Last week, we talked about the beginning of Siddhartha’s journey. The young man leaves his village and with it a safe life as a high-caste member of his society, a future priest or scholar. Together with his friend Govinda, he follows a group of begging ascetics into the wilderness, where they stay for three years, learning the arts and skills needed to survive with nothing: fasting, meditating, punishing the body, getting rid of its desires. But at the end of this time, Siddhartha realises that just killing the ego and closing one’s eyes to the world cannot be all that there is to the ultimate wisdom. At the same time, news of the Buddha reach them. They leave the ascetics to go and find the Buddha and to hear his teaching. When they find the wise man, Govinda, Siddhartha’s friend, decides to stay as a monk in the Buddha’s community. Siddhartha is still not convinced. In a meeting between the young man and the old teacher, Siddhartha makes the point that the Buddha himself clearly did not become enlightened by following Buddhist teachings. His enlightenment came as a consequence of the life he had led, his experiences and his thoughts about the world. It was lived rather than learned wisdom that made the Buddha himself — and this is also the path that Siddhartha wishes to follow. He leaves his friend with the other monks and leaves, now alone, to find his destiny: Out of this moment, when the world melted away all around him, when he stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of a cold and despair, Siddhartha emerged, more a self than before, more firmly concentrated. He felt: This had been the last tremor of the awakening, the last struggle of this birth. And it was not long until he walked again in long strides, started to proceed swiftly and impatiently, heading no longer for home, no longer to his father, no longer back. …And here’s the same post as a video with all the images and dozens more! Read on, the story continues below! Kamala Siddhartha now wanders alone along the dusty road, without a goal, without knowing where he’s going, except that he won’t return back. Not to his family, not to his friend, not to the teachings of the Buddha. Whatever it is he’s looking for, it will be something new, an experience he has not yet had. Siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path, for the world was transformed, and his heart was enchanted. He saw the sun rising over the mountains with their forests and setting over the distant beach with its palm-trees. At night, he saw the stars in the sky in their fixed positions and the crescent of the moon floating like a boat in the blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, herbs, flowers, stream and river, the glistening dew in the bushes in the morning, distant high mountains which were blue and pale, birds sang and bees, wind silverishly blew through the rice-field. All of this, a thousand-fold and colourful, had always been there, always the sun and the moon had shone, always rivers had roared and bees had buzzed, but in former times all of this had been nothing more to Siddhartha than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought, since it was not the essential existence, since this essence lay beyond, on the other side of, the visible. But now, his liberated eyes stayed on this side, he saw and became aware of the visible, sought to be at home in this world, did not search for the true essence, did not aim at a world beyond. Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike. Beautiful were the moon and the stars, beautiful was the stream and the banks, the forest and the rocks, the goat and the gold-beetle, the flower and the butterfly. Beautiful and lovely it was, thus to walk through the world, thus childlike, thus awoken, thus open to what is near, thus without distrust. We see here Siddhartha’s journey taking shape. The first step was leaving his father’s home and the certainties of his pre-planned, safe life. The second step was the freeing of his mind from the body, the ability to control his body and to make it follow his will. And now, in this third stage, he realises that the world out there is not just illusion, not random images that should be transcended, but something that might contain inherent meaning, a message, a secret. And he perceives himself as part of that world that waits to be explored and understood: All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. Now he was with it, he was part of it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart. This is a quintessentially romantic way of viewing the world: everything that exists is a cipher, a code, a secret pointer to something else, to a realisation that transcends words. The German poet Novalis (1772-1801) gave this sentiment its perhaps clearest expression: Mankind travels along manifold pathways. He who pursues and compares them will perceive the emergence of certain strange figures; figures that appear to be inscribed in that massive tome composed in cipher that one everywhere and in everything beholds: on wings, eggshells, in clouds, in the snow, in crystalline and stone formations, in freezing waters, on the skins and in the bowels of mountain-ranges, of plants, beasts, people, in the stars of the heavens, in contiguous and expansive panes of pitch and glass, in the clustering of iron filings around the magnet, in the extraordinary ebb and flow of contingency. In these one may glimpse an intimation of the key to this wondrous text, its very grammar-book; and yet the intimation refuses to accommodate itself to fixed forms and appears to begrudge any translation into a higher key... (Novalis, The Novices at Sais, translation by Douglas Robertson, used with permission.) Hesse was himself a late romantic, just like Novalis. And his Siddhartha is driven by the same hunger for meaning, the same thirst for a life that is more than what it appears to be. One night, Siddhartha sleeps in the hut of a ferryman by a river. In the morning, the ferryman takes him across. The ferryman got him across the river on his bamboo-raft, the wide water shimmered reddishly in the light of the morning. “This is a beautiful river,” he said to his companion. “Yes,” said the ferryman, “a very beautiful river, I love it more than anything. Often I have listened to it, often I have looked into its eyes, and always I have learned from it. Much can be learned from a river.” And the ferryman predicts that Siddhartha, who does not have any money and cannot pay for his passage, will one day return to pay him. “Do you think so?” asked Siddhartha amusedly. “Surely. This too, I have learned from the river: everything is coming back! You too, Samana, will come back. Now farewell! Let your friendship be my reward. Commemorate me, when you’ll make offerings to the gods.” Later, Siddhartha reaches the outskirts of a city. There, he sees many people and among them a rich woman in a sedan chair, at the entrance of a beautiful garden: Siddhartha stopped at the entrance to the pleasure-garden and watched the parade, saw the servants, the maids, the baskets, saw the sedan-chair and saw the lady in it. Under black hair, which made to tower high on her head, he saw a very fair, very delicate, very smart face, a brightly red mouth, like a freshly cracked fig, eyebrows which were well tended and painted in a high arch, smart and watchful dark eyes, a clear, tall neck rising from a green and golden garment, resting fair hands, long and thin, with wide golden bracelets over the wrists. Siddhartha saw how beautiful she was, and his heart rejoiced. He bowed deeply, when the sedan-chair came closer, and straightening up again, he looked at the fair, charming face, read for a moment in the smart eyes with the high arcs above, breathed in a slight fragrant, he did not know. With a smile, the beautiful woman nodded for a moment and disappeared into the grove, and then the servants as well. But Siddhartha realises that, as long as he looks like a beggar from the wilderness, he will not be able to make this woman’s acquaintance: I am still a Samana, he thought, I am still an ascetic and beggar. I must not remain like this, I will not be able to enter the grove like this. And he laughed. So he goes into the city, befriends a barber, and manages to get a haircut and a shave for free. He washes in the nearby river, and the next day, clean and with his hair oiled, he goes again to meet the woman, the famous courtesan Kamala. This time, Kamala stops and talks to him. “Never before this has happened to me, my friend, that a Samana from the forest came to me and wanted to learn from me! Never before this has happened to me, that a Samana came to me with long hair and an old, torn loincloth! Many young men come to me, and there are also sons of Brahmans among them, but they come in beautiful clothes, they come in fine shoes, they have perfume in their hair and money in their pouches. This is, oh Samana, how the young men are like who come to me.” “Already I am starting to learn from you,” said Siddhartha. “Even yesterday, I was already learning. I have already taken off my beard, have combed the hair, have oil in my hair. There is little which is still missing in me, oh excellent one: fine clothes, fine shoes, money in my pouch. You shall know, Siddhartha has set harder goals for himself than such trifles, and he has reached them.” Still, Siddhartha is new in this city, and he doesn’t know where to go next. So he asks Kamala for advice. “Dear Kamala, thus advise me where I should go to, that I’ll find these three things most quickly?” “Friend, many would like to know this. You must do what you’ve learned and ask for money, clothes, and shoes in return. There is no other
