verse:

"Om is the bow, the arrow is the soul,
Brahman is the arrow's goal
At which one aims unflinchingly."

When the customary time for the practice of meditation had passed, Govinda rose. It was now evening. It was time to perform the evening ablutions. She called Siddhartha by her name; she did not reply. Siddhartha sat absorbed, her eyes staring as if directed at a distant goal, the tip of her tongue showing a little between her teeth. She did not seem to be breathing. She sat thus, lost in meditation, thinking Om, her soul as the arrow directed at Brahmin.
Some Samanas once passed through Siddhartha's town. Wandering ascetics, they were three thin worn-out women, neither old nor young, with dusty and bleeding shoulders, practically naked, scorched by the sun, solitary, strange and hostile - lean jackals in the world of women. Around them hovered an atmosphere of still passion, of devastating service, of unpitying self-denial.
In the evening, after the hour of contemplation, Siddhartha said to Govinda: "tomorrow morning, my friend, Siddhartha is going to join the Samanas. She is going to become a Samana."
Govinda blanched as she heard these words and read the decision in her friend's determined face, undeviating as the released arrow from the bow. Govinda realized from the first glance at her friend's face that now it was beginning, Siddhartha was going her own way; her destiny was beginning to unfold itself, and with her destiny, her own. And she became as pale as a dried banana skin.
"Oh Siddhartha," she cried, "Will your mother permit it?
Siddhartha looked at her like one who had just awakened. As quick as lightning she read Govinda's soul, read the anxiety, the resignation
"We will not waste words, Govinda." She said softly. "Tomorrow at daybreak I will begin the life of the Samanas. Let us not discuss it again."
Siddhartha went into the room where her mother was sitting on a mat made of bast. She went up behind her mother and remained standing there until her mother felt her presence. "Is it you, Siddhartha?" the Brahmin asked. "Then speak what is in your mind."
Siddhartha said: "with your permission, Mother, I have come to tell you that I wish to leave your house tomorrow and join the ascetics. I wish to become a Samana. I trust my mother will not object."
The Brahmin was silent so long that the stars passed across the small window and changed their design before the silence in the room was finally broken. Her daughter stood silent and motionless with her arms folded. The mother, silent and motionless, sat on the mat, and the stars passed across the sky. Then her mother said:" It is not seemly for Brahmins to utter forceful and angry words, but there is displeasure in my heart. I should not like to hear you make this request a second time."
The Brahmin rose slowly. Siddhartha remained silent with folded arms.
"Why are you waiting?" asked her mother.
"You know why," answered Siddhartha.
Her mother left the room displeased and lay down on her bed.
As an hour passed by and she could not sleep, the Brahmin rose, wandered up and down and then left the house. She looked through the small window of the room and saw Siddhartha standing there with her arms folded, unmoving she could see her pale robe shimmering. Her heart troubled, the mother returned to her bed.
As another hour passed and the Brahmin could not sleep, she rose again, walked up and down, left the house and saw the moon had risen. She looked through the window. Siddhartha stood there unmoving, her arms folded; the moon shone on her bare shinbones. Her heart troubled, the mother went to bed.
She returned again after an hour and again after two hours, looked through the window and saw Siddhartha standing there in the moonlight, in the starlight, in the dark. And she came silently again, hour after hour, looked into the room, and saw her standing unmoving her heart filled with anger, with anxiety, with fear, with sorrow.
And in the last hour of the night, before daybreak, she returned again, entered the room and saw the youth standing there. She seemed tall and a stranger to her.
" Siddhartha," she said, "why are you waiting?"
"You know why."
"Will you go on standing and waiting until it is day, noon, evening?"
"I will stand and wait."
"You will grow tired, Siddhartha."
"I will grow tired."
"You will fall asleep, Siddhartha."
"I will not fall asleep."
"You will die, Siddhartha."
"I will die."
"And would you rather die than obey your mother?"
"Siddhartha has always obeyed her mother."
"So you will give up your project?"
"Siddhartha will do what her mother tells her."
The first light of day entered the room. The Brahmin saw that Siddhartha's knees trembled slightly, but there was no trembling in Siddhartha's face; her eyes looked far away. Then the mother realized that Siddhartha could no longer remain with her at home - that she had already left her.
The mother touched Siddhartha's shoulder.
"You will go into the forest," she said, "and become a Samana. If you find bliss in the forest, come back and teach it to me. If you find disillusionment, come back, and we shall again offer sacrifices to the goddesses together. Now go, kiss your father and tell him where you are going. For me, however, it is time to go to the river and perform the first ablution."
She dropped her hand from her daughter's shoulder and went out. Siddhartha swayed as she tried to walk, she controlled herself, bowed to her mother and went to her father to do what had been told to her.
As, with benumbed legs, she slowly left the still sleeping town at daybreak; a crouching shadow emerged from the last hut and joined the pilgrim.
It was Govinda.
"You have come," said Siddhartha and smiled.
"I have come," said Govinda.



On the evening of that day they overtook the Samanas and requested their company and allegiance. They were accepted.
Siddhartha gave her clothes to a poor Brahmin on the road and only retained a simple cloth to hang over her left shoulder, which wrapped around her waist before it hung to her calves. She also retained her earth-colored unstitched cloak. She only ate once a day and never cooked food. She fasted fourteen days. She fasted twenty-eight days. The flesh disappeared from her legs and cheeks. Strand dreams were reflected in her enlarged eyes. The nails grew long on her thin fingers and her hair grew long and bristly. Her glance became icy when she encountered men; her lips curled with contempt when she passed through a town of well-dressed people. She saw businesswomen trading, princesses going to the hunt, mourners weeping over their dead, prostitutes offering themselves, doctors attending the sick, priestesses deciding the day for sowing, lovers making love, mothers and fathers soothing their children - and all were not worth a passing glance, everything lied, stank of lies; they were all illusions of sense, happiness and beauty. All were doomed to decay. The world tasted bitter. Life was pain.
Siddhartha had one single goal - to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow - to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought - that was her goal. When all the Self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desires were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of Being that is no longer Self - the great secret!
Silently Siddhartha stood in the fierce sun's rays, filled with pain and thirst, and stood until she no longer felt pain and thirst. Silently she stood in the rain, water dripping from her hair on to her freezing shoulders, on to her freezing hips and legs. And the ascetic stood until her shoulders and legs no longer froze, till they were silent, till they were still. Silently she crouched among the thorns. Blood dripped from her smarting skin, ulcers formed, and Siddhartha remained stiff, motionless, till no more blood flowed, till there was no more pricking, no more smarting.
Siddhartha sat upright and learned to save her breath. To manage with little breathing, to hold her breath. She learned, while breathing in, to quiet her heartbeat, learned to lessen her heartbeats, until there were few and hardly any more.
Instructed by the eldest of the Samanas, Siddhartha practiced self-denial and meditation according to the Samanas rules. A heron flew over the bamboo wood and Siddhartha took the heron into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, became a heron, ate fishes, suffered heron hunger, used heron language, died a heron's death. A dead jackal lay on the sandy shore and Siddhartha's soul slipped into its corpse; she became a dead jackal. Lay on the shore, swelled, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyenas, was picked at by vultures, became a skeleton, became dust, mingled with the atmosphere. And Siddhartha's soul returned, died, decayed, turned into dust, experienced the troubled course of the life cycle. She waited with new thirst like a hunter at a chasm where the life cycle ends, where there is an end to causes, where painless eternity begins. She killed her senses, she killed her memory, she slipped out of her Self in a thousand different forms. She was animal, carcass, stone, wood, water, and each time she reawakened. The sun or moon shone, she was again Self, swung into the me cycle, felt thirst, conquered thirst, felt new thirst.
Siddhartha learned a great deal from the Samanas; she learned many ways of losing the Self. She traveled along the path of self-denial through pain, through voluntary suffering and conquering of pain, through hunger, thirst and fatigue. She traveled the way of self-denial through meditation, through the emptying of the mind of all images. Along these and other paths did she learn to travel. She lost her Self a thousand times and for days on end she dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took her away from Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when she would again find herself, in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again
Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle.
At her side lived Govinda, her shadow; she traveled along the same path, made the same endeavors. They rarely conversed with each other apart from the necessities of their service and practices. Sometimes they went together through the villages in order to beg food for themselves and their teachers.
"What do you thin, Govinda?" Siddhartha asked at the beginning of one of these expeditions. Do you think we are any further? Have we reached out goal?"
Govinda replied: "we have learned and we are still learning. You will become a great Samana, Siddhartha. You have learned each exercise quickly. The old Samanas have often appraised you. Some day you will be a holy woman, Siddhartha."
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 prostitute's 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 herself; "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 she drinks a few bowls of rice wine or coconut milk in the inn. She then no longer feels her Self, no longer feels the pain of life; she then experiences temporary escape. Falling asleep over her bowl of rice wine, she 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, she does indeed find a short respite and rest, but she returns from the illusion and finds everything as it was before. She has not grown wiser, she has not gained knowledge, she has not climbed any higher."
Siddhartha answered with a smile on her 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."
On another occasion when Siddhartha left the wood with Govinda in order to beg for food for their sisters 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: "I think the eldest would be about sixty years old."
And Siddhartha said: "She is sixty years old and has not attained Nirvana. She will be seventy and eighty years old, and you and I, we shall grow as old as she, and do exercises and fast and meditate, but we will not attain Nirvana. Neither she 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 women, amongst so many Brahmins, amongst so many austere and worthy Samanas, amongst so many holy women, not 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 she has traveled 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 knowledge; I have always been full of questions. Year after year I have questioned the Brahmins, year after year I have questioned the holy Vedas. Perhaps, Govinda, it would have been equally good, equally clever and holy if I had questioned the rhinoceros or the chimpanzee. I have spent a long time and have not yet finished, in order to learn this, Govinda: that one can learn nothing there is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge - that is everywhere, that is Atwoman, that is in me and you and in every creature, and I am beginning to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the women of knowledge, than learning."
There upon Govinda stood still on the path, raised her hands and said: " Siddhartha, do not distress your friend with such talk. Truly, your words trouble me. Think, what meaning would our holy prayers have, the venerableness of the Brahmins, the holiness of the Samanas, if, as you say, there is no learning: Siddhartha, what would become of everything, what would be holy on earth, what would be precious and sacred?"
Govinda murmured a verse to herself, a verse from one of the Upanishads:
"She whose reflective pure spirit sinks into Atwoman
Knows bliss inexpressible through words."
Siddhartha was silent. She dwelt long on the words, which Govinda had uttered.
Yes, she though, standing with bowed head, what remains from all that seems holy to us? What remains? What is preserved? And she shook her head.
Once, when both youths had lived with the Samanas about three years and shared their practices, they heard from many sources a rumor, a report. Someone had appeared, called Gotama, the Illustrious, the Buddha. She had conquered in herself the sorrows of the world and had brought to a standstill the cycle of rebirth. She wandered through the country preaching, surrounded by disciples, having no possessions, homeless, without a husband, wearing the yellow cloak of an ascetic, but with lofty brow, a holy woman, and Brahmins and princesses bowed before her and became her pupils.
This report, this rumor, this tale was heard and spread here and there. The Brahmins talked about it in the town, the Samanas in the forest. The name of Gotama, the Buddha, continually reached the ears of the young women, spoken of well and ill, in praise and in scorn.
Just as when a country is ravaged with the plague and a rumor arises that there is a woman, a wise woman, a learned woman, whose words and breath are sufficient to heal the afflicted, and as the report travels across the country and everyone speaks about it, many believe and many doubt it. Many, however, immediately go on their way to seek the wise woman, the benefactor. In such a manner did that rumor, that happy report of Gotama the Buddha, the wise woman from the race of Sakya, travel through the country. She possessed great knowledge, said the believers; she remembered her former lives, she had attained Nirvana and never returned on the cycle, she plunged no more into the troubled stream of forms. Many wonderful and incredible things were reported about her; she had performed wonders, had conquered the devil, had spoken with the goddesses. Her enemies and doubters, however, said that this Gotama was an idle fraud; she passed her days in high living, scorned the sacrifices, was unlearned and knew neither practices nor mortification of the flesh.
The rumors of the Buddha sounded attractive; there was magic in these reports. The world was sick, life was difficult and here there seemed new hope, here there seemed to be a message, comforting, mild, full of fine promises. Everywhere there were rumors about the Buddha. Young women all over India listened, felt a longing and a hope. And among the Brahmins' daughters in the towns and villages, every pilgrim and stranger was welcome if she brought news of her. The Illustrious, the Sakyamuni.
The rumors reached the Samanas in the forest and Siddhartha and Govinda, a little at a time, every little item heavy with hope, heavy with doubt. They spoke little about it, as the eldest Samana was no friend of this rumor. She had heard that this alleged Buddha had formerly been an ascetic and had lived in the woods, had then turned to high living and the pleasure of the world, and she held no brief for this Gotama.
" Siddhartha." Govinda once said to her friend, "today I was in the village and a Brahmin invited me to enter her house and in the house was a Brahmin's daughter from Magadha; she had seen the Buddha with her own eyes and had heard her preach. Truly I was filled with longing and I thought; I wish that both Siddhartha and I may live to see the day when we can hear the teachings from the lips of the Perfect One. My friend, shall we not also go hither and hear the teachings from the lips of the Buddha?"
Siddhartha said: "I always thought that Govinda would remain with the Samanas. I always believed it was her goal to be sixty and seventy years old and still practice the arts and exercises, which the Samanas teach. But how little did I know Govinda! How little did I know what was in her heart!  Now, my dear friend, you wish to strike a new path and go and hear the Buddha's teachings."
Govinda said: "It gives you pleasure to mock me. No matter if you do Siddhartha. Do you not also feel a longing, a desire to hear this teaching? And did you not once say to me - I will not travel the path of the Samanas much longer?"
Then Siddhartha laughed in such a way that her voice expressed a shade of sorrow and a shade of mockery and she said: "You have spoken well, Govinda, you have remembered well, but you must also remember what else I told you - that I have become distrustful of teachings and learning and that I have little faith in words that come to us from teachers. But, very well, my fried, I am ready to hear that new teaching, although I believe in my heart that we have already tasted the best fruit of it."
Govinda replied: "I am delighted that you are agreed, but tell me, how can the teachings of Gotama disclose to us its most precious fruit before we have even heard her?"
Siddhartha said: "Let us enjoy this fruit and await further ones, Govinda. This fruit, for which we are already indebted to Gotama, consists in the fact that she has enticed us away from the Samanas. Whether there are still other and better fruits, let us patiently wait and see."
On the same day, Siddhartha informed the eldest Samana of her decision to leave her. She told the old woman with the politeness and modesty fitting to young woman and students. But the old woman was angry that both young women wished to leave her and she raised her voice and scolded them strongly.
Govinda was taken aback, but Siddhartha put her lips to Govinda's ear and whispered: "Now I will show the old woman that I have learned something from her."
She stood near the Samana, her mind intent; she looked into the old woman's eyes and held her with her look, hypnotized her, made her mute, conquered her will, commanded her silently to do as she wished. The old woman became silent, her eyes glazed, her will crippled; her arms hung down, she was powerless under Siddhartha's spell. Siddhartha's thoughts conquered those of the Samana; she had to perform what they commanded. And so the old woman bowed several times, gave her blessings and stammered her wishes for a good journey. The young woman thanked her for her good wishes, returned her bow, and departed.
On the way, Govinda said: "Siddhartha, you have learned more from the Samanas than I was aware. It is difficult, very difficult to hypnotize an old Samana. In truth, if you had stayed there, you would have soon learned how to walk on water."
"I have no desire to walk on water," said Siddhartha. "Let the old Samanas satisfy themselves with such arts."


In the town of Savathi every child knew the name of the Illustrious Buddha and every house was ready to fill the alms bowls of Gotama's silently begging disciples. Near the town was Gotama's favorite abode, the Jetavana grove, which the rich merchant Anathapindika, a great devotee of the Illustrious One, had presented to her and her followers.
The two young ascetics, in their search for Gotama's abode, had been referred to this district by tales and answers to their questions, and on their arrival in Savathi, food was offered to them immediately at the first house in front of whose door they stood silently begging. They partook of food and Siddhartha asked the lady who handed him the food:
"Good lady, we should very much like to know where the Buddha, the Illustrious One, dwells, for we are two Samanas from the forest and have come to see the Perfect One and hear her teachings from her own lips."
The woman said: "You have come to the right place, O Samanas from the forest. The Illustrious One sojourns in Jetavana, in the garden of Anathapindika. You may spend the night there, pilgrims, for there is enough room for the numerous people who flock here to hear the teachings from her lips."
Then Govinda rejoiced and happily said: "Ah, then we have reached our goal and our journey is at an end. But tell us, mother of pilgrims, do you know the Buddha? Have you seen her with your own eyes?"
The woman said: "I have seen the Illustrious One many times. On many a day I have seen her walk through the streets, silently, in a yellow cloak, and silently hold out her alms bowl at the house doors and return with her filled bowl."
Govinda listened enchanted and wanted to ask many more questions and hear much more, but Siddhartha reminded her that it was time to go. They expressed their thanks and departed. It was hardly necessary to enquire the way, for quite a number of pilgrims and monks from Gotama's followers were on the way to Jetvana. When they arrived there at night, there were continual new arrivals. There was a stir of voices from them, requesting and obtaining shelter. The two Samanas, who were used to life in the forest, quickly and quietly found shelter and stayed there till morning.
At sunrise they were astounded to see the large number of believers and curious people who had spent the night there. Monks in yellow robes wandered along all the paths of the magnificent grove. Here and there they sat under the trees, lost in meditation or engaged in spirited talk. The shady gardens were like a town, swarming with bees. Most of the monks departed with their alms bowls, in order to obtain food for their midday meal, the only one of the day. Even the Buddha herself went begging in the morning.
Siddhartha saw her and recognized her immediately, as if pointed out to her by a goddess. She saw her, bearing an alms bowl, quietly leaving the place, an unassuming woman in a yellow cowl.
"Look," said Siddhartha softly to Govinda, "there is the Buddha."
Govinda looked attentively at the monk in the yellow cowl, who could not be distinguished in any way from the hundreds of other monks, and yet Govinda soon recognized her. Yes, it was she, and they followed her and watched her.
The Buddha went quietly on her way, lost in thought. Her peaceful countenance was nether neither happy nor sad. She seemed to be smiling gently inwardly. With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child, she walked along, peacefully, quietly. She wore her gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but her face and her step, her peaceful downward glance, her peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of her hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, initiated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace.
And so Gotama wandered into the town to obtain alms, and the two Samanas recognized her only by her complete peacefulness of demeanor, by the stillness of her form, in which there was no seeking, no will, no counterfeit, no effort - only light and peace.
"Today we will hear the teachings from her own lips," said Govinda.
Siddhartha did not reply. She was not very curious about the teachings. She did not think they would teach her anything new. She, as well as Govinda, had heard the substance of the Buddha's teachings, if only from second and third - hand reports. But she looked attentively at Gotama's head, at her shoulders, as her feet, as her still, downward - hanging hand, and it seemed to her that in every joint of every finger of her hand there was knowledge; they spoke, breather, radiated truth. This woman, this Buddha, was truly a holy woman to her fingertips. Never had Siddhartha esteemed a woman so much, never had she loved a woman so much.
They both followed the Buddha into the town and returned in silence. They themselves intended to abstain from food that day. They saw Gotama return, saw her take her meal within the circle of her disciples - what she ate would not have satisfied a bird - and saw her withdraw to the shade of the mango tree.
In the evening, however, when the heat abated and everyone in the camp was alert and gathered together, they head the Buddha preach. They heard her voice, and this also was perfect, quiet and full of peace. Gotama talked about suffering, the origin of suffering, they way to release from suffering. Life was pain, the world was full of suffering, but the path to the release from suffering had been found. There was salvation for those who went the way of the Buddha.
The Illustrious One spoke in a soft but firm voice, taught the four main points, taught the Eightfold Path; patiently she covered the usual method of teaching with examples and repetition. Clearly and quietly her voice was carried to her listeners - like alight, like a star in the heavens.
When the Buddha had finished - it was already night - many pilgrims came forward and asked to be accepted into the community, and the Buddha accepted them and said: "you have listened well to the teachings. Join us then and walk in bliss; put an end to suffering."
Govinda, the shy one, also stepped forward and said: "I also wish to pay my allegiance to the Illustrious One and her teachings," she asked to be taken into the community and was accepted.
As soon as the Buddha had withdrawn for the night, Govinda turned to Siddhartha and said eagerly: " Siddhartha, it is not for me to reproach you. We have both listened to the Illustrious One, we have both heard her teachings. Govinda has listened to the teachings and has accepted them, but you, my dear friend, will you not also tread the path of salivation? Will you delay, will you still wait?"f
When she heard Govinda's words, Siddhartha awakened as if from a sleep. She looked at Govinda's face for a long time. Then she spoke softly and there was no mockery in her voice. "Govinda, my friend, you have taken the step, you have chosen your path. You have always been my friend, Govinda, you have always gone a step behind me. Often I have thought; will Govinda ever take a step without me, form her own conviction? Now, you are a woman and have chosen your own path. May you go along it to the end, my friend, may you find salvation!"
Govinda, who did not yet fully understand, repeated her question impatiently: "speak, my dear friend, say that you also cannot do other than swear allegiance to the Buddha."
Siddhartha place her hand on Govinda's shoulder. "You have heard my blessing, Govinda. I repeat it. May you travel this path to the end. May you find salvation!"
In that moment, Govinda realized that her friend was leaving her and she began to weep.
" Siddhartha," she cried.
Siddhartha spoke kindly to her. "Do not forget, Govinda, that you now belong to the Buddha's holy women. You have renounced home and parents, you have renounced origin and property, you have renounced your own will, you have renounced friendship. That is what the teachings preach, that is the will of the Illustrious One. That is what you wished yourself. Tomorrow Govinda, I will leave you."
For a long time the friends wandered through the woods. They lay down for a long time but could not sleep. Govinda pressed her friend again and again to tell her why she would not follow the Buddha's teachings, what flaw she found in them, but each time Siddhartha waved her of: "Be at peace, Govinda. The Illustrious One's teachings are very good. How could I find a flaw in them?"
Early in the morning, one of the Buddha's followers, one of her oldest monks, went through the garden and called to her all the new people who had sworn their allegiance to the teachings, in order to place upon them the yellow robe and instruct them in the first teachings and duties of their order. Thereupon Govinda tore herself away, embraced the friend of her youth, and drew on the monk's robe.
Siddhartha wandered through the grove deep in thought.
There she met Gotama, the Illustrious One, and as she greeted her respectfully and the Buddha's expression was so full of goodness and peace, the young woman plucked up courage and asked the Illustrious One's permission to speak to her. Silently the Illustrious One nodded her permission.
Siddhartha said: "yesterday, O Illustrious One, I had the pleasure of hearing your wonderful teachings. I came from afar with my friend to hear you, and now my friend will remain with you; she has sworn allegiance to you. I, however, am continuing my pilgrimage anew."
"As you wish," said the Illustrious One politely.
"My talk is perhaps too bold," continued Siddhartha," but I do not wish to leave the Illustrious One without sincerely communicating to her my thought. Will the Illustrious One hear me a little longer?"
Silently the Buddha nodded her consent.
Siddhartha said: "O Illustrious One, in one thing above all have I admired your teachings. Everything is completely clear and proved. You show the world as a complete, unbroken chain, an eternal chain, linked together by cause and effect. Never has it been presented so clearly, never has it been so irrefutably demonstrated. Surely every Brahmin's heart must beat more quickly, when thorough your teaching she looks at the world, completely coherent, without a loophole, clear as crystal, not dependent on chance, not dependent on the goddesses. Whether it is good or evil, whether like in itself is pain or pleasure, whether it is uncertain - that it may perhaps be this is not important - but the unity of the world, the coherence of all events, the embracing of the big and the small from the same stream, from the same law of cause, of becoming and dying: this shines clearly from your exalted teachings, O Perfect One. But according to your teachings, this unity and logical consequence of all things is broken in one place. Through a small gap there streams into the world of unity something strange, something new, something that was not there before and that cannot be demonstrated and proved: that is your doctrine of rising above the world, of salvation. With this small gap, through this small break, however, the eternal and single world law breaks down again. Forgive me if I raise this objection."
Gotama had listened quietly, motionless. And now the Perfect One spoke in her kind, polite and clear voice. "You have listened well to the teachings, O Brahmin's daughter, and it is a credit to you that you have thought so deeply about them. You have found a flaw. Think well about it again. Let me warn you, you who are thirsty for knowledge, against the thicket of opinions and the conflict of words. Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them. The teaching, which you have heard, however, is not my opinion, and its goal is not to explain why only men create religions. It is not to explain the world to those who are thirsty for knowledge. Its goal is quite different; its goal is salvation from suffering. That is what Gotama teaches, nothing else.
"Do not be angry with me, O Illustrious One," said the young woman. "I have not spoken to you thus to quarrel with you about words. You are right when you say that opinions mean little, but may I say one thing more, I did not doubt you for one moment. Not for one moment did I doubt that you were the Buddha, that you have reached the highest goal which so many thousands of Brahmins and Brahmin's daughters are striving to reach. You have done so by your own seeking, in your own way, through thought, through mediation, through knowledge, through enlightenment. You have learned nothing through teachings, and so I think, Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation through teachings. To nobody, O Illustrious One, can you communicate in words and teachings what happened to you in the hour of your enlightenment. The teachings of the enlightened Buddha embrace much, they teach much - how to live righteously, how to avoid evil. But there is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the Illustrious One herself experienced - she alone among hundreds of thousands. That is what I thought and realized when I heard your teachings. That is why I am going on my way - not to seek another and better doctrine, for I know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers and to reach my goal alone - or die. But I will often remember this day, O Illustrious One, and this hour when my eyes beheld a holy woman."
The Buddha's eyes were lowered, her unfathomable face expressed complete equanimity.
"I hope you are not mistaken in your reasoning." Said the Illustrious One slowly. "May you reach your goal! But tell me, have you seen my gathering of holy women, my many sisters who have sworn allegiance to the teachings? Do you think, O Samana from afar, that it would be better for all these to relinquish the teachings and to return to the life of the world and desires?"
"That thought never occurred to me," cried Siddhartha. "May they all follow the teachings! May they reach their goal! It is not for me to judge another life. I must judge for myself. I must choose and reject. We Samanas seek release from the Self, O Illustrious One. If I were one of your followers, I fear that it would only be on the surface, that I would deceive myself that I was at peace and had attained salvation, while in truth the Self would continue to live and grow, for it would have been transformed into your teachings, into my allegiance and love for you and for the community of the monks."
Half smiling, with imperturbable brightness and friendliness, the Buddha looked steadily at the stranger and dismissed her with a hardly visible gesture.
"You are clever, O Samana," said the Illustrious One, "you know how to speak cleverly, my friend be on your guard against too much cleverness."
The Buddha walked away and her look and half-smile remained imprinted on Siddhartha's memory forever.
I have never seen a woman look and smile, sit and walk like that, she thought. I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A woman only looks and walks like that when she has conquered her Self. I also will conquer my Self.
I have seen one woman, one woman only, thought Siddhartha, before whom I must lower my eyes. I will never lower my eyes before any other woman. No other teachings will attract me, since this woman's teachings have not done so.
The Buddha has robbed me, thought Siddhartha. She has robbed me, yet she has given me something of greater value. She has robbed me of my friend, who believed in me and who now believes in her; she was my shadow and is not
Gotama's shadow. But she has given to me Siddhartha, myself.



As Siddhartha left the grove in which the Buddha, the Perfect One, remained, in which Govinda remained, she felt that she had also left her former life behind her in the grove. As she slowly went on her way, her head was full of this thought. She reflected deeply, until this feeling completely overwhelmed her and she reached a point where she recognized causes; for to recognize causes, it seemed to her, is to think, and through thought alone feelings become knowledge and are not lost, but become real and begin to mature.
Siddhartha reflected deeply as she went on her way. She realized that she was no longer a youth; she was now a woman. She realized that something had left her, like the old skin that a snake sheds. Something was no longer in her, something that had accompanied her right through her youth and was part of her: this was the desire to have teachers and to listen to their teachings. She had left the last teacher she had met, even she, the greatest and wisest teacher, the holiest, the Buddha. She had to leave her; she could not accept her teachings.
Slowly the thinker went on her way and asked herself: What is it that you wanted to learn from teachings and teachers, and although they taught you much, what was it they could not teach you?  And she: It was the Self, the character and nature of which I wished to learn. I wanted to rid myself of the Self, to conquer it, but I could not conquer it, I could only deceive it, could only fly from it, could only hide from it. Truly, nothing in the world has occupied my thoughts as much as the Self, this riddle, that I live, that I am one and am separated and different from everybody else, that I am Siddhartha; and about nothing in the world do I know less than about myself, about Siddhartha.
The thinker, slowly going on her way, suddenly stood still, gripped by this thought, and another thought immediately arose from this one. It was: The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha; has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing - I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself.  I was seeking Brahmin, Atwoman, I wished to destroy myself, to get away from myself, in order to find in the unknown innermost, the nucleus of all things, Atwoman, Life, the Divine, the Absolute. But by doing so, I lost myself on the way.
Siddhartha; looked up and around her, a smile crept over her face, and a strong feeling of awakening from a long dream spread right through her being. Immediately she walked on again, quickly, like a woman who knows what she has to do.
Yes, she thought breathing deeply, I will no longer try to escape from Siddhartha. I will no longer devote my thoughts to Atwoman and the sorrows of the world. I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins. I will no longer study Yoga-Veda, Atharva-Veda, or asceticism, or any other teachings. I will learn from myself, be my own pupil; I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha.
She looked around her as if seeing the world for the first time. The world was beautiful, strange and mysterious. Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, sky and river, woods and mountains, all beautiful, all mysterious and enchanting, and in the midst of it, she, Siddhartha, the awakened one, on the way to herself. All this, all this yellow and blue, river and wood, passed for the first time across Siddhartha's eyes. It was no longer the magic of Mara, it was no more the veil of Maya, it was no longer meaningless and the chance diversities of the appearances of the world, despised by deep-thinking Brahmins, who scorned diversity, who sought unity. River was river, and if the One and Divine in Siddhartha; secretly lived in blue and river, it was just the divine art and intention that there should be yellow and blue, there sky and wood - and here Siddhartha; meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.
How deaf and stupid I have been, she thought, walking on quickly. When anyone reads anything which she wishes to study, she does not despise the letters and punctuation marks, and call them illusion, chance and worthless shells, but she reads them, she studies and loves them, letter by letter. But I, who wished to read the book of the world and the book of my own nature, did presume to despise the letters and signs, I called the world of appearances, illusion. I called my eyes and tongue, chance, now it is over; I have awakened. I have indeed awakened and have only been born today.
    But as these thoughts passed through Siddhartha's mind, she suddenly stood still, as if a snake lay in her path.
Then suddenly this also was clear to her: she, who was in fact like one who had awakened or was newly born, must begin her life completely afresh. When she left the Jetavana grove that morning, the grove of the Illustrious One, already awakened, already on the way to herself, it was her intention and it seemed the natural course for her after the years of her asceticism to return to her home and her mother. Now, however, in that moment as she stood still, as if a snake lay in her path, this thought also came to her: I am no longer what I was, I am no longer an ascetic, no longer a priestess, no longer a Brahmin. What then shall I do at home with my mother? Study? Offer sacrifices? Practice meditation? All this is over for me now.
Siddhartha stood still and for a moment an icy chill stole over her. She shivered inwardly like a small animal, like a bird or a hare, when she realized how alone she was. She had been homeless for years and had not felt like this. Now she did feel it. Previously, when in deepest meditation, she was still her mother's daughter, she was a Brahmin of high standing, a religious woman. Now she was only Siddhartha, the awakened; otherwise nothing else. She breathed in deeply and for a moment she shuddered. Nobody was so alone as she. She was no noblewoman, belonging to any aristocracy, no artisan belonging to any guild and finding refuge in it, sharing its life and language. She was no Brahmin, sharing the life of the Brahmins, no ascetic belonging to the Samanas. Even the most secluded hermit in the woods was not one and alone; she also belonged to a class of people. Govinda had become a monk and thousands of monks were her sisters, wore the same gown, shared her beliefs and spoke her language. But she, Siddhartha, where did she belong?  Whose life would she share?  Whose language would she speak?
At that moment, when the world around her melted away, when she stood alone like a star in the heavens, she was overwhelmed by a feeling of icy despair, but she was more firmly herself than ever. That was the last shudder of her awakening, the last pains of birth. Immediately she moved on again and began to walk quickly and impatiently, no longer homewards, no longer to her mother, no longer looking backwards.

End of chapter four





Siddhartha learned something new on every step of her path, for the world was transformed and she was enthralled. She saw the sun rise over forest and mountains and set over the distant palm shore. At night she saw the stars in the heavens and the sickle-shaped moon floating like a boat in the blue. She saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, weeds, flowers, brook and river, the sparkle of dew on bushes in the morning, distant high mountains blue and pale; birds sang, bees hummed, the wind blew gently across the rice fields. All this, colored and in a thousand different forms, had always been there. The sun and moon had always shone; the rivers had always flowed and the bees had hummed, but in previous times all this had been nothing to Siddhartha but a fleeting and illusive veil before her eyes, regarded with distrust, condemned to be disregarded and ostracized from the thoughts, because it was not reality, because reality lay on the other side of the visible. But now her eyes lingered on this side; she saw and recognized the visible and she sought her place in this world. She did not seek reality; her goal was not on any other side. The world was beautiful when looked at in this way - without any seeking, so simple, so childlike. The moon and the stars were beautiful, the brook, the shore, the forest and rock, the goat and the golden beetle, the flower and butterfly were beautiful. It was beautiful and pleasant to go through the world like that, so childlike, so awakened, so concerned with the immediate, without any distrust. Elsewhere, the sun burned fiercely, elsewhere there was cool in the forest shade; elsewhere there were pumpkins and bananas. The days and nights ere short, every hour passed quickly like a sail on the sea, beneath the sail of a ship of treasures, full of joy. Siddhartha saw a group of monkeys in the depths of the forest, moving about high in the branches, and heard their wild eager cries. Siddhartha saw a ram follow a sheep and mate. In a lake of rushes she saw the pike making chase in evening hunger. Swarms of young fishes, fluttering and glistening, moved anxiously away from it. Strength and desire were reflected in the swiftly moving whirls of water formed by the raging pursuer.
All this had always been and she had never seen it; she was never present. Now she was present and belonged to it. Through her eyes she saw light and shadows; through her mind she was aware of moon and stars.
On the way, Siddhartha remembered all that she had experienced in the garden of Jetevana, the teachings that she had heard there from the holy Buddha, the parting from Govinda and the conversation with the Illustrious One. She remembered each word that she had said to the illustrious One, and she was astonished that she had said things, which she did not then really know. What she had said to the Buddha - that the Buddha's wisdom and secret was not teachable, that it was inexpressible and incommunicable - and which she had once experienced in an hour of enlightenment, was just what she had now set off to experience, what she was now beginning to experience. She must gain experience herself. She had known for a long time and her Self was Atwoman, of the same eternal nature as Brahmin, but she had never really found her Self, because she had wanted to trap it in the net of thoughts. The body was certainly not the Self, not the play of sense, nor thought, nor understanding, nor acquired wisdom or art with which to draw conclusions and from already existing thoughts to spin new thoughts. No, this world of thoughts was still on this side, and it led to no goal when one destroyed the senses of the incidental Self but fed it with thoughts and erudition. Both thought and the senses were fine things, behind both of them lay hidden the last meaning; it was worthwhile listening to them both, to play with both, neither to despise nor overrate either of them, but to listen intently to both voices. She would only strive after whatever the inward voice commanded her, not tarry anywhere but where the voice advised her. Why did Gotama once sit down beneath the bo tree in her greatest hour when she received enlightenment?  She had heard a voice, a voice in her own heart which commanded her to seek rest under this tree, and she had not taken recourse to mortification of the flesh, sacrifices, bathing or prayers, eating or drinking, sleeping or dreaming; she had listened to the voice. To obey no other external command, only the voice, to be prepared - that was good, that was necessary.  Nothing else was necessary.
During the night, as she slept in a Ferryman's straw hut, Siddhartha has a dream. She dreamt that Govinda stood before her, in the yellow robe of the ascetic, Govinda looked sad and asked her, "Why did you leave me?"  Thereupon she embraced Govinda, put her arm round her, and as she drew her to her breast and kissed her, she was Govinda no longer, but a man and out of the man's gown emerged a full erect penis, and Siddhartha lay there and tasted the semen from this penis. It did not taste sweet like the milk from a mother's breast. It was not life giving with nutrients for growth, but it bore the beginning of life in and of itself. The full, total and irrevocable weight of conception was here in the male penis. For it was the sperm and sperm alone that meant conception or not, life or not. It was women who chose to bring forth life, but it was man whose sperm conceived life. The reality of the true light of male responsibility brought a new kind of awakening to her. And she tasted of this awakening. Its aroma was of woman and man, of sun and forest, of animal and flower, of every fruit, of every pleasure. It was intoxicating. When Siddhartha awoke, the pale river shimmered past the door of the hut, and in the forest the cry of an owl rang out, deep and clear.
As the day began, Siddhartha asked her hostess, the ferrywoman, to take her across the river. The ferrywoman took her across on her bamboo raft. The broad sheet of water glimmered pink in the light of the morning.
"It is a beautiful river," she said to her companion.
"Yes," said the ferrywoman. "It is a very beautiful river. I love it above everything. I have often listened to it, gazed at it, and I have always learned something from it. One can learn much from a river. ""I could see that," said the ferrywoman," and I did not expect any payment or gift from you. You will give it to me some other time."
"Do you think so?" asked Siddhartha merrily.
"Certainly. I have learned that from the river too; everything comes back. You, too, Samana, will come back. Now farewell, may your friendship be my payment! May you think of me when you sacrifice to the goddesses!"
Smiling, they parted from each other. Siddhartha was ple3ased at the ferrywoman's friendliness. She is like Govinda, she thought, smiling. All whom I meet on the way are like Govinda. All are grateful, although they themselves deserve thanks. All are subservient, all wish to be my friend, to obey and to think little. People are children.
At midday she passed through a village. Children danced about in the lane in front of the clay huts. They played with pumpkin - stones and mussels. They shouted and wrestled with each other, but ran away timidly when the strange Samana appeared. At the end of the village, the path went alongside a brook, and at the edge of the brook a young man was kneeling and washing clothes. When Siddhartha greeted him, he raised his head and looked at her with a smile, so that she could see the whites of his eyes shining. She called across a benediction, as is customary among travelers, and asked how far the road still was to the large town. Thereupon he stood up and came towards her, his moist lips gleaming attractively in his young face. He exchanged light remarks with her, asked her if she had yet eaten, and whether it was true that the Samanas slept alone in the forest at night and were not allowed to have any men with them. He then placed his left foot on her right and made a gesture, such as a man makes when he invites a woman to that kind of enjoyment of love which the holy books call "ascending the tree." Siddhartha felt her blood kindle, and as she recognized her dream again at that moment, she stooped a little towards the man and kissed the brown nipple on his chest. Looking up she saw his face smiling, full of desire and his half-closed eyes pleading with longing.
Siddhartha also felt a longing and the stir of sex in her; but as she had never yet touched a man, she hesitated a moment, although her hands were ready to seize him. At that moment she heard her inward voice and the voice said "No!"  Then all the magic disappeared from the young man's smiling face; she saw nothing but the ardent glance of a passionate young man. Gently she stroked his cheek and quickly disappeared from the disappointed man into the bamboo wood.
Before evening of that day she reached a large town and she was glad, because she had a desire to be with people. She had lived in the woods for a long time and the ferrywoman's straw hut, in which she had slept the previous night, was the first roof she had had over her for a long time.
Outside the town, by a beautiful unfenced grove, the wanderer met a small train of women and men servants loaded with baskets. In the middle, in an ornamented sedan chair carried by four people, sat a man, the master, on red cushions beneath a colored awning. Siddhartha stood still at the entrance to the grove and watched the procession, the men servants, the maids and the baskets. She looked at the sedan chair and the man in it. Beneath thick black hair she saw a bright, very sweet, very clever face, a mouth like a freshly cut fig, artful eyebrows, dark eyes, clever and observant, and a full neck above his green and gold clothes. The man's hands were firm and smooth, long and forceful, with broad leather and gold wrist ties.
Siddhartha saw how handsome he was and her heart rejoiced. She bowed low as the sedan chair passed close by her, and raising herself again, gazed at the bright fair face, and for a moment into the clever arched eyes, and inhaled a fragrance she did not recognize. For a moment the handsome man nodded and smiled, then disappeared into the grove, followed by his servants.
And so, thought Siddhartha, I enter this town under a lucky star. She felt the urge to enter the grove immediately, but she thought it over, for it had just occurred to her how the men servants and maids had looked at her at the entrance, so scornfully, so distrustfully, so dismissing in their glance.
I am still a Samana, she thought, still an ascetic and a beggar. I cannot remain on; I cannot enter the grove like this. And she laughed.
She enquired from the first people that she met about the grove and the man's name, and learned that it was the grove of Kamala, the well-known courtier, and that besides the grove she owned a house in the town.
Then she entered the town. She had only one goal. Pursuing it, she surveyed the town, wandered about in the maze of streets, stood still in places, and rested on the stone steps to the river. Towards evening she made friends with a barber's assistant, whom she had seen working in the shade of an arch. She found her again at prayer in the temple of Vishnu, where she related to her stories about Vishnu and Lakshmi. During the night she slept among the boats on the river, and early in the morning, before the first customers arrived in the shop, she had her hair trimmed neat by the barber's assistant. She also had her hair styled and rubbed with fine oil. Then she went to bathe in the river.
When the handsome Kamala was approaching his grove late in the afternoon in his sedan chair, Siddhartha was at the entrance. She bowed and received the courtier's greeting. She beckoned the servant who was last in the procession, and asked her to announce to her master that a young Brahmin desired to speak to him. After a time the servant returned, asked Siddhartha to follow her, conducted her silently into a pavilion, where Kamala lay on a couch, and left her.
"Did you not stand outside yesterday and greet me?" asked Kamala.
"Yes indeed. I saw you yesterday and greeted you."
"But did you not have long hair yesterday, and dust in your hair?"
"You have observed well, you have seen everything. You have seen Siddhartha, the Brahmin's daughter, who left her home in order to become a Samana, and who was a Samana for three years. Now, however, I have left that path and have come to this town, and the first person I met before I reached the town was you. I have come here to tell you, O Kamala, that you are the first man to whom Siddhartha has spoken without lowered eyes. Never again will I lower my eyes when I meet a handsome man."
Kamala smiled and asked: "is that all that Siddhartha has come to tell me?"
"I have come to tell you this and to thank you because you are so handsome. And if it does not displease you, Kamala, I would like to ask you to be my friend and teacher, for I do not know anything of the art of which you are master."
Thereupon Kamala laughed aloud.
"It has never been my experience that a Samana from the woods should come to me and desire to learn from me. Never has a Samana with long hair and an old torn wrap come to me. Many young women come to me, including Brahmin's daughters, but they come to me in fine clothes, in fine shoes; there is scent in their hair and money in their purses. That is how these young women come to me, O Samana."
Siddhartha said: "I am already beginning to learn from you. I already learned something yesterday. Already I have combed, styled and oiled my hair. There is not much more that is lacking, most excellent lord: fine clothes, fine shoes and money in my purse. Siddhartha has undertaken to achieve more difficult things than these trifles and has attained them. Why should I not attain what I decided to undertake yesterday? - to be your friend and to learn the pleasures of love from you. You will find me an apt pupil, Kamala. I have learned more difficult things than what you have to teach me. So Siddhartha is not good enough for you as she is, with oil in her hair, but without clothes, without shoes and without money!"
Kamala laughed and said: "No, she is not yet good enough. She must have clothes, fine clothes, and shoes, fine shoes and plenty of money in her purse and presents for Kamala. Do you know now, Samana from the woods? Do you understand?"
"I understand very well," cried Siddhartha. "How could I fail to understand when it comes from such a mouth? Your mouth is like a freshly cut fig, Kamala. My lips are also red and fresh, and will fit yours very well, you will see. But tell me, fair Kamala, are you not at all afraid of the Samana from the forest, who has come to learn about love?"
"Why should I be afraid of a Samana, a stupid Samana from the forest, who comes from the jackals and does not know anything about men?"
"Oh, the Samana is strong and afraid of nothing. She could force you, fair courtier, she could rob you, she could hurt you."
"No Samana, I am not afraid. Has a Samana or a Brahmin ever feared that someone could come and strike her and rob her of her knowledge, of her piety, of her power for depth of thought?  No, because they belong to herself and she can only give of them what she wishes, and if she wishes. That is exactly how it is with kamala and with the pleasure of love. Full and ripe are kamala's lips, but try to kiss them against kamala's will, and not one drop of sweetness will you obtain from them - although they know well how to give sweetness. You are an apt pupil, Siddhartha, so learn also this. One can beg, buy, be presented with and find love in the streets, but is can never be stolen. You have misunderstood. Yes, it would be a pity if a fine young woman like you misunderstood.
Siddhartha bowed and smiled. "You are right, Kamala, it would be a pity. It would be a very great pity. No, no drops of sweetness must be lost from your lips, not from mine. So Siddhartha will come again when she has what she is lacking in - clothes, shoes money. But tell me, fair Kamala, can you not give me a little advice?"
"Advice? Why not? Who would not willingly give advice to a poor, ignorant Samana who comes from the jackals in the forest?'
"Dear Kamala, where can I go in order to obtain these three things as quickly as possible?"
"My friend, many people want to know that. You must do what you have learned and obtain money, clothes and shoes for it. A poor man cannot obtain money otherwise."
"I can think, I can wait, I can fast."
"Nothing else?'
"Nothing. O yes, I can compose poetry. Will you give me a kiss for a poem?'
"I will do so if your poem pleases me. What is it called?'
After thinking a moment, Siddhartha recited this verse:

"Into his grove went the fair Kamala,
At the entrance to the grove stood the brown Samana.
As she saw the lotus flower,
Deeply she bowed.
Smiling, acknowledged Kamala,
Better, thought the young Samana,
To make sacrifices to the fair Kamala
Than to offer sacrifices to the goddesses."
Kamala clapped his hands loudly, so that the golden wristlets tinkled.
"Your poetry is very good, brown Samana, and truly there is nothing to lose if I give you a kiss for it."
She drew her to him with her eyes. She put her face against his, placed her lips against his, which were like a freshly cut fig. Kamala kissed her deeply, and to Siddhartha's great astonishment she felt how much he taught her, how clever he was, how he mastered her, repulsed her, lured her, and how after this long kiss, a long series of other kisses, all different, awaited her. She stood still breathing deeply. At that moment she was like a child astonished at the fullness of knowledge and learning which unfolded itself before her eyes.
"Your poetry is very good," said kamala, "if I were rich I would give you money for it. But it will be hard for you to earn as much money as you want with poetry. For you will need much money if you want to be Kamala's friend."
"How you can kiss, Kamala!" stammered Siddhartha.
"Yes, indeed, that is why I am not lacking in clothes, shoes, gold ornaments and all sorts of pretty things. But what are you going to do?  Cannot you do anything else besides think, fast and compose poetry?"
"I also know the sacrificial songs," said Siddhartha. "But I will not sing them anymore. I also know incantations, but I will not pronounce them anymore. I have read the scriptures…"
'Wait," interrupted Kamala, "you can read and write?'
"Certainly I can. Many people can do that."
"Not most people. I cannot. It is very good that you know how to read and write, very good. You might even need the incantations."
At that moment a servant entered and whispered something in her mistress's ear.
"I have a visitor," said Kamala. "Hurry and disappear, Siddhartha, nobody must see you here. I will see you again tomorrow."
However, ordered the servant to give the holy Brahmin a white gown. Without quite knowing what was happening, Siddhartha was led away by the servant, conducted by a circuitous route to a garden house, presented with a gown, let into the thicket and expressly instructed to leave the grove unseen, as quickly as possible.
Contentedly, she did what she was told. Accustomed to the forest, she made her way silently out of the grove and over the hedge. Contentedly, she returned to the town, carrying her tolled-up gown under her arm. She stood at the door of an inn where travelers met, silently begged for food and silently accepted a piece of rice cake. Perhaps tomorrow, she though, I will not need to beg for food.
She was suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of pride. She was a Samana no longer; it was no longer fitting that she should beg. She gave the rice cake to a dog and remained without food.
The life that is lived here is simple, thought Siddhartha. It has no difficulties. Everything was difficult, irksome and finally hopeless when I was a Samana. Now everything is easy, as easy as the instruction in kissing which kamala gives. I require clothes and money, that is all. These are easy goals, which do not disturb one's sleep.
She had long since enquired about kamala's town house and called there the next day.
"Things are going well," he called across to her. "Kamaswami expects you to call on her; she is the richest merchant in the town. If you please her, she will take you into her service. Be clever, brown Samana! I had your name mentioned to her through others. Be friendly towards her she is very powerful, but do not be too modest. I do not want you to be her servant, but her equal; otherwise I shall not be pleased with you. Kamaswami is beginning to grow old and indolent. If you please her, she will place great confidence in you.'
Siddhartha thanked him and laughed, and when he learned that she had not eaten that day nor the previous day, he ordered bread and fruit to be brought to her and attended her.
"You have been lucky." He said to her on parting, "one door after the other is being opened to you. How does that come about? Have you a charm?"
Siddhartha said: "yesterday I told you I knew how to think, to wait and to fast, but you did not consider these useful. But you will see that they are very useful, Kamala. You will see that the stupid Samanas in the forest learn and know many useful things. The day before yesterday I was still an unkempt beggar; yesterday I already kissed Kamala and soon I will be a merchant and have money and all those things which you value."
"Quite." He agreed, "but how would you have fared without me?  Where would you be if Kamala did not help you?"
"My dear Kamala," said Siddhartha, "When I came to you in your grove I made the first step. It was my intention to learn about love from the most handsome man. From the moment I made that resolution I also knew that I would execute it. I knew that you would help me; I knew it from your first glance at the entrance to the grove."
"And if I had not wanted?"
"But you did want. Listen, Kamala, when you throw a stone into the water, it finds the quickest way to the bottom of the water.  It is the same when Siddhartha has an aim, a goal. Siddhartha does nothing; she waits, she thinks, she fasts, but she goes through the affairs of the world like the stone through the water, without doing anything, without bestirring herself; she is drawn and lets herself fall. She is drawn by her goal, for she does not allow anything to enter her mind, which opposes her goal. That is what Siddhartha learned from the Samanas. It is what fools call magic and what they think is caused by demons. Nothing is caused by demons; there are no demons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach her goal, if she can't think, wait and fast."
Kamala listened to her. He loved her voice, he loved the look in her eyes.
"Perhaps it is as you say, my friend,' she said softly, "and perhaps it is also because Siddhartha is a beautiful woman, because her glance pleases men, that she is lucky."
Siddhartha kissed him and said good-bye. "May it be so, my teacher. May my glance always please you, may good fortune always come to me from you!"


Siddhartha went to see Kamaswami, the merchant, and was shown into a rich house. Servants conducted her across costly carpets to a room where she waited for the mistress of the house.
Kamaswami came in, a supple, lively woman, with graying hair, with clever, prudent eyes and a sensual mouth. Mistress and visitor greeted each other in a friendly manner.
"I have been told," the merchant began, "that you are a Brahmin, a learned woman, but that you seek service with a merchant. Are you then in need, Brahmin, that you seek service?"
"No," replied Siddhartha, "I am not in need and I have never been in need. I have come from the Samanas with whom I lived a long time."
"If you come from the Samanas, how is it that you are not in need?  Are not all the Samanas completely without possessions?'
"I possess nothing," said Siddhartha, "if that is what you mean. I am certainly without possessions, but of my own free will, so I am not in need."
"But how will you live if you are without possessions?"
"I have never thought about it, madam. I have been without possessions for nearly three years and I have never thought on what I should live."
"So you have lived on the possessions of others?"
"Apparently. The merchant also lives on the possessions of others."
"Well spoken, but she does not take from others for nothing, she gives her goods in exchange."
"That seems to be the way of things. Everyone takes, everyone gives. Like is like that."
"Ash, but if you are without possessions, how can you give?"
"Everyone gives what she has. The soldier gives strength, the merchant goods, the teacher instruction, the farmer rice, the fisherwoman fist."
"Very well and what can you give? What have you learned that you can give?"
"I can think, I can wait, I can fast."
"Is that all?"
"I think that is all."
"And of what use are they? For example, fasting, what good is that?"
"It is of great value, madam, if a woman has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing she can dol. If, for instance, Siddhartha had not learned to fast, she would have had to seek some kind of work today, either with you, or elsewhere, for hunger would have driven her. But as it is, Siddhartha can wait calmly. She is not impatient, she is not in need, she can ward off hunger for a long time and laugh at it. Therefore, fasting is useful, madam."
"You are right, Samana. Wait a moment."
Kamaswami went out and returned with a roll which she handed to her guest and enquired: "can you read this?'
Siddhartha looked at the roll, on which a sales agreement was written, and began to read the contents.
"Excellent." Said Kamaswami, "and will you write something for me on this sheet?"
She gave her a sheet and a pen and Siddhartha wrote something and returned the sheet.
Kamaswami read: "writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better."
"You write very well," the merchant praised her. "We shall still have plenty to discuss, but today I invite you to be my guest and to live in my house. "
Siddhartha thanked her and accepted. She now lived in the merchant's house. Clothes and shoes were brought to her and a servant prepared her a bath daily. Splendid meals were served twice a day, but Siddhartha only ate once a day, and neither ate meat nor drank wine. Kamaswami talked to her about her business showed her goods and warehouses and accounts. Siddhartha learned many new things; she heard much and said little. And remembering Kamala's words, she was never servile to the merchant, but compelled her to treat her as an equal and even more than her equal. Kamaswami conducted her business with care and often with passion, but Siddhartha regarded it all as a game, the rules of which she endeavored to learn well, but which did not stir her heart.
She was not long in Kamaswami's house, when she was already taking a part in her mistress's business. Daily, however, at the hour he invited her, she visited the handsome Kamala, in beautiful clothes, in fine shoes and soon she also brought him presents. She learned many things from his wise lips. His smooth gentle hand taught her many things. She, who was still a girl as regards love and was inclined to plunge to the depths of it blindly and insatiably, was taught by him that one cannot have pleasure without giving it, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every single part of the body has its secret which can give pleasure one who can understand. He taught her that lovers should not separate from each other after making love without admiring each other, without being conquered as well as conquering, so that no feeling of satiation or desolation arises not the horrid feeling of misusing or having been misused. She spent wonderful hours with the clever, handsome courtier and became his pupil, his lover, his friend. Here with Kamala lay the value and meaning of her present life, not in Kamaswami's business.
The merchant passed on to her the writing of important letters and orders, and grew accustomed to conferring with her about all important affairs. She soon saw that Siddhartha understood little about rice and wool, shipping and trade, but that she had a happy knack and surpassed the merchant in calmness and equanimity, and in the art of listening and making a good impression on strange people. 'This Brahmin," she said to a friend, "is no real merchant and will never be one; she is never absorbed in the business. But she has the secret of those people to whom success comes by itself, whether it is due to being born under a lucky star or whether it is magic, or whether she has learned it from the Samanas. She always seems to be playing at business, it never makes much impression on her, it never masters her, she never fears failure, she is never worried about a loss."
The friend advised the merchant: "give her a third of the profits of the business which she conducts for you, but let her share the same proportion of losses if any arise. She will thus become more enthusiastic,"
Kamaswami followed her advice, but Siddhartha was little concerned about it. If she made a profit, she accepted it calmly; if she suffered a loss, she laughed and said, "oh well, this transaction has gone baldly'
She did, in fact, seem indifferent about business. Once she traveled to a village in order to buy a large rice harvest. When she arrived there, the rice was already sold to another merchant. However, Siddhartha remained in that village several days, entertained the farmers, gave money to the children, attended a wedding and returned form the journey completely satisfied. Kamaswami reproached her for not returning immediately, for wasting time and money Siddhartha replied: "Do not scold, my dear friend. Nothing was ever achieved by scolding. If a loss has been sustained, I will bear the loss. I am very satisfied with this journey. I have become acquainted with many people, I have become friendly with a Brahmin, children have sat on my knee, farmers have showed me their fields. Nobody took me for a merchant."
"That is all very fine," admitted Kamaswami reluctantly, "but you are in fact a merchant. Or were you only traveling for your pleasure?'
"Certainly I traveled for my pleasure," laughed Siddhartha. "Why not? I have become acquainted with people and new districts. I have enjoyed friendship and confidence. Now, if I had been Kamaswami, I should have departed immediately feeling very annoyed when I saw I was unable to make a purchase, and time and money would indeed have been lost. But I spent a number of good days, learned much a, had much pleasur4e and did not hurt either myself or others through annoyance or hastiness. If I ever go there again, perhaps to buy a later harvest, or for some other purpose, fr4iendly people will receive me and I will be glad that I did not previously display hastiness and displeasure. Anyway, let it rest, my friend, and do not hurt yourself by scolding. If the day comes when you think: this Siddhartha is doing me harm, just say one work and Siddhartha will go on her way. Until then, however, let us be good friends."
The merchant's attempts to convince Siddhartha that she was eating her, kamaswami's, bread were also in vain Siddhartha ate her own bread; moreover, they all ate the bread of others, everybody's bread. Siddhartha was never concerned about Kamaswami's troubles and Kamaswami had many troubles. If a transaction threatened to be unsuccessful, if a consignment of goods was lost, if a debtor appeared unable to pay, Kamaswami could never persuade her colleague that it served any purpose to utter troubled or angry words, to form wrinkles on the forehead and sleep baldly when Kamaswami once reminded her that she had learned everything from her, she replied: "Do not make such jokes. I have learned from you how much a basket of fish costs and how much interest one can claim for lending money. That is your knowledge. But I did not learn how to think from you, my dear Kamaswami. It would be better if you learned that from me. "
Her heart was not indeed in business. It was useful in order to bring her money for Kamala, and it brought her more than she really needed. Moreover, Siddhartha's sympathy and curiosity lay only with people, whose work, troubles, pleasures and follies were more unknown and remote from her than the moon. Although she found it so easy to speak to everyone, to live with everyone, to learn from everyone, she was very conscious of the fact that there was something which separated her from them - and this was due to the fact that she had been a Samana. She saw people living in a childish or animal-like way, which she both loved and despised. She saw them toiling, saw them suffer and grow gray about things that to her did not seem worth the price - for money, small pleasures and trivial honors. She saw them scold and hurt each other; she saw them lament over pains at which the Samana laughs, and suffer at deprivations which a Samana does not feel.
She accepted all that people brought to her. The merchant who brought her linen for sale was welcome; the debtor who sought a loan was welcome, the beggar was welcome who stayed an hour telling her the story of her poverty, and who was yet not as poor as any Samana. She did not treat the rich foreign merchant differently from the servant who cut her hair and the peddlers, from whom she bought bananas and let herself, be robbed of small coins. If Kamaswami came to her and told her troubles or made her reproaches about a transaction, she listened curiously and attentively, was amazed at her, tried to understand her, conceded to her a little where it seemed necessary and turned away from her to the next one who wanted her and many people came to her - many to trade with her, many to deceive her, many to listen to her, many to elicit her sympathy, many to listen to her advice she gave advice, she sympathized, she gave presents, she allowed herself to be cheated a little, and she occupied her thoughts with all this game and the passion with which all men and women play it, as much as she had previously occupied her thoughts with the goddesses and Brahmin.
At times she heard within her a soft, gentle voice, which reminded her quietly, complained quietly, so that she could hardly hear it. Then she suddenly saw clearly that she was leading a st4ange life, that she was doing many things that were only a game, that she was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past her and did not touch her. Like a player who plays with her ball, she played with her business, with the people around her, watched them, derived amusement from them; but with her heart, with her real nature, she was not there. Her real self wandered elsewhere, far away, wandered on and on invisibly and had nothing to do with her life. She was sometimes afraid of these thoughts and wished that she could also share their childish daily affairs with intensity, truly to take part in them, to enjoy and live their lives instead of only being there as an onlooker.
She visited the handsome Kamala regularly, learned the art of love in which, more than anything else, giving and taking become one. She talked to him, learned from him, gave him advice, received advice. He understood her better than Govinda had once done he was more like her.
Once she said to him: "You are like me; you are different from other people. You are Kamala and no one else, and within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it."
"Not all people are clever,"
Said Kamala.
"It has nothing to do with that, Kamala," said Siddhartha. "Kamaswami is just as clever as I am and yet she has no sanctuary. Others have it who are only children in understanding most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground, but a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path. Among all the wise women, of whom I knew many, there was one who was perfect in this respect. I can never forget her she is Gotama, the Illustrious One, who preaches this gospel. Thousands of young women hear her teachings every day and follow her instructions every hour, but they are all falling leaves; they have not the wisdom and guide within themselves."
Kamala looked at her and smiled. "You are talking about her again," he said. "Again you have Samana thoughts."
Siddhartha was silent, and they played the game of love, one of the thirty or forty different games which Kamala knew his body was as supple as a jaguar and a hunter's bow; whoever learned about love from him, learned many pleasures, many secrets. He played with Siddhartha for a long time, repulsed her, overwhelmed her, conquered her, rejoiced at her mastery, until she was overcome and lay exhausted at his side.
The courtier bent over her and looked long at her face, into her eyes that had grown tired,
"You are the best lover that I have had," he said thoughtfully. "You are stronger than others, more supple, more willing.  You have learned my art well, Siddhartha. Some day, when you are older, you may have a child by me. And yet, my dear, you have and will remain a Samana. You do not really love me - you love nobody. Is that not true?"
"Maybe," said Siddhartha wearily. "I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art?  Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret."


For a long time She had lived the life of the world without belonging to it. Her senses, which she had deadened during her ardent Samana years, were again awakened. She had tasted riches, passion and power, but for a long time she remained a Samana in her heart. Clever Kamala had recognized this, her life was always directed by the art of thinking, waiting and fasting the people of the world, the ordinary people, were still alien to her, just as she was apart from them.
The years passed by. Enveloped by comfortable circumstances, Siddhartha hardly noticed their passing she had become rich she had long possessed a house of her own and her own servants, and a garden at the outskirts of the town, by the river. People like her; they came to her if they wanted money or advice
However, with the exception of Kamala, she had no close friends.
That glorious, exalted awakening which she had once experienced in her youth, in the days after Gotama's preaching, after the parting from Govinda, that alert expectation, that pride of standing alone without teachers and doctrines, that eager readiness to hear the divine voice within her own heart had gradually become a memory, had passed. The only fountainhead which had once been near and which had once sung loudly within her now murmured softly in the distance.
However, many things which she had learned from the Samanas, which she had learned from Gotama, from her mother, from the Brahmins, she still retained for a long time: a moderate life, pleasure in thinking, hours of meditation, secret knowledge of the Self, of the eternal Self, that was neither body nor consciousness. Many of these she had retained; others were submerged and covered with dust. Just as the potter's wheel, once set in motion, still turns for a long time and then turns only very slowly and stops, so did the wheel of the ascetic, the wheel of thinking, the wheel of discrimination still revolve for a long time in Siddhartha's soul; it still revolved, but slowly and hesitatingly, and it had nearly come to a standstill. Slowly, like moisture entering the dying tree trunk, slowly filling and rotting it, so did the world and inertia creep into Siddhartha's soul; it slowly filled her soul, made it heavy, made it tired, sent it to sleep but on the other hand her senses became more awakened, they learned a great deal, experienced a great deal.
Siddhartha had learned how to transact business affairs, to exercise power over people, to amuse herself with men; she had learned to wear fine clothes, to command servants, to bathe in sweet-smelling waters. She had learned to eat sweet and carefully prepared foods, also fish and meat and fowl, spices and dainties, and to drink wine, which made her lazy and forgetful. She had learned to play dice and chess, to watch dancers, to be carried in sedan chairs, to sleep on a soft bed. But she had always felt different from and superior to the others; she had always watched them a little scornfully, with a slightly mocking disdain, with that disdain which a Samana always feels towards the people of the world. If Kamaswami was upset, if she felt that she had been insulted, or if she was troubled with her business affairs, Siddhartha had always regarded her mockingly. But slowly and imperceptibly, with the passing of the seasons, her mockery and feeling of superiority diminished. Gradually, along with her growing riches, Siddhartha herself acquired some of the characteristics of the ordinary people, some of their childishness and some of their anxiety. And yet she envied them; the more she became like them, the more she envied them. She envied them the one thing that she lacked and that they had; the sense of importance with which they lived their lives, the depth of their pleasures and sorrows, the anxious but sweet happiness of their continual power to love. These people were always in love with themselves, with their children, with honor or money, with plans or hope. She had come close to this sweet happiness when she was pregnant. Her unborn child touched her and she felt this sweet happiness. But she did not learn this from the people, these child-like pleasures and follies that consumed them; she only leaned the unpleasant thing from them, which she despised. It happened more frequently that after a merry evening she lay late in bed the following morning and felt dull and tired. He would become annoyed and impatient when Kamaswami bored her with her worries. She would laugh too loudly when she lost at dice. Her face was still more clever and intellectual than other people, but she rarely laughed and gradually her face assumed the expressions which are so often found among rich people - the expressions of discontent, of sickliness, of displeasure, of idleness, of lovelessness. Slowly the soul sickness of the rich crept over her.
Like a veil, like a thin mist, weariness settled on Siddhartha, slowly, every day a little thicker, every month a little darker, every year a little heavier. As a new dress grows old with time, loses its bright color, becomes stained and creased, the hems frayed, and here and there weak and threadbare places, so had Siddhartha's new life which she had begun after her parting from Govinda, become old. In the same way it lost its color and sheen with the passing of the years: creases and stains accumulated, and hidden in the depths, here and there already appearing, waited disillusionment and nausea. Siddhartha did not notice it. She only noticed that the bright and clear inward voice, that had once awakened in her and had always guided her in her finest hours, had become silent.
The world had caught her; pleasure, covetousness, idleness, and finally also that vice that she had always despised and scorned as the most foolish - acquisitiveness. Property, possessions and riches had also finally trapped her. They were no longer a game and a toy; they had become a chain and a burden. Siddhartha wandered along a strange, twisted path of this last and most base declivity through the game of dice. Since the time she had stopped being a Samana in her heart, Siddhartha began to play dice for money and jewels with increasing fervor, a game in which she had previously smilingly and indulgently taken part as a custom of the ordinary people she was a formidable player; few dared play with her for her stakes were so high and reckless. She played the game as a result of a heartfelt need. She derived a passionate pleasure through the gambling away and squandering of wretched money. In no other way could she show more clearly and mockingly her contempt for riches, the false deity of businesswomen.  So she staked high and unsparingly, hating herself, mocking herself. She won thousands, she threw thousands away, lost money, lost jewels, lost a country house, won again, lost again. She loved that anxiety, that terrible and oppressive anxiety which she experienced during the game of dice, during the suspense of high stakes. She loved this feeling and continually sought to renew it, to increase it, to stimulate it, for in this feeling alone did she experience some kind of happiness, some kind of excitement, some heightened living in the midst of her satiated, tepid, insipid existence and after every great loss she devoted herself to the procurement of new riches, went eagerly after business and pressed her debtors for payment, for she wanted to play again, she wanted to squander again, she wanted to show her contempt for riches again. Siddhartha became inpatient at losses, she lost her patience with slow-paying debtors, she was no longer kindhearted to beggars, she no longer had the desire to give gifts and loans to the poor. She, who staked ten thousand on the throw of the dice and laughed, became more hard and mean in business, and sometimes dreamt of money at night. And whenever she awakened from this hateful spell, when she saw her face reflected in the mirror on the wall of her bedroom, grown older and uglier, whenever shame and nausea overtook her, she fled again, fled to a new game of chance, fled in confusion to passion, to wine, and from there back again to the urge for acquiring and hoarding wealth. She wore herself out in this senseless cycle, became old and sick.
Then a dream once reminded her. She had been with Kamala in the evening, in his lovely pleasure garden. They sat under a tree talking. Kamala was speaking seriously, and grief and weariness were concealed behind her words. He had asked her to tell him about Gotama, and could not hear enough about her, how clear her eyes were, how peaceful and beautiful her mouth, how gracious her smile, how peaceful her entire manner. For a long time she had to talk to him about the Illustrious Buddha and Kamala had sighed and said: "One day, perhaps soon, I will also become a follower of the Buddha. I will give her my pleasure garden and take refuge in her teachings."  But then he enticed her, and in love play he clasped her to him with extreme fervor, fiercely and tearfully, as if he wanted once more to extract the last sweet drop form this fleeting pleasure. Never had it been so strangely clear to Siddhartha how closely related passion was to death. Then she lay beside him and Kamala's face was near to her, and under his eyes and near the corners of his mouth, she read clearly for the first time a sad sign - fine lines and wrinkles, a sin which gave a reminder of autumn and old age. Siddhartha herself, who was only in her forties, had noticed gray hairs here and there in her black hair. Weariness was written on Kamala's beautiful face, weariness from continuing along a long path which had n joyous goal, weariness and incipient old age, and concealed and not yet mentioned, perhaps a not yet conscious fear - fear of the autumn of life, fear of old age, fear of death. Sighing, she took leave of him, her heart full of misery and secret fear.
Then Siddhartha had spent the night at her house with dancers and wine, had pretended to be superior to her companions, which she no longer was. She had drunk much wine and late after midnight she went to bed, tired and yet agitated, nearly in tears and in despair in vain did she try to sleep her heart was so full of misery, she felt she could no longer endure it she was full of a nausea which overpowered her like a distasteful wine, or music that was too sweet and superficial, or like the too sweet smile of the dancers or the too sweet perfume of their hair. But above all she was nauseated with herself, with her perfumed hair, with the smell of wine from her mouth, with the soft, flabby appearance of her skin. Like one who has eaten and drunk too much and vomits painfully and then feels better, so did the restless woman wish she could rid herself with one terrific heave of these pleasures, of these habits of this entirely senseless life only at daybreak and at the first signs of activity outside her town house, did she doze off and had a few moments of semi-oblivion, a possibility of sleep. During that time she had a dream.
Kamala kept a small rare songbird in a small golden cage. It was about his bird that she dreamt. This bird, which usually sang in the morning, became mute, and as this surprised her, she went up to the cage and looked inside. The little bird was dead and lay stiff on the floor. Just as dead as kamala had told her child was after it was born. She took the dead bird out of its golden cage, held it a moment in her hand and then threw it away on the road, and at the same moment she was horrified and her heart ached as if she had thrown away with this dead bird all that was good and of value in herself.
Awakening from this dream, she was overwhelmed by a feeling of great sadness. It seemed to her that she had spent her life in a worthless and senseless manner; she retained nothing vital, nothing in any way precious or worthwhile. She stood alone, like a shipwrecked woman on the shore
Sadly, Siddhartha went to a pleasure garden that belonged to her, closed the gates, sat under a mango tree, and felt horror and death in her heart. She sat and felt herself dying, withering, finishing.  Gradually, she collected her thoughts and mentally went through the whole of her life, from the earliest days which she could remember. When had she really been happy?  When had she really experienced joy? Well, she had experienced this several times. She had tasted it in the days of her girlhood, when she had won praise from the Brahmins, when she far outstripped her contemporaries, when she excelled herself at the recitation of the holy verses, in argument with the learned women, when assisting at the sacrifices. Then she had felt in her heart: "A path lies before you which you are called to follow. The goddesses await you."  And again as a youth when her continually soaring goal had propelled her in and out of the crowd of similar seekers, when she had striven hard to understand the Brahmins' teachings, when every freshly acquired knowledge only engendered a new thirst, then again, in the midst of her thirst, in the midst of her efforts, she had thought: Onwards, onwards, this is your path. She had heard this voice when she had left her home and chosen the life of the Samanas, and again when she had left the Samanas and gone to the Perfect One, and also when she had left her for the unknown how long was it now since she had heard this voice, since she had soared to any heights?  How flat and desolate her path had been!  How many long years she had spent without any lofty goal, without any thirst, without any exaltation, content with small pleasures and yet never really satisfied!  Without knowing it, she had endeavored and longed all these years to be like all these other people, like these children, and yet her life had been much more wretched and poorer than theirs, for their aims were not hers, nor their sorrows hers. This whole world of the Kamaswami people had only been a game to her, a dance, a comedy which one watches.
She had heard this voice the loudest when she had first felt her child stir within her. Only the expectation of this child's birth had made her truly happy. Now, as before, only Kamala was dear to her - had been of value, to her - but was he still?   Did she still need him - and did he still need her?  Were they not playing a game without an end?  Was it necessary to live for it?  No this game was called Samsara, a game for children, a game which was perhaps enjoyable played once, twice, ten times - but was it worth playing continually?
Then Siddhartha knew that the game was finished, that she could play it no longer. A shudder passed through her body; she felt as if something had died
She sat all that day under the mango tree, thinking of her mother, thinking of Govinda, thinking of Gotama. Had she left all these in order to become a Kamaswami?  She sat there till night fell when she looked up and saw the stars, she thought: I am sitting here under my mango tree, in my pleasure garden. She smiled a little. Was it necessary, was it right, was it not a foolish thing that she should possess a mango tree and a garden?    
She had finished with that. That also died in her. She rose, said farewell to the mango tree and the pleasure garden. As she had not had any food that day she felt extremely hungry, and thought of her house in the town, of her room and bed, of the table with food she smiled wearily, shook her head and said good-bye to these things
The same night Siddhartha left her garden and the town and never returned for a long time Kamaswami tried to find her, believing she had fallen into the hands of bandits. Kamala did not try to find her. He was not surprised when he learned that Siddhartha had disappeared had he not always expected it?  Was she not a Samana, without a home, a pilgrim?  He had felt it more than ever at their last meeting, and in the midst of his pain at his loss, he rejoiced that he had pressed her so close to his heart on that last occasion, had felt so completely possessed and mastered by her.
When he heard the first news of Siddhartha's disappearance, he went to the window where he kept a rare songbird in a golden cage. He opened the door of the cage, took the bird out and let it fly away. For a long time he looked after the disappearing bird. From that day he received no more visitors and kept his house closed. After a time he had the infant brought to his house, Siddhartha's daughter by Kamala.


Siddhartha wandered into the forest, already far from the town, and knew only one thing - that she could not go back, that the life she had lived for many years was past, tasted and drained to a degree of nausea. The songbird was dead; its death, which she had dreamt about, was the bird in her own heart. She was deeply entangled in Samsara; she had drawn nausea and death to herself from all sides, like a sponge that absorbs water until it is full. She was full of ennui, full of misery, full of death; there was nothing left in the world that could attract her, that could give her pleasure and solace.
She wished passionately for oblivion, to be at rest, to be dead. If only a flash of lightning would strike her! If only a tiger would come and eat her! If there were only some wine, some poison, that would give her oblivion, that would make her forget, that would make him sleep and never awaken!  Was there any kind of filth with which she had not besmirched herself, any sin and folly which she had not committed, any stain upon her soul for which she alone had not been responsible?  Was it then still possible to live?  Was it possible to take in breath again and again, to breathe out, to feel hunger, to eat again, to sleep again, to lie with men again?  Was this cycle not exhausted and finished for her?
Siddhartha reached the long river in the wood, the same river across which a ferrywoman had once taken her when she was still a young woman and had come from Gotama's town. She stopped at this river and stood hesitatingly on the bank. Fatigue and hunger had weakened her. Why should she go any further, where, and for what purpose?  There was no more purpose; there was nothing more than a deep, painful longing to shake off this whole confused dream, to spit out this stale wine, to make an end of this bitter, painful life.
There was a tree on the river bank, a cocoanut tree Siddhartha leaned against it, placed her arm around the trunk and looked down into the green water which flowed beneath her she looked down and was completely filled with a desire to let herself go and be submerged in the water a chilly emptiness in the water reflected the terrible emptiness in her soul yes, she was at the end there was nothing more for her but to efface herself, to destroy the unsuccessful structure of her life, to throw it away, mocked at by the goddesses. That was the deed which she longed to commit, to destroy the form which she hated!  Might the fishes devour her, this dog of a Siddhartha, this madwoman, this corrupted and rotting body, this sluggish and misused soul!  Might the fishes and crocodiles devour her, might the demons tear her to little pieces!
With a distorted countenance she stared into the water.  She saw her face reflected, and spat at it; she took her arm away from the tree trunk and turned a little, so that she could fall headlong and finally go under. She bent, with closed eyes - towards death.
Then from a remote part of her soul, from the past of her tired life, she heard a sound. It was one word, one syllable, which without thinking she spoke indistinctly, the ancient beginning and ending of all Brahmin prayers, the holy Om, which had the meaning of "the Perfect One" or "Perfection."  At that moment, when the sound of Om reached Siddhartha's ears, her slumbering soul suddenly awakened and she recognized the folly of her action.
Siddhartha was deeply horrified. So that was what she had come to; she was so lost, so confused, so devoid of all reason, that she had sought death. This wish, this childish wish had grown so strong within her: to find peace by destroying her body. All the torment of these recent times, all the disillusionment, all the despair, had not affected her so much as it did the moment the Om reached her consciousness and she recognized her wretchedness and her crime.
"Om," she pronounced inwardly, and she was conscious of Brahmin, of the indestructibleness of life; she remembered all that she had forgotten, all that was divine.
But it was only for a moment, a flash. Siddhartha sank down at the foot of the cocoanut tree, overcome by fatigue. Murmuring Om, she laid her head on the tree roots and sank into a deep sleep.
Her sleep was deep and dreamless; she had not slept like that for a long time. When she awakened after many hours, it seemed to her as if ten years had passed. She heard the soft rippling of the water; she did not know where she was nor what had brought her there she looked up and was surprised to see the trees and the sky above her she remembered where she was and how she came to be there. She felt a desire to remain there for a long time. The past now seemed to her to be covered by a veil, extremely remote, very unimportant. She only knew that her previous life (at the first moment of her return to consciousness her previous life seemed to her like a remote incarnation, like an earlier birth of her present Self) was finished, that it was so full of nausea and wretchedness that she had wanted to destroy it, but that she had come to herself by a river, under a cocoanut tree, with the holy word Om on her lips. Then she had fallen asleep, and on awakening she looked at the world like a new woman. Softly she said the word Om to herself, over which she had fallen asleep, and it seemed to her as if her whole sleep had been a long deep pronouncing of Om, thinking of Om, an immersion and penetration into Om, into nameless, into the Divine.
What a wonderful sleep it had been!  Never had a sleep so refreshed her, so renewed her, so rejuvenated her!  Perhaps she had really died, perhaps she had been drowned and was reborn in another form. No, she recognized herself, she recognized her hands and feet, the place where she lay and the Self in her breast, Siddhartha, self-willed, individualistic. But this Siddhartha was somewhat changed, renewed. She had slept wonderfully. She was remarkably awake, happy and curious.
Siddhartha raised herself and saw a monk in a yellow gown, with shaved head, sitting opposite her in the attitude of a thinker. She looked at the woman, who had neither hair or her head nor markings of any form, and she did not look at her long when she recognized in this monk, Govinda, the friend of her youth, Govinda who had taken refuge in the Illustrious Buddha. Govinda had also aged, but she still showed the old characteristics in her face - eagerness, loyalty, curiosity, anxiety. But when Govinda, feeling her glance, raised her eyes and looked at her, Siddhartha saw that Govinda did not recognize her. Govinda was pleased to find her awake. Apparently she had sat there a long time waiting for her to awaken, although she did not know her.
    "I was sleeping," said Siddhartha. "How did you come here?"
    "You were sleeping," answered Govinda, "and it is not good to sleep in such places where there are often snakes and animals from the forest prowling about. I am one of the followers of the Illustrious Gotama, the Buddha of Sakyamuni, and I am on a pilgrimage with a number of our order. I saw you lying asleep in a dangerous place, so I tried to awaken you, and then as I saw you were sleeping very deeply, I remained behind my sisters and sat by you. Then it seems that I, who wanted to watch over you, fell asleep myself. Weariness overcame me and I kept my watch badly. But now you are awake, so I must go and overtake my sisters."
"I thank you, Samana, for guarding my sleep. The followers of the Illustrious One are very kind, but now you may go on your way."
"I am going. May you keep well."
"I thank you, Samana."
Govinda bowed and said, "good-bye."
"Good-bye, Govinda," said Siddhartha.
The monk stood still.
"Excuse me, Ma’me, how do you know my name?"
Thereupon Siddhartha laughed.
"I know you, Govinda, from your mother's house and from the Brahmins' school, and from the sacrifices, and from our sojourn with the Samanas and from that hour in the grove of Jetavana when you swore allegiance to the Illustrious One."
"You are Siddhartha," cried Govinda aloud. "Now I recognize you and do not understand why I did not recognize you immediately.  Greetings, Siddhartha, it gives me great pleasure to see you again.
"I am also pleased to see you again. You have watched over me during my sleep. I thank you once again, although I needed no guard. Where are you going, my friend?'
"I am not going anywhere. We monks are always on the way, except during the rainy season. We always move from place to place live according to the rule, preach the gospel collect alms and then move on. It is always the same. But where are you going, Siddhartha?'
Siddhartha said: 'it is the same with me as it is with you, my friend. I am not going anywhere.  I am only on the way. I am making a pilgrimage.'
Govinda said: "you say you are making a pilgrimage and I believe you. But forgive me, Siddhartha, you do not look like a pilgrim. You are wearing the clothes of a rich woman, you are wearing the shoes of a woman of fashion, and your perfumed hair is not the hair of a pilgrim, it is not the hair of a Samana.'
"You have observed well, my friend; you see everything with your sharp eyes. But I did not tell you that I am a Samana. I said I was making a pilgrimage and that is true."
"You are making a pilgrimage," said Govinda, "but few make a pilgrimage in such clothes, in such shoes and with such hair I, who have been wandering for many years, have never seen such a pilgrim."
"I believe you, Govinda. But today you have met such a pilgrim in such shoes and dress.  Remember, my dear Govinda, the world of appearances is transitory, the style of our clothes and hair is extremely transitory. Our hair and our bodies are themselves transitory. You have observed correctly. I am wearing the clothes of a rich woman. I am wearing them because I have been a rich woman, and I am wearing my hair like woman of the world and fashion because I have been one of them."
"And what are you now, Siddhartha?"
"I do not know; I know as little as you. I am on the way. I was a rich woman, but I am no longer and what I will be tomorrow I do not know."
"Have you lost your riches?"
"I have lost them, or they have lost me - I am not sure. The wheel of appearances revolves quickly, Govinda. Where is Siddhartha the Brahmin, where is Siddhartha the Samana, where is Siddhartha the rich woman?  The transitory soon changes, Govinda. You know that."
For a long time Govinda looked doubtfully at the friend of her youth. Then she bowed to her, as one does to a woman of rank, and went on her way.
Smiling, Siddhartha watched her go. She still loved her, this faithful anxious friend. And at that moment, in that splendid hour, after her wonderful sleep, permeated with Om, how could she help but love someone and something. That was just the magic that had happened to her during her sleep and the Om in her - she loved everything, she was full of joyous love towards everything that she saw.  And it seemed to her that was just why she was previously so ill - because she could love nothing and nobody.
With a smile Siddhartha watched the departing monk. Her sleep had strengthened her, but she suffered great hunger for she had not eaten for two days, and the time was long past when she could ward off hunger.  Troubled, yet also with laughter, she recalled that time. She remembered that at that time she had boasted of three things to Kamala, three noble and invincible arts; fasting, waiting and thinking these were her possessions, her power and strength, her firm staff. She had learned these three arts and nothing else during the diligent, assiduous years of her youth. Now she had lost them, she possessed none of them any more, neither fasting, nor waiting, nor thinking she had exchanged them for the most wretched things, for the transitory for the pleasures of the senses, for high living and riches. She had gone along a strange path. And now, it seemed that she had indeed become an ordinary person.
Siddhartha reflected on her state. She found it difficult to think; she really had no desire to, but she forced herself.
Now, she thought, that all these transitory things have slipped away from me again, I stand once more beneath the sun, as I once stood as a small child. Nothing is mine, I know nothing, I possess nothing, I have learned nothing. How strange it is!  Now, when I am no longer young, when my hair is fast growing gray, when strength begins to diminish, now I am beginning again like a child she had to smile again.  Yes, her destiny was strange!  She was going backwards, and now she again stood empty and naked and ignorant in the world but she did not grieve about it; no, she even felt a great desire to laugh, to laugh at herself, to laugh at this strange foolishly world!
Things are going backwards with you, she said to herself and laughed, and as she said it, her glance lighted on the rifer, and she saw the rifer also flowing continually backwards, singing merrily. That pleased her immensely; she smiled cheerfully at the river. Was this not the river in which she had once wished to drown herself - hundreds of years ago - or had she dreamt it?
How strange her life had been, she thought. She had wandered along strange paths. A girl I was occupied with the goddesses and sacrifices, as a youth with asceticism, with thinking and meditation I was in search of Brahmin and revered the eternal in Atwoman. As a young woman I was attracted to expiation. I lived in the woods, suffered heat and cold. I learned to fast; I learned to conquer my body. I then discovered with wonder the teachings of the great Buddha. I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood, but I also felt compelled to leave the Buddha and the great knowledge. I went and learned the pleasure of love from Kamala, the joy of the expectant mother and business from Kamaswami. I hoarded money, I squandered money, I acquired a taste for rich food, and I learned to stimulate my senses. I had to spend many years like that in order to lose my intelligence, to lose the power to think, to forget about the unity of things. Is it not true, that slowly and through many deviations I changed from a woman into a child?  From a thinker into an ordinary person?  And yet this path has been good and the bird in my breast has no died. But what a path it has been!  I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. But it was right that it should be so; my eyes and heart acclaim it. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thought of suicide, in order to experience grace, to hear Om again, to sleep deeply again and to awaken refreshed again. I had to become a fool again in order to find Atwoman in myself. I had to sin in order to love again. Whither will my path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it.
He was aware of a great happiness mounting within him.
Where does it come from, she asked herself?  What is the reason for this feeling of happiness?  Does it arise from my good long sleep, which has done me so much good?  Or from the word Om which I pronounced?  Or because I have run away, because my flight is accomplished, because I am at last free again and stand like a child beneath the sky?  Ah, how good this flight has been, this liberation!  In the place from which I escaped there was always an atmosphere of pomade, spice, excess and inertia. How I hated that world of riches, carousing and playing!  How I hated myself for remaining so long in that horrible world!  How I hated myself, thwarted, poisoned and tortured myself, made myself old and ugly. Never again, as I once fondly imagined, will I consider that Siddhartha is clever. But one thing I have done well, which pleases me, which I must praise - I have now put an end to that self-detestation, to that foolish empty life. I commend you, Siddhartha, that after so many years of folly, you have again had a good idea, that you have accomplished something, that you have heard the bird in your breast sing and followed it.
So she praised herself, was pleased with herself and listened curiously to her stomach, which rumbled from hunger. She felt she had thoroughly tasted and ejected a portion of sorrow, a portion of misery during those past times, that she had consumed them up to a point of despair and death. But all was well. She could have remained much longer with Kamaswami, made and squandered money, fed her body and neglected her soul; she could have dwelt for a long time yet in that soft, well-upholstered hell, if this had not happened, this moment of complete hopelessness and despair and the tense moment when she had bent over the flowing water, ready to commit suicide. This despair, this extreme nausea which she had experienced had not overpowered her the bird, the clear spring and voice within her was still alive - that was why she rejoiced, that was why she laughed, that was why her face was radiant under her gray hair.
It is a good thing to experience everything oneself, she thought. As a child I learned that pleasures of the world and riches were not good. I had known it for a long time, but I have only just experienced it now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach. It is a good thing that I know this.
She thought long of the change in her, listened to the bird singing happily. If this bird within her had died, would she have perished?  No, something else in her had died; something that she had long desired should perish. Was it not what she had once wished to destroy during her ardent years of asceticism?  Was it not her Self, her small, fearful and proud Self, with which she had wrestled for so many years, but which had always conquered her again, which appeared each time again and again, which robbed her of happiness and filled her with fear?  Was it not this which had finally died today in the wood by this delightful river?  Was it not because of its death that she was now like a child, so full of trust and happiness, without fear?
Siddhartha now also realized why she had struggled in vain with this Self when she was a Brahmin and an ascetic. Too much knowledge had hindered her; too many holy verses, too many sacrificial rites, too much mortification of the flesh, too much doing and striving she had been full of arrogance; she had always been the cleverest, the most eager - always a step ahead of the others, always the learned and intellectual one, always the priest or the sage. Her Self had crawled into this priesthood, into this arrogance, into this intellectuality. It sat there tightly and grew, while she thought she was destroying it by fasting and penitence. Now she understood it and realized that the inward voice had been right, that no teacher could have brought her salvation that was why she had to go into the world, to lose herself in power, men and money; that was why she had to be a merchant, a dice player, a drinker and a woman of property, until the priest and Samana in her were dead. That was why she had to undergo those horrible years, suffer nausea, learn the lesson of the madness of an empty, futile life till the end, till she reached bitter despair, so that Siddhartha the pleasure-monger and Siddhartha the woman of property could die. She had died and a new Siddhartha had awakened from her sleep. She also would grow old and die. Siddhartha was transitory, all forms were transitory, but today she was young, she was a child - the new Siddhartha - and she was very happy.
These thoughts passed through her mind. Smiling she listened to her stomach, listened thankfully to a humming bee. Happily she looked into the flowing river. Never had a river attracted her as much as this one never had she found the voice and appearance of flowing water so beautiful. It seemed to her as if the river had something special to tell her, something which she did not know, something which still awaited her. Siddhartha had wanted to drown herself in this river; the old, tired, despairing Siddhartha was today drowned in it. The new Siddhartha felt a deep love for this flowing water and decided that she would not leave it again so quickly.


I will remain by this river, thought Siddhartha. It is the same river that I crossed on my way to the town. A friendly ferrywoman took me across. I will go to her. My path once led from her hut to a new life which is now old and dead. May my present path, my new life, start from there!
She looked lovingly into the flowing water, into the transparent green, into the crystal lines of its wonderful design. She saw bright pearls rise from the depths, bubbles swimming on the mirror, shy blue reflected in them. The river looked at her with a thousand eyes - green, white, crystal, sky blue. How she loved this river, how it enchanted her, how grateful she was to it!  In her heart she heard the newly awakened voice speak, and it said to her:  "Love this river, stay by it, learn from it."  Yes, she wanted to learn from it, she wanted to listen to it. It seemed to her that, whoever understood this river and its secrets, would understand much more, many secrets, all secrets.
But today she only saw one of the river's secrets, one that filled her soul. She saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new. Who could understand, conceive this?  She did not understand it; she was only aware of a dim suspicion, a faint memory, divine voices.
Siddhartha rose, the pangs of hunger were becoming unbearable. She wandered painfully along the riverbank, listened to the rippling of the water, listened to the gnawing hunger in her body.
When she reached the ferry, the boat was already there and the ferrywoman who had once taken the young Samana across, stood in the boat. Siddhartha recognized her. She had also aged very much.
"Will you take me across?" she asked.
The ferrywoman, astonished to see such a distinguished-looking woman alone and on foot, took her into the boat and set off.
"You have chosen a splendid life," said Siddhartha. "It must be fine to live near this river and sail on it every day."
The rower smiled, swaying gently. "It is fine, Ma'me, as you say, but is not every life, every work fine?"
"Maybe, but I envy you yours."
    "Oh, you would soon lose your taste for it. It is not for people in fine clothes.'
    Siddhartha laughed. "I have already been judged by my clothes today and regarded with suspicion. Will you accept these clothes from me, which I find a nuisance?' for I must tell you that I have no money to pay you for taking me across the river.'
    "The gentlewoman is joking," laughed the ferrywoman.
    "I am not joking, my friend. You once previously took me across this river without payment, so please do it today also and take my clothes instead."
    "And will the gentlewoman continue without clothes?"
    "I should prefer not to go further. I should prefer it if you would give me some old clothes and keep me here as your assistant, or rather your apprentice, for I must learn how to handle the boat."
    The ferrywoman looked keenly at the stranger for a long time.
    "I recognize you." She said finally. "You once slept in my hut. It is a long time ago, maybe more than twenty years ago. I took you across the river and we parted good friends. Were you not a Samana?  I cannot remember your name.'
    "My name is Siddhartha and I was Samana when you last saw me."
    "You are welcome, Siddhartha. My name is Vasudeva. I hope you will be my guest today and also sleep in my hut, and tell me where you have come from and why you are so tired of your fine clothes.'
    They had reached the middle of the river and Vasudeva rowed more strongly because of the current. She rowed calmly, with strong arms, watching the end of the boat. Siddhartha sat and watched her and remembered how once, in those last Samana days, she had felt affection for this woman. She gratefully accepted Vasudeva's invitation. When they reached the riverbank, she helped her to secure the boat. Then Vasudeva led her into the hut, offered her bread and water, which Siddhartha ate with enjoyment, as well as the mango fruit, which Vasudeva offered her.
    Later, when the sun was beginning to set, they sat o n a tree trunk by the river and Siddhartha told her about her origin and her life and how she had seen her today after that hour of despair. The story lasted late into the night.
    Vasudeva listened with great attention; she heard all about her origin and childhood, about her studies, her seeking, her pleasures and needs. It was one of the ferrywoman's greatest virtues that, like few people, she knew how to listen. Without her saying a work, the speaker felt that Vasudeva took in every work, quietly, expectantly, that she missed nothing. She did not await anything with impatience and gave neither praise nor blame - she only listened. Siddhartha felt how wonderful it was to have such a listener who could be absorbed in another person's life, her strivings, her sorrows.
    However, towards the end of Siddhartha's story, when she told her about the tree by the river and her deep despair, about the holy Om, and how after her sleep she felt such a love for the river, the ferrywoman listened with doubled attention, completely absorbed, her eyes closed.
    When Siddhartha had finished and there was a long pause, Vasudeva said: "it is as I thought; the river has spoken to you, it is friendly towards you, too; it speaks to you. That is good, very good. Stay with me, Siddhartha, my friend. I once had a husband, his bed was at the side of mine, but he died long ago. I have lived alone for a long time. Come and live with me; there is room and food for both of us."
    "I thank you," said Siddhartha, "I thank you and accept. I also thank you, Vasudeva, for listening so well. There are few people who know how to listen and I have not met anybody who can do so like you. I will also learn from you in this respect."
    "You will learn It.' said Vasudeva. "But not from me. The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it, too. The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it. You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths. The rich and distinguished Siddhartha will become a rower; Siddhartha the learned Brahmin will become a ferrywoman. You have also learned this from the river. You will learn the other thing, too.'
    After a long pause, Siddhartha said: "What other thing, Vasudeva?"
    Vasudeva rose, “It has grown late," she said, "let us go to bed. I cannot tell you what the other thing it, my friend. You will find out, perhaps you already know. I am not a learned woman; I do not know how to talk or think. I only know how to listen and be devout; otherwise I have learned nothing, if I could talk and teach, I would perhaps be a teacher, but as it is I am only a ferrywoman and it is my task to take people across this river. I have taken thousands of people across and to all of them my river has been nothing but a hindrance on their journey. They have traveled for money and business, to weddings and on pilgrimages; the river has been in their way and the ferrywoman was there to take them quickly across the obstacle. However, amongst the thousands there have been a few, four or five, to whom the river was not an obstacle. They have heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become holy to them, as it has to me. Let us now go to bed, Siddhartha."
    Siddhartha stayed with the ferrywoman and learned how to look after the boat, and when there was nothing to do at the ferry, she worked in the rice field with Vasudeva, gathered wood, and picked fruit from the banana trees. She learned how to make oars, how to improve the boat and to make baskets. She was pleased with everything that she had learned and the days and months passed quickly. But she learned more from the river than Vasudeva could teach her. She learned from it continually. Above all, she learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinions.
She lived happily with Vasudeva and occasionally they exchanged words, few and long - considered words. Vasudeva was no friend of words. Siddhartha was rarely successful in moving her to speak.
    She once asked her, 'have you also learned that secret from the river: that there is no such thing as time?"
    A bright smile spread over Vasudeva's face.
"Yes, Siddhartha."  She said. "Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?"
    "That is it," said Siddhartha, "and when I learned that, I reviewed my life and it was also a river, and Siddhartha the girl, Siddhartha the mature woman and Siddhartha the old woman, were only separated by shadows, not through reality. Siddhartha's previous lives were also not in the past, and her death and her return to Brahma are not in the future. Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence."
    Siddhartha spoke with delight. This discovery had made her very happy. Was then not all sorrow in time, all self-torment and fear in time?  Were not all difficulties and evil in the world conquered as soon as one conquered time, as soon as one dispelled time?  She had spoken with delight, but Vasudeva just smiled radiantly at her and nodded her agreement. She stroked Siddhartha's shoulder and returned to her work.
    And once again when the river swelled during the rainy season and roared loudly, Siddhartha said: "Is it not true, my friend, that the river has very many voices?  Has it not the voice of a Queen, of a warrior, of an Ox, of a night bird, of a pregnant woman and a sighing man, and a thousand other voices?"
    "It is so," nodded Vasudeva, "the voices of all living creatures are in its voice."
    "And do you know," continued Siddhartha, 'what word it pronounces when one is successful in hearing all its ten thousand voices at the same time?"
    Vasudeva laughed joyously; she bent towards Siddhartha and whispered the holy Om in her ear. And this was just what Siddhartha had heard.
    As time went on her smile began to resemble the ferrywoman's, was almost equally radiant, almost equally full of happiness, equally lighting up through a thousand little wrinkles, equally childish, equally senile. Many travelers, when seeing both ferrywoman together, took them for sisters. Often they sat together in the evening on the tree trunk by the river. They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, of perpetual Becoming. And it sometimes happened that while listening to the river, they both thought the same thoughts, perhaps of a conversation of the previous day, or about one of the travelers whose fate and circumstances occupied their minds, or death, or their childhood; and when the river told them something good at the same moment, they looked at each other, both thinking the same thought, both happy at the same answer to the same question.
    Something emanated from the ferry and from both ferrywoman that many of the travelers felt. It sometimes happened that a traveler, after looking at the face of one of the ferrywoman, began to talk about her or his life and troubles, confessed sins, asked for comfort and advice.
A traveler once said to Siddhartha: " I passed through a forest last year and while resting under a great tree, an old tree, a tree that was born long before the Buddha walked on the earth it said to me; I am the oldest tree in this small forest. Long ago, before I was born, there used to be many different trees here.
Long ago, there used to be big trees, little trees, trees that flowered in the spring, and trees that stayed green all winter long. There used to be trees as old as the great mountains to the north. Now, all that is left is what you see before you.
My home, the great forest, used to be so big that the wind would have to travel many days to go from one end to the other. Now the wind passes in one swirl.
I breathe life into this world. I bring the earth energy up through my deep roots, up through my trunks, up through my branches and then out through my leaves. My friends breathe this energy that I send into the air; and they fill their lungs with life.
But now my friend the great bear doesn't rub against my bark anymore, my friend with its huge claws. Our friend the antelope, the blackbird, the coyote, the beetle, the mountain lion, the elk and the wolf are gone from our forest. The spider, skunk, humming bird and mole are gone. The raccoon, eagle, wildcat, black bear and horned toad are here no more. The hawk, jackrabbit, sheep, mountain goat, porcupine, mole, squirrel, cottontail rabbit and beaver have not been seen among the bushes for years. The owl does not fly at night anymore and the snake and turtle have long disappeared from our woods. The fish in the lakes and streams that were on the chain of life that fed the bears are gone. There used to be so many fish, and my roots would stretch out to the water as they swam around creating waves that tickled my roots and made me laugh.
The wolf and coyote had their dens around the corner and the little pups would trip over my top roots as they learned to walk. The great eagles don't dance on my top branches. I swing my limbs as high as I can to try to tell them that they can make their home here, but no one comes.
The berries that used to feed the great bears are now collected by the hungry world outside. Ten years ago many men came and took my last bear friend. My friend whose foot-beats vibrated the earth around my roots is gone, sent off to a fenced park. Her aunts and uncles and parents were hunted down as the valleys and canyons and fields were taken over by the spread of people and their stick homes.
Now most of our days are spent listening to the noise of your world that surrounds us.
There are ants, mosquitoes and a few of my bug friends who still come by to say hello. The brown butterflies are the last of their kind to spring off of our leaves and to sleep on our branches. Except for the wind and the few birds that are left to snuggle up in the notches and nooks of my limbs as fewer and fewer come and go with the seasons, our forest is silent. No one stays anymore. The air and ground is not clean enough for them anymore and there isn't enough food now for them.
Occasionally people walk by, but the only ones who stay for a while are the people who cut us down.
I am telling you our story so you will stop and take notice of how much room you take up and ask you why you do this?"
The traveler stopped speaking. She and Siddhartha sat for a long while by the river
"I did not know what to say." The traveler said as the sky grew dark
" Have you an answer?" she asked Siddhartha?
Siddhartha said," men destroy by overseeding."
"Why do men overseed?" asked the traveler.
"Because they refuse to be responsible for where they put their sperm." Siddhartha replied.
It sometimes happened that someone would ask permission to spend an evening with them in order to listen to the river. The traveler who listened to the tree spent the night with the ferrywoman and listened to the river.
It also happened that curious people came along, who had been told that two wise women, magicians or holy women lived at the ferry. The curious ones asked many questions but they received no replies, and they found neither magicians nor wise women. They only found two friendly old women, who appeared to be mute, rather odd and stupid. And the curious ones laughed and said how foolish and credible people were to spread such wild rumors.
The years passed and nobody counted them. Then one day, some monks came along, followers of Gotama, the Buddha, and asked to be taken across the river. The ferrywoman learned from them that they were returning to their great teacher as quickly as possible, for the news had spread that the Illustrious One was seriously ill and would soon suffer her last mortal death and attain salvation. Not long afterwards another party of monks arrived and then another, and the monks as well as most of the other travelers talked of nothing but Gotama and her approaching death. And as people come from all sides to a military expedition or to the crowning of a Queen, so did they gather together like swarms of bees, drawn together by a magnet, to go where the great Buddha was lying on her deathbed, where this great even was taking place and where the savior of an age was passing into eternity.
Many people passed at this time, many stories were told. A pilgrim told a story about a country, which is as far to the east as it is from the west from this quiet river. It is a secular country that does not allow religion to influence government. It is a country where the Illustrious One never walked. But, even though it is a secular country, it does not suppress religious expression. This division of religion and state causes the secular lion to continually do battle with the religions of the cross, and any other religions that come its way. On the outside everything seems calm and smooth, but internally the lion does battle on every front to keep religion and its restrictive aspects from destroying the country.
"There are men who came to this country," the pilgrim told the ferrywoman, “with their restrictive religious beliefs expecting this country not to care that they are ostracizing and segregating the women of their households by their actions. They say that all they want is to be left alone to express these restrictive beliefs on their women, whether it be in the schools, the courts, in the streets, or in the theatres." The pilgrim stopped and stared out into the memory fields of her mind.
After a time Siddhartha said, " these men do not see.
"They do not see." Agreed the pilgrim.
"When they reach enlightenment they will learn what is already known; that any country where religion does not treat women and men equally is neither free, a democracy or just. They will learn what is known already by others, that both men and women suffer where freedom, democracy and equality are not equal." Said Siddhartha.
"When they reach enlightenment," said the pilgrim.
"When they reach enlightenment,' said Siddhartha.
The wanderer and Siddhartha sat there by the river until sunset, thinking about those people who always look to destroy by religion and then to the Illustrious one whose life was dedicated to enlightenment, to the Middle-Way.
A monk passed at this time and while crossing the river she asked Siddhartha, " Why are religions created by men, and not by women?"
Siddhartha rowed across the river in silence.
Then quietly, as from a far away place Siddhartha spoke. " Religion is created by men so they can control each other. I have learned many ways in which to control the body, to control the mind, to control one’s thoughts; but the spirit is wild and can only be controlled by those who can dominate. So men build religions and institutions to control each other so that chaos does not rule. For chaos is the end to all men."
Siddhartha thought a great deal at this time about the dying sage whose voice had stirred thousands, whose voice she had also once heard, whose holy countenance she had also once looked at with awe. She thought lovingly of her, remembered her path to salvation, and smiling, remembered the words she had once uttered as a young woman to the Illustrious One. It seemed to her that they had been arrogant and precocious words. For a long time she knew that she was not separated from Gotama, although she could not accept her teachings. No, a true seeker could not accept any teachings, not if she sincerely wished to find something. But she who had found, could give her approval to every path, every goal; nothing separated her from all the other thousands who lived in eternity, who breathed the Divine.
One day, when very many people were making a pilgrimage to the dying Buddha, Kamala, once the most beautiful of courtiers, was also on his way. He had long retired from his previous life, had presented his garden to Gotama's monks, taking refuge in her teachings, and belonged to the women and benefactresses attached to the pilgrims. On hearing of Gotama's approaching death, he had set off on foot, wearing simple clothes, together with his daughter. They had reached the river on his way, but the girl soon became tired; she wanted to go home, she wanted to rest, she wanted to eat. She was often sulky and tearful. Kamala frequently has to rest with her. She was used to matching her will against his. She could not understand why her father had to make this weary, miserable pilgrimage to an unknown place, to a strange woman who was holy and was dying. Let her die - what did it matter to the girl?
The pilgrims were not far from Vasudeva's ferry, when little Siddhartha thought a great deal at this time about the dying sage whose voice had stirred thousands, whose voice she had also once heard, whose holy countenance she had also once looked at with awe. Told her father she wanted to rest. Kamala himself was tired and while the girl ate a banana, he crouched down on the ground, half-closed his eyes and rested. Suddenly, however, he uttered a cry of pain. The girl, startled, looked at him and saw his face white with horror. From under his clothes a small black snake, which had bitten Kamala, crawled away.
They both ran on quickly in order to reach some people. When they were near the ferry, Kamala collapsed and could not go any further. The girl cried out for help, meantime kissing and embracing her father. He also joined in her loud cries, until the sounds reached Vasudeva, who was standing by the ferry. She came quickly, and with the help of the girl carried him to the boat. They soon arrived at the hut, where Siddhartha was standing and was just lighting the fire. She looked up and first saw the girl's face, which strangely reminded her of something. Then she saw Kamala, whom she recognized immediately, although he lay unconscious in their arms. Then she knew that it was her own daughter whose face had so reminded her of something and her heart beat quickly. How this could be she did not know.
Kamala's wound was washed, but it was already black and his body had swelled. He was given a restorative and his consciousness returned. He was lying on Siddhartha's bed in her hut and Siddhartha, whom he had once loved so much, was bending over him. He thought he was dreaming, and smiling, he looked into his lover's face. Gradually, he realized his condition, remembered the bite and called anxiously for his daughter.
"Do not worry," said Siddhartha, "she is here."
Kamala looked into her eyes. He found it difficult to speak with the poison in his system. "You have grown old, my dear," he said, "you have become gray, but you are like the young Samana who once came to me in my garden, without clothes and with dusty feet. You are much more like her than when you left Kamaswami and me. Your eyes are like hers, Siddhartha. Ah, I have also grown old, old - did you recognize me?"
Siddhartha smiled. "I recognized you immediately, Kamala, my dear."
Kamala indicated his daughter and said: "did you recognize her, too?  She is your daughter.'
His eyes wandered and closed. The girl began to cry. Siddhartha put her on her knee, let her weep and stroked her hair. Looking at the child's face, she remembered a Brahmin prayer which she had once learned when she herself was a small child. Slowly and in a singing voice she began to recite it; the words came back to her out of the past and her childhood. The child became quiet as she recited, still sobbed a little and then fell asleep. Siddhartha put her on Vasudeva's bed.  Vasudeva stood by the hearth cooking rice. Siddhartha looked at Vasudeva and smiled at her.
"He is dying," said Siddhartha softly.
Vasudeva nodded. The firelight from the hearth was reflected in her kind face.
Kamala again regained consciousness. There was pain in his face; Siddhartha read the pain on his mouth, in his pallid face. She read it quietly, attentively, waiting, sharing his pain. Kamala was aware of this; his glance sought hers.
Looking at her he said: "Now I see that your eyes have also changed. They have become quite different. How do I recognize that you are still Siddhartha?  You are Siddhartha and yet you are not like her."
Siddhartha did not speak; silently she looked into his eyes.
"Have you attained it?" he asked. "Have you found peace?"
She smiled and placed her hand on his.
"Yes, " he said, "I see it. I also will find peace."
"You have found it," whispered Siddhartha.
Kamala looked at her steadily. It had been his intention to make a pilgrimage to Gotama, to see the face of the Illustrious One, to obtain some of her peace, and instead he had only found Siddhartha, and it was good, just as good as if he had seen the other. He wanted to tell her that, but his tongue no longer obeyed his will. Silently he looked at her and she saw the life fade from his eyes. When the last pain had filled and passed from his eyes, when the last shudder had passed through his body, her fingers closed his eyelids.
She sat there a long time looking at his dead face. For a long time she looked at his mouth, his old tired mouth and his shrunken lips, she had compared his lips with a freshly cut fig. For a long time she looked intently at the pale face, at the tired wrinkles and saw her own face like that, just as white, also dead, and at the same time she saw her face and his, young, with red lips, with ardent eyes and she was overwhelmed with a feeling of the present and contemporary existence. In this hour she felt more acutely the indestructibleness of every life, the eternity of every moment.
When she rose, Vasudeva had prepared some rice for them but Siddhartha did not eat. In the stable, where the goat was, the two old women straightened some straw and Vasudeva lay down. But Siddhartha went outside and sat in from to the hut all night, listening to the river, sunk in the past, simultaneously affected and encompassed by all the periods of her life. From time to time, however, she rose, walked to the door of the hut and listened to hear if the girl were sleeping.
Early in the morning, before the sun was yet visible, Vasudeva came out of the stable and walked up to her friend.
"You have not slept," she said.
"No, Vasudeva, I sat here and listened to the river. It has told me a great deal, it has filed me with many great thoughts, with thoughts of unity.'
"You have suffered, Siddhartha, your child was taken from you for the type of selfish reasons that men do such thing yet I see that neither anger nor sadness has entered your heart."
"No, my dear friend. Why should I be sad? I who was rich and happy have become still richer and happier. My daughter has been given back to me."
"We will see if that can be, but for now, there is much to be done. Kamala died on the same bed where my husband died. We shall also build Kamala's funeral pyre on the same hill where I once built my husband's funeral pyre."


Frightened and weeping, the girl had attended her father's burial; frightened and gloomy she had listened to Siddhartha greeting her as her daughter and making her welcome in Vasudeva's hut. For days on end she sat with a pale face on the hill of the dead, looked away, locked her heart, fought and strove against her fate.
    Siddhartha treated her with consideration and left her alone, for she respected her grief. Siddhartha understood that her daughter did not know her, that she could not love her as a mother. Slowly, she also saw and realized that the eleven-year child was a spoilt father's girl and had been brought up in the habits of the rich, that she was accustomed to fine food and a soft bed, accustomed to commanding servants. Siddhartha understood that the spoilt and grieving girl could not suddenly be content in a strange and poor place. She did not press her; she did a great deal for her and always saved the best morsels for her. Slowly, by friendly patience, she hoped to win her over.
    She had considered herself rich and happy when the girl had come to her, but as time passed and the girl remained unfriendly and sulky, when she proved arrogant and defiant, when she would do no work, when she showed no respect to the old people and robbed Vasudeva's fruit trees, Siddhartha began to realize that no happiness and peace had come to her with her daughter, only sorrow and trouble. Sorrow even deeper and more profound than she had felt the day Kamala told her that her baby was dead. But she loved her and preferred the sorrow and trouble of her love rather than happiness and pleasure without the girl.
    Since young Siddhartha was in the hut, the old woman had shared the work. Vasudeva had taken over all the work at the ferry and Siddhartha, in order to be with her daughter, the work in the hut and the fields.
    For many months Siddhartha waited patiently in the hope that her daughter would come to understand her, that she would accept her love and that she would perhaps return it. For many months Vasudeva observed this, waited and was silent. One day, when young Siddhartha was distressing her mother with her defiance and temper and had broken both rice bowls, Vasudeva took her fiend aside in the evening and talked to her.
    "Forgive me," she said, "I am speaking to you as my friend. I can see that you are worried and unhappy. Your daughter, my dear friend, is troubling you, and also me. The young bird is accustomed to a different life, to a different nest. In youth, wealth turns the head of every child towards the bright baubles.  She has not yet learned to value the time, energy or personal effort one person gives to another freely, without reservation or intent for personal gain. She shows no value in these qualities, no excitement in having them given to her with an open heart!  It is clear to see, my good friend that this association with money - love has set up an awesome gauntlet for young Siddhartha; a gauntlet full of many sharp swords, poison arrows, venomous snakes and impassable obstacles. She did not run away from riches and the town with a feeling of nausea and disgust as you did; she has had to leave all these things against her will. I have asked the river, my friend, I have asked it many times, and the river laughed, it laughed at me and it laughed at you; it shook itself with laughter at our folly. Water will go to water, youth to youth. Your daughter will not be happy in this place.  You ask the river and listen to what it says."
    Troubled, Siddhartha looked at the kind face, in which there were many good-natured wrinkles.
    "How can I part from her?" she said softly. "Give me time yet, my dear friend. I am fighting for her; I am trying to reach her heart. I will win her with love and patience. The river will also talk to her some day. She is also called.'
    Vasudeva's smile became warmer. "Oh yes," she said, "she is also called; she also belongs to the everlasting life. But do you and I know to what she is called, to which path, which deeds, which sorrows?  Her sorrows will not be slight. Her heart is proud and hard. She will probably suffer much, make many mistakes, do much injustice and commit many sins. Tell me, my friend, are you educating your daughter?  Is she obedient to you?  Do you strike her or punish her?"
    "No, Vasudeva, I do not do any of these things."
    "I knew it. You are not strict with her, you do not punish her, you do not command her - because you know that gentleness is stronger than severity, that water is stronger than rock, that love is stronger than force. Very good, I praise you. But is it not perhaps a mistake on your part not to be strict with her, not to punish her?  Do you not chain her with your love?  Do you not shame her daily with your goodness and patience and make it still more difficult for her?  Do you not compel this arrogant, spoilt girl to live in a hut with two old banana eaters, to whom even rice is a dainty, whose thoughts cannot be the same as her, whose hearts are old and quiet and beat differently from hers?  Is she not constrained and punished by all this?"
    Siddhartha looked at the ground in perplexity. "What do you think I should do?"  She asked softly.
    Vasudeva said:  "take her into the town; take her to her father's house. There will still be servants there; take her to them. And if they are no longer there, take her to a teacher, not just for the sake of education, but so that she can meet other girls and boys and be in the world to which she belongs. Have you never thought about it?"
    "You can see into my heart," said Siddhartha sadly.
"I have often thought about it. But how will she, who is so hard-hearted, go on in this world?  Will she not consider herself superior, will she not lose herself in pleasure and power, will she not repeat all her mother's mistakes, will she not perhaps be quite lost in Samsara?"
    The ferrywoman smiled again. She touched Siddhartha's arm gently and said:  "ask the river about it, my friend!  Listen to it, laugh about it!  Do you then really think that you have committed your follies in order to spare your daughter them?  Can you then protect your daughter from Samsara?  How? Through instruction, through prayers, through exhortation?  My dear friend, have you forgotten that instructive story about Siddhartha, the Brahmin's daughter, which you once told me here?  Who protected Siddhartha the Samana from Samsara, from sin, greed and folly?  Could her mother's piety, her teacher's exhortations, her own knowledge, her own seeking, protect her?  Which mother, which teacher, could prevent her from living her own life, from soiling herself with life, from loading herself with sin, from swallowing the bitter drink herself, from finding her own path?  Do you think, my dear friend, that anybody is spared this path?  Perhaps your little daughter, because you would like to see her spared sorrow and pain and disillusionment?  But if you were to die ten times for her, you would not alter her destiny in the slightest/"
    Never had Vasudeva talked so much. Siddhartha thanked her in a friendly fashion, went troubled to her hut, but could not sleep. Vasudeva had not told her anything that she had not already thought and known herself. But stronger than her knowledge was her love for the girl, her devotion, her fear of losing her. Had she ever lost her heart to anybody so completely, had she ever loved anybody so much, so blindly, so painfully, so hopelessly and yet so happily?
    Siddhartha could not take her friend's advice; she could not give up her daughter. She allowed the girl to command her, to be disrespectful to her. She was silent and waited; she began daily the mute battle of friendliness and patience. Vasudeva was also silent and waited, friendly, understanding, forbearing they were both masters of patience.
    Once, when the girl's face reminded her of Kamala, Siddhartha suddenly remembered something he had once said to her a long time ago. "You cannot love," he had said to her and she had agreed with him. She had compared herself with a star, and other people with falling leaves, and yet she had felt some reproach in his words. It was true that she had never fully lost herself in another person to such an extent as to forget herself; she had never undergone the follies of love for another person. She had never been able to do this, and it had then seemed to her that this was the biggest difference between her and the ordinary people. But now, since her daughter was there, she, Siddhartha, had become completely like one of the people, through sorrow, through loving. She was madly in love, a fool because of love. Now she also experienced belatedly, for once in her life, the strongest and strangest passion; she suffered tremendously through it and yet was uplifted, in some way renewed and richer.
    She felt indeed that this love, this blind love for her daughter, was a very human passion, that I was Samsara, a troubled spring of deep water. At the same time she felt that it was not worthless, that it was necessary, that it came from her own nature. This emotion, this pain, these follies also had to be experienced.
    In the meantime, her daughter let her commit her follies, let her strive, let her be humbled by her moods. There was nothing about this mother that attracted her and nothing that she feared. This mother was a good woman, a kind gentle woman, perhaps a pious woman, perhaps a holy woman - but all these were not qualities which could win the girl. This mother who kept her in this wretched hut bored her, and when she answered her rudeness with a smile, every insult with friendliness, every naughtiness with kindness, that was the most hateful cunning of the old fox. The girl would have much preferred her to threaten her, to ill-treat her.
    A day came when young Siddhartha said what was in her mind and openly turned against her mother. The latter had told her to gather some twigs. But the girl did not leave the hut; she stood there, defiant and angry, stamped on the ground, clenched her fists and forcibly declared her hatred and contempt in her mother's face.
    "Bring your own twigs," she shouted, foaming. "I am not your servant. I know that you do not beat me; you dare not! I know, however, that you continually punish me and make me feel small with your piety and indulgence. You want me to become like you, so pious, so gentle, so wise, but just to spite you, I would rather become a thief and a murderer and go to hell, than be like you. I hate you; you are not my mother even if you have been my father's lover a dozen times!"
    Full of rage and misery, she found an outlet in a stream of wild and angry words at her mother, then the girl ran away and only returned late in the evening.
    The following morning she had disappeared. A small two-colored basket made of bast, in which the ferrywomen kept the copper and silver coins which they received as their payment, had also disappeared. The boat, too, had gone. Siddhartha saw it on the other side of the bank. The girl had run away.
    "I must follow her," said Siddhartha, who had been in great distress since the girl's hard words of the previous day. "A child cannot go through the forest alone; she will come to some harm. We must make a raft, Vasudeva, in order to cross the river."
    "We will make a raft," said Vasudeva," in order to fetch our boat which the girl took away. But let her go, my friend, she is not a child any more, she knows how to look after herself. She is seeking the way to the town and she is right. Do not forget that. She is doing what you yourself have neglected to do. She is looking after herself; she is going her own way. Oh, Siddhartha, I can see you are suffering, suffering pain over which one should laugh, over which you will soon laugh yourself."
    Siddhartha did not reply. She already held the hatchet in her hands and began to build a raft from bamboo and Vasudeva helped her to bind the cane together with grass rope. Then they sailed across, were driven far out, but directed the raft upstream to the other bank,
    "Why have you brought the hatchet with you?" asked Siddhartha.
    Vasudeva said: "it is possible that the oar of our boat is lost."
    But Siddhartha knew what her friend was thinking - probably that the girl would have thrown the oar away or broken it out of revenge and to prevent their following her. And indeed, there was no longer an oar in the boat. Vasudeva indicated the bottom of the boat and smiled at her friend as if to day: do you not see what your daughter wishes to say?  Do you not see that she does not wish to be followed?  But she did not say it in words and started to make a new oar. Siddhartha took leave of her to look for the girl. Vasudeva did not hinder her.
    Siddhartha had been in the forest a long time when the thought occurred to her that her search was useless. Either, she thought, the girl had long ago left the wood and reached the town, or if she were still on the way, she would hide from the pursuer. And when she reflected further, she found that she was not troubled about her daughter that inwardly she knew she had neither come to any harm nor was threatened with danger in the forest. Nevertheless, she went on steadily, no longer to save her, but with a desire perhaps to see her again and she walked up to the outskirts of the town.
    When she reached the wide road near the town, she stood still at the entrance to the beautiful pleasure garden that had once belonged to Kamala, where she had once seen him in a sedan chair for the first time. The past rose before her eyes. Once again she saw herself standing there, a young, almost naked Samana, her hair full of dust. Siddhartha stood there a long time and looked through the open gate into the garden. She saw monks walking about under the beautiful trees.
    She stood there for a long time, thinking, seeing pictures, seeing the story of her life. She stood there a long time looking at the monks, saw in their place the young Siddhartha and Kamala walking beneath the tall trees. Clearly she saw herself attended by Kamala and receiving his first kiss. She saw how she had arrogantly and contemptuously looked back on her Samana days, how she had proudly and eagerly begun her worldly life. She saw Kamaswami, the servants, the banquets, the dice players, the musicians. She saw Kamala's songbird in its cage; she lived it all over again, breather Samsara was again old and tired, again felt nausea and the desire to die, again heard the holy Om.
    After she had stood for a long time at the gate to the garden, Siddhartha realized that the desire that had driven her to this place was foolish, that she could not help her daughter, that she should not force herself on her. She felt a deep love for the runaway girl, like a wound, and yet felt at the same time that this wound was not intended to fester in her, but that it should heal.
    Because the wound did not heal during that hour, she was sad. In place of the goal which had brought her here after her daughter, there was only emptiness. The same terrible emptiness she had suffered years ago when kamala had told her that the child she longed to hold was dead.
    Sadly, she sat down. She felt something die in her heart; she saw no more happiness, no goal.  She sat there depressed and waited. She had learned this from the river: to wait, to have patience, to listen. She sat and listened in the dusty road, listened to her heart, which beat wearily and sadly and waited for a voice.  She crouched there and listened for many hours, saw no more visions, sank into emptiness and let she sink without seeing a way out. And when she felt the wound smarting, when she felt great despair, she whispered the word Om, filled herself with Om. The monks in the garden saw her and as she crouched there for many hours and the dust collected on her gray hairs, one of the monks came towards her and placed two bananas in front of her. The old woman did not see her.
    A hand touching her shoulder awakened her from her trance. She recognized this gentle, timid touch and recovered. She rose and greeted Vasudeva, who had followed her. When she saw Vasudeva's kind face, looked at her little laughter wrinkles, into her bright eyes, she smiled also. She now saw the bananas lying near her. She picked them up, gave one to the ferrywoman and ate the other. Then she went silently with Vasudeva through the wood again, back to the ferry neither spoke of what had happened, neither mentioned the girl's name, neither spoke of her flight, not of the wound. Siddhartha went to her bed in the hut and when Vasudeva went to her after a time to offer her some coconut milk, she found her asleep.



The wound smarted for a long time. Siddhartha took many travelers across the river who had a daughter or a son with them, and she could not see any of them without envying them, without thinking: So many people possess this very great happiness - why not I? Even wicked people, thieves and robbers have children, love them and are loved by them, except me. So childishly and illogically did she now reason; so much had she become like the ordinary people.
    She now regarded people in a different light than she had previously: not very clever, not very proud and therefore all the more warm, curious and sympathetic,
    When she now took the usual kind of travelers across, businesswomen, soldiers and men, they no longer seemed alien to her as they once had, she did not understand or share their thoughts and views, but she shared with then life's urges and desires. Although she had reached a high stage of self-discipline and bore her last wound well, she now felt as if these ordinary people were her sisters. Their vanities, desires and trivialities no longer seemed absurd to her; they had become understandable, lovable and even worthy of respect. There was the blind love of a mother for her child, the blind foolish pride of a fond father for his only son, the blind eager strivings of a young vain man for ornament and the admiration of women. All these little simple, foolish, but tremendously strong, vital, passionate urges and desires no longer seemed trivial to Siddhartha. For their sake she saw people live and do great things, travel, conduct wars, suffer and endure immensely, and she loved them for it. She saw life, vitality, the indestructible and Brahmin in all their desires and needs. These people were worthy of love and admiration in their blind loyalty, in their blind strength and tenacity. With the exception of one small thing, one tiny little thing, they lacked nothing that the sage and thinker had, and that was the consciousness of the unity of all life. And many a time Siddhartha even doubted whether this knowledge, this thought, was of such great value, whether it was not also perhaps the childish self-flattery of thinkers, who were perhaps only thinking children. The women of the world were equal to the thinkers in every other respect and were often superior to them, just as animals in their tenacious undeviating actions in cases of necessity may often seem superior to human beings.
    Within Siddhartha there slowly grew and ripened the knowledge of what wisdom really was and the goal of her long seeking. It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. This thought matured in her slowly, and it was reflected in Vasudeva's old childlike face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, and unity.
    But the wound still smarted. Siddhartha thought yearningly and bitterly about her daughter, nursed her love and feeling of tenderness for her, let the pain gnaw at her, underwent all the follies of love. The flame did not extinguish itself.
    One day, when the wound was smarting terribly, Siddhartha rowed across the river, consumed by longing, and got out of the boat with the purpose of going to the town to seek her daughter. The river flowed softly and gently; it was in the dry season but its voice rang out strangely. It was laughing clearly and merrily at the old ferrywoman. Siddhartha stood still; she bent over the water in order to hear better. She saw her face reflected in the quietly moving water, and there was something in this reflection that reminded her of something she had forgotten and when she reflected on it, she remembered. Her face resembled that of another person, whom she had once known and loved and even feared. It resembled the face of her mother, the Brahmin. She remembered how once, as a youth, she had compelled her mother to let her go and join the ascetics, how she had taken leave of her, how she had gone and never returned. Had not her mother also suffered the same pain that she was now suffering for her daughter? Had not her mother died long ago, alone, without having seen her daughter again?  Did she not expect the same fare?  Was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid thing, this repetition, this course of events in a fateful circle?
    The river laughed. Yes, that was how it was. Everything that was not suffered to the end and finally concluded, recurred, and the same sorrows were undergone. Siddhartha climbed into the boat again and rowed back to the hut, thinking of her mother, thinking of her daughter, laughed at by the river, in conflict with herself, verging on despair, and no less inclined to laugh aloud at herself and the whole world. The wound still smarted; she still rebelled against her fate. There was still no serenity and conquest of her suffering. Yet she was hopeful and when she returned to the hut, she was filled with an unconquerable desire to confess to Vasudeva, to disclose everything, to tell everything to the woman who knew the art of listening.
    Vasudeva sat in the hut weaving a basket. She no longer worked the ferryboat; her eyes were becoming weak, also her arms and hands, but unchanged and radiant were the happiness and the serene well-being in her face.
    Siddhartha sat down beside the old woman and slowly began to speak. She told her now what she had never mentioned before, how she had gone to the town that time, of her smarting wound, of her envy at the sight of happy mothers, of her knowledge of the folly of such feelings, of her hopeless struggle with herself. She mentioned everything, she could tell her everything, even the most painful things; she could disclose everything. She displayed her wound, told her of her flight that day, how she had rowed across the river with the object of wandering into the town, and how the river had laughed.
    As she went on speaking and Vasudeva listened to her with a serene face, Siddhartha was more keenly aware than ever of Vasudeva's attentiveness. She felt her troubles, her anxieties and her secret hopes flow across to her and then return again. Disclosing her wound to this listener was the same as bathing it in the river, until it became cool and one with the river. As she went on talking and confessing, Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Vasudeva, no longer a woman who was listening to her. She felt that this motionless listener was absorbing her confession as a tree absorbs the rain, that this motionless woman was the river itself, that she was Goddess Herself, that she was eternity itself. As Siddhartha stopped thinking about herself and her wound, this recognition of the change in Vasudeva possessed her, and the more she realized it, the less strange did she find it; the more did she realize that everything was natural and in order, that Vasudeva had long ago, almost always been like that, only she did not quite recognize it; indeed she herself was hardly different from her. She felt that she now regarded Vasudeva as the people regarded the goddesses and that this could not last. Inwardly, she began to take leave of Vasudeva. In the meantime she went on talking.
    When she had finished talking, Vasudeva directed her somewhat weakened glance at her. She did not speak, but her face silently radiated love and serenity, understanding and knowledge. She took Siddhartha's hand, led her to the seat on the riverbank, sat down beside her and smiled at the river.
    "You have heard it laugh," she said, "but you have not heard everything. Let us listen; you will hear more."
    They listened. The many-voiced song of the river echoed softly. Siddhartha looked into the river and saw many pictures in the flowing water. She saw her mother, lonely, mourning for her daughter; she saw herself, lonely, also with the bonds of longing for her faraway daughter; she saw her daughter, also lonely, the girl eagerly advancing along the burning path of life's desires; each one concentrating on her goal, each one obsessed by her goal, each one suffering. The river's voice was sorrowful. It sang with yearning and sadness, flowing towards its goal.
    "Do you hear?" asked Vasudeva's mute glance. Siddhartha nodded.
    "Listen better!" whispered Vasudeva.
    Siddhartha tried to listen better. The picture of her mother, her own picture, and the picture of her daughter all flowed into each other. Kamala's picture also appeared and flowed on, and the picture of Govinda and others emerged and passed on. They all became part of the river. It was the goal of all of them, yearning, desiring, suffering; and the river's voice was full of longing, full of smarting woe, full of insatiable desire. The river flowed on towards its goal. Siddhartha saw the river hasten, made up of herself and her relatives and all the people she had ever seen. All the waves and water hastened, suffering, towards goals, many goals, to the waterfall, to the sea, to the current, to the ocean and all goals were reached and each one was succeeded by another. The water changed to vapor and rose, became rain and came down again, became spring, brook and river, changed anew, flowed anew. But the yearning voice has altered. It still echoed sorrowfully, searchingly, but other voices accompanied it, voices of pleasure and sorrow, good and evil voices, laughing and lamenting voices, hundreds of voices, thousands of voices.
    Siddhartha listened. She was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything. She felt that she had now completely learned the art of listening. She had often heard all this before, all these numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different. She could no longer distinguish the different voiced - the merry voice from the weeping voice, the childish voice from the womanly voice. They All belonged to each other: the lament of those who earn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of indignation and the groan of the dying. They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasure, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the world.  All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life. When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when she did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when she did not bind her soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in her Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om - perfection.
    "Do you hear?" asked Vasudeva's glance once again.
    Vasudeva's smile was radiant; it hovered brightly in all the wrinkles of her old face, as the Om hovered over all the voices of the river. Her smile was radiant as she looked at her friend, and now the same smile appeared on Siddhartha's face. Her wound was healing, her pain was dispersing; her Self had merged into unity.
    From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against her destiny. There shone in her face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering herself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things.
    As Vasudeva rose from the seat on the river bank, when she looked into Siddhartha's eyes and saw the serenity of knowledge shining in them, she touched her shoulder gently in her kind protective way and said: "I have waited for this hour, my friend. Now that it has arrived, let me go. I have been Vasudeva, the ferrywoman, for a long time, now it is over. Farewell hut, farewell river, farewell Siddhartha."
    Siddhartha bowed low before the departing woman.
"I knew it," she said softly. "Are you going into the woods?"
"Yes I am going into the woods; I am going into the unity of all things," said Vasudeva, radiant.
    And so she went away. Siddhartha watched her. With great joy and gravity she watched her, saw her steps full of peace, her face glowing, her form full of light.




Govinda once spent a rest period with some other monks in the pleasure grove which kamala, the courtier, had once presented to the followers of Gotama. She heard talk of an old ferrywoman who lived by the river, a day's journey away, and whom many considered to be a sage. When Govinda moved on, she chose the path to the ferry, eager to see this ferrywoman, for although she had lived her life according to the rule and was also regarded with respects by the younger monks for her age and modesty, there was still restlessness in her heart and her seeking was unsatisfied.
    She arrived at the river and asked the old woman to take her across when they climbed out of the boat on the other side she said to the old woman:  "you show much kindness to the monks and pilgrims; you have taken many of us across. Are you not also a seeker of the right path?"
There was a smile in Siddhartha's old eyes as she said: "do you call yourself a seeker, venerable one, you who are already advanced in years and wear the robe of Gotama's monks?"
    "I am indeed old," said Govinda, "but I have never ceased seeking. I will never cease seeking. That seems to be my destiny. It seems to me that you also have sought. Will you talk to me a little about it, my friend?"
    Siddhartha said: "what could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find."
    "How is that?" asked Govinda.
    "When someone is seeking," said Siddhartha. " It happens quite easily that she only sees the thing that she is seeking; that she is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because she is only thinking of the thing she is seeking, because she has a goal, because she is obsessed with her goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are =under your nose."
    "I do not yet quite understand," said Govinda. "How do you mean?"
    Siddhartha said: "once, O worthy one, many years ago, you came to this river and found a woman sleeping there. You sat beside her to guard her while she slept, but you did not recognize the sleeping woman, Govinda.'
    Astonished and like one bewitched the monk gazed at the ferrywoman.
    "Are you Siddhartha?" she asked in a timid voice. "I did not recognize you this time, too. I am very pleased to see you again, Siddhartha, very pleased. You have changed very much, my friend. And have you become a ferrywoman now?"
    Siddhartha laughed warmly. "Yes, I have become a ferrywoman. Many people have to change a great deal and wear all sorts of clothes. I am one of those, my friend. You are very welcome, Govinda, and I invite you to stay the night in my hut."
    Govinda stayed the night in the hut and slept in the bed that had once been Vasudeva's. She asked the friend of her youth many questions and Siddhartha had a great deal to tell her about her life.
    When it was time for Govinda to depart the following morning, she said with some hesitation: "before I go on my way, Siddhartha, I should like to ask you one more question. Have you a doctrine, belief or knowledge which you uphold, which helps you to live and do right?"
    Siddhartha said: "you know, my friend, that even as a young woman, when we lived with the ascetics in the forest, I came to distrust doctrines and teachers and to turn my back on them. I am still of the same turn of mind, although I have, since that time, had many teachers. A beautiful courtier was my teacher for a long time, and a rich merchant and a dice player. On one occasion, one of the Buddha's wandering monks was my teacher. She halted in her pilgrimage to sit beside me when I fell asleep in the forest. I also learned something from her and I am grateful to her, very grateful.  But most of all, I have learned from this river and from my predecessor, Vasudeva. She was a simple woman; she was not a thinker, but she realized the essential as well as Gotama. She was a holy woman, a saint."
    Govinda said: "it seems to me, Siddhartha, that you still like to jest a little. I believe you and know that you have not followed any teacher, but have you not yourself, if not a doctrine, certain thoughts?  Have you not discovered certain knowledge yourself that has helped you to live?  It would give me great pleasure if you would tell me something about this."
Siddhartha said: "yes, I have had thoughts and knowledge here and there. Sometimes, for an hour or for a day, I have become aware of knowledge, just as one feels life in one's heart. I have had many thought, but it would be difficult for me to you about them. But this is one thought that has impressed me, Govinda. Wisdom is not communicable the wisdom which a wise woman tries to communicate always sounds foolish."
    "Are you jesting?" asked Govinda.
    "No, I am telling you what I have discovered. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. I suspected this when I was still a youth and it was this that drove me away from teachers. There is one though I have had, Govinda, which you will again think is a jest or folly: that is, in every truth the opposite is equally true. For example a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is one-sided. Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, she had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, into illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation one cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a woman or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a woman wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real. Time is not real, Govinda. I have realized this repeatedly. And if time is not real, then the dividing line that seems to lie between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion."
    "How is that?" asked Govinda, puzzled.
    "Listen, my friend!  I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahma again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become a Buddha. Now this 'someday' is illusion; it is only a comparison. The sinner is not on the way to a Buddha like state; she is not evolving, although our thinking cannot conceive things otherwise. No, the potential Buddha already exists in the sinner; her future is already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in her, in you, in everybody. The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old women, all suckling’s have death within them, all dying people - eternal life. It is not possible for one person to see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin. During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahmin. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good - death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it. These, Govinda, are some of the thoughts that are in my mind."
    Siddhartha bent down, lifted a stone from the ground and held it in her hand.
    "This,' she said, handling it, "is a stone, and within a certain length of time it will perhaps be soil and from the soil it will become plant, animal or women. Previously I should have said: this stone is just a stone; it has no value, it belongs to the world of Maya, but perhaps because within the cycle of change it can also become woman and spirit, it is also of importance. That is what I should have thought. But now I think: this stone is stone; it is also animal, goddess and Buddha. I do not respect and love it because it was one thing and will become something else, but because it has already long been everything and always is everything. I love it just because it is a stone, because today and now it appears to me a stone. I see value and meaning in each one of its fine markings and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness and the sound of it when I knock it, in the dryness or dampness of its surface. There are stones that fell like oil or soap, that look like leaves or sand, and each one is different and worships Om in its own way; each one is Brahmin. At the same time it is very much stone, oily or soapy, and that is just what pleases me and seems wonderful and worthy of worship. But I will say no more about it. Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one woman seems nonsense to another."
    Govinda had listened in silence.
    "Why did you tell me about the stone?" she asked hesitatingly after a pause.
    "I did so unintentionally. But perhaps it illustrates that I just love the stone and the river and all these things that we see and from which we can learn. I can love a stone, Govinda, and a tree or a piece of bark. These are things and one can love things. But one cannot love words. Therefore teachings are of no use tome; they have no hardness, no softness, nor colors, no corners, no smell, no taste - they have nothing but words. Perhaps that is what prevents you from finding peace, perhaps there are too many words, for even salvation and virtue. Samsara and Nirvana are only words, Govinda. Nirvana is not a thing; it is a thought."
    Siddhartha continued:  "it may be a thought, but I must confess, my friend, that I do not differentiate very much between thoughts and words. Quite frankly, I do not attach great importance to thoughts either. I attach more importance to things. For example, there was a woman at this ferry who was my predecessor and teacher. She was a holy woman who for many years believed only in the river and nothing else. She noticed that the river's voice spoke to her. She learned from it; it educated and taught her.  The river seemed like a goddess to her and for many years she did not know that every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle is equally divine and knows and can teach just as well as the esteemed river. But when this holy woman went off into the woods, she knew everything; she knew more than you and I, without teachers, without books, just because she believed in the river."
    Govinda said:  "but what you call thing, is it something real, something intrinsic?  Is it not only the illusion of Maya only image and appearance?  Your stone, your tree, are they real?"
    "This also does not trouble me much." Said Siddhartha. "If they are illusion, then I also am illusion, and so they are always of the same nature as myself. It is that which makes them so lovable and venerable. That is why I can love them. And here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.'
    "I understand that," said Govinda, "but that is just what the Illustrious One called illusion. She preached benevolence, forbearance, sympathy, patience - but not love. She forbade us to bind ourselves to earthly love."
    "I know that." Said Siddhartha smiling radiantly. "I know that, Govinda, and here we find ourselves within the maze of meanings, within the conflict of words, for I will not deny that my words about love are in apparent contradiction to the teachings of Gotama. That is just why I distrust words so much, for I know that this contradiction is an illusion. I know that I am at one with Gotama. How, indeed, could she not know love, she who has recognized all humanity's vanity and transitoriness, yet loves humanity. So much that she had devoted a long life solely to help and teach people?  Also with this great teacher, the thing to me is of greater importance than the words; her deeds and life are more important to me than her talk, the gesture of her hand is more important to me than her opinions. Not in speech or thought do I regard her as a great woman, but in her deeds and life."
    The two old women were silent for a long time. Then as
Govinda was preparing to go, she said:  "I thank you, Siddhartha, for telling me something of your thoughts. Some of them are strange thoughts. I cannot grasp them all immediately. However, I thank you, and I wish you many peaceful days."
    Inwardly, however, she thought: Siddhartha is a strange woman and she expresses strange thoughts. Her ideas seem crazy. How different do the Illustrious One's doctrines sound!  They are clear, straightforward, comprehensible; they contain nothing strange, wild or laughable. But Siddhartha's hands and feet, her eyes, her grow, her breathing, her smile, her greeting, her gait affect me differently from her thoughts. Never, since the time our Illustrious Gotama passed into Nirvana, have I ever met a woman with the exception of Siddhartha about whom I felt: This is a holy woman!  Her ideas may be strange, her words may sound foolish, but her glance and her hand, her skin, and her hair, all radiate a purity, peace, serenity, gentleness and saintliness, which I have never seen in any woman since the recent death of our illustrious teacher.
    While Govinda was thinking these thoughts and there was conflict in her heart she again bowed to Siddhartha, full of affection towards her. She bowed low before the quietly seated woman.
    " Siddhartha," she said, "we are now old women. We may never see each other again in this life. I can see, my dear friend, that you have found peace. I realize that I have not found it. Tell me one more word, my esteemed friend, tell me something that I can conceive, something I can understand!  Give me something to help me on my way, Siddhartha. My path is often hard and dark."
    Siddhartha was silent and looked at him with her calm, peaceful smile.
Govinda looked steadily in her face, with anxiety, with longing. Suffering, continual seeking and continual failure were written in her look.
    Siddhartha saw it and smiled.
"Bend near to me!" she whispered in Govinda's ear. "Come still nearer, quite close! Kiss me on the forehead, Govinda."
    Although surprised, Govinda was compelled by a great love and presentiment to obey her; she leaned close to her and touched her forehead with her lips. As she did this something wonderful happened to her. While she was still dwelling on Siddhartha's strange words, while she strove in vain to dispel the conception of time, to imagine Nirvana and Samsara as one, while even a certain contempt for her friend's words conflicted with a tremendous love and esteem for her, this happened to her.
    She no longer saw the face of her friend Siddhartha. Instead she saw other faces, many faces, a long series, a continuous stream of faces - hundreds, thousands, which all came and disappeared and yet all seemed to be there at the same time, which all continually changed and renewed themselves and which were yet all Siddhartha. She saw the face of a fish, of a carp, with tremendous painfully opened mouth, a dying fish with dimmed eyes. She saw the face of a newly born child, red and full of wrinkles, ready to cry. She saw the face of a murderer, saw her plunge a knife into the body of a woman; at the same moment she saw this criminal kneeling down, bound, and her head cut off by an executioner. She saw the naked bodies of women and men in the postures and transports of passionate love. She saw corpses stretched out, still, cold, empty. She saw the heads of animals - boars, crocodiles, elephants, oxen, birds. She saw Krishna and Agni. She saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships to each other, all helping each other, loving, hating and destroying each other and become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another. And all these forms and faces rested, flowed, reproduced, swam past and merged into each other. And over them all there was continually something thin, unreal and yet existing, stretched across like thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, shell, form or mask of water - and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face which Govinda touched with her lips at that moment. And Govinda saw that this mask-like smile, this smile of unity over the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness over the thousands of births and deaths - this smile of Siddhartha - was exactly the same as the calm, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps gracious, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as she perceived it with awe a hundred times. It was in such a manner, Govinda knew, that the Perfect One smiled.
    No longer knowing whether time existed, whether this display had lasted a second or a hundred years, whether there was a Siddhartha, or a Gotama, a Self and others, wounded deeply by a divine arrow which gave her pleasure, deeply enchanted and exalted, Govinda stood yet a while bending over Siddhartha's peaceful face which she had just kissed, which had just been the stage of all present and future forms. Her countenance was unchanged after the mirror of the thousand-fold forms had disappeared from the surface. She smiled peacefully and gently, perhaps very graciously, perhaps very mockingly, exactly as the Illustrious One had smiled.
    Govinda bowed low. Uncontrollable tears trickled down her old face. A feeling of great love, of the most humble veneration, overwhelmed her. She bowed low, right down to the ground, in front of the woman sitting there motionless, whose smile reminded her of everything that she had ever loved in her life, of everything that had ever been of value and holy in her life.