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Chapter 2. With the Samanas
Hermit at Gem Lake, University of Minnesota Libraries Siddhartha sat upright and learned to breathe sparingly, learned to get along with only few breaths, learned to stop breathing. He learned, beginning with the breath, to calm the beat of his heart, learned to reduce the beats of his heart, until they were only a few and almost none.
Instructed by the oldest of the Samanas, Siddhartha practised self-denial, practised meditation, according to the new Samana rules. A heron flew over the bamboo forest—and Siddhartha accepted the heron into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, was a heron, ate fish, felt the pangs of a heron’s hunger, spoke the heron’s croak, died a heron’s death. A dead jackal was lying on the sandy bank, and Siddhartha’s soul slipped inside the body, was the dead jackal, lay on the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyaenas, was skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown across the fields. And Siddhartha’s soul returned, had died, had decayed, was scattered as dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new thirst.
Siddhartha learned a lot when he was with the Samanas, many ways leading Siddhartha: An Open-Source Text
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away from the self he learned to go. He went the way of self-denial by means of pain, through voluntarily suffering and overcoming pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness. He went the way of self-denial by means of meditation, through imagining the mind to be void of all conceptions. These and other ways he learned to go, a thousand times he left his self, for hours and days he remained in the non-self. But though the ways led away from the self, their end nevertheless always led back to the self. Though Siddhartha fled from the self a thousand times, stayed in nothingness, stayed in the animal, in the stone, the return was inevitable, inescapable was the hour, when he found himself back in the sunshine or in the moonlight, in the shade or in the rain, and was once again his self and Siddhartha, and again felt the agony of the cycle which had been forced upon him.
By his side lived Govinda, his shadow, walked the same paths, undertook the same efforts. They rarely spoke to one another, than the service and the exercises required. Occasionally the two of them went through the villages, to beg for food for themselves and their teachers.
“How do you think, Govinda,” Siddhartha spoke one day while begging this way, “how do you think, did we progress? Did we reach any goals?”
Govinda answered, “We have learned, and we’ll continue learning. You’ll be a great Samana, Siddhartha. Quickly, you’ve learned every exercise, often the old Samanas have admired you. One day, you’ll be a holy man, oh Siddhartha.”
Siddhartha said, “I can’t help but feel that it is not like this, my friend. What I’ve learned, being among the Samanas, up to this day, this, oh Govinda, I could have learned more quickly and by simpler means. In every tavern of that part of a town where the whorehouses are, my friend, among carters and gamblers I could have learned it.”
From the reading. . .
“But though the ways led away from the self, their end nevertheless always led back to the self. ”
Govinda replied, “Siddhartha is putting me on. How could you have learned meditation, holding your breath, insensitivity against hunger and pain there among these wretched people?”
And Siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself, “What is meditation? What is leaving one’s body? What is fasting? What is holding one’s breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of 14
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an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then he won’t feel his self any more, then he won’t feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he’ll find the same what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non-self. This is how it is, oh Govinda.”
Govinda said, “You say so, oh friend, and yet you know that Siddhartha is no driver of an ox-cart and a Samana is no drunkard. It’s true that a drinker numbs his senses, it’s true that he briefly escapes and rests, but he’ll return from the delusion, finds everything to be unchanged, has not become wiser, has gathered no enlightenment,—has not risen several steps.”
And Siddhartha spoke with a smile, “I do not know, I’ve never been a drunkard. But that I, Siddhartha, find only a short numbing of the senses in my exercises and meditations and that I am just as far removed from wisdom, from salvation, as a child in the mother’s womb, this I know, oh Govinda, this I know.”
And once again, another time, when Siddhartha left the forest together with Govinda, to beg for some food in the village for their brothers and teachers, Siddhartha began to speak and said, “What now, oh Govinda, might we be on the right path? Might we get closer to enlightenment? Might we get closer to salvation? Or do we perhaps live in a circle—we, who have thought we were escaping the cycle?”
Govinda said, “We have learned a lot, Siddhartha, there is still much to learn.
We are not going around in circles, we are moving up, the circle is a spiral, we have already ascended many a level.”
Siddhartha answered, “How old, would you think, is our oldest Samana, our venerable teacher?”
Govinda replied, “Our oldest one might be about sixty years of age.”
From the reading. . .
“What is meditation? What is leaving one’s body? . . . It is fleeing from the self. . . The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine. . . ”
And Siddhartha said, “He has lived for sixty years and has not reached the Nirvana. He’ll turn seventy and eighty, and you and me, we will grow just as old and will do our exercises, and will fast, and will meditate. But we will not reach Nirvana, he won’t and we won’t. Oh Govinda, I believe out of all the Samanas out there, perhaps not a single one, not a single one, will Siddhartha: An Open-Source Text
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reach Nirvana. We find comfort, we find numbness, we learn feats, to deceive others. But the most important thing, the path of paths, we will not find.”
“If you only,” spoke Govinda, “wouldn’t speak such terrible words, Siddhartha! How could it be that among so many learned men, among so many Brahmins, among so many austere and venerable Samanas, among so many who are searching, so many who are eagerly trying, so many holy men, no one will find the path of paths?”
But Siddhartha said in a voice which contained just as much sadness as mockery, with a quiet, a slightly sad, a slightly mocking voice, “Soon, Govinda, your friend will leave the path of the Samanas he has walked along your side for so long. I’m suffering of thirst, oh Govinda, and on this long path of a Samana, my thirst has remained as strong as ever. I always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions. I have asked the Brahmins, year after year, and I have asked the holy Vedas, year after year, and I have asked the devoted Samanas, year after year. Perhaps, oh Govinda, it had been just as well, had been just as smart and just as profitable, if I had asked the hornbill or the chimpanzee. It took me a long time and I am not finished learning this yet, oh Govinda, that there is nothing to be learned! There is indeed no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as ‘learning.’ There is, oh my friend, just one truth, this is everywhere, this is Atman, this is within me and within you and within every creature. And so I’m starting to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the desire to know it, than learning.”
At this, Govinda stopped on the path, raised his hands, and spoke, “If you, Siddhartha, only would not bother your friend with this kind of talk! Truly, your words stir up fear in my heart. And just consider: what would become of the sanctity of prayer, what of the venerability of the Brahmins’ caste, what of the holiness of the Samanas, if it was as you say, if there was no learning?!
What, oh Siddhartha, what would then become of all of this what is holy, what is precious, what is venerable on earth?!”
And Govinda mumbled a verse to himself, a verse from an Upanishad: He who ponderingly, of a purified spirit, loses himself in the meditation of Atman, inexpressable by words is his blissfulness of his heart.
But Siddhartha remained silent. He thought about the words which Govinda had said to him and thought the words through to their end.
