Part 9
Govinda said: "Still, o Siddhartha, you love a little mockery, it seems to me. I believe you and know that you have not followed a teacher. But have you not yourself, if not a doctrine, then at least found certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you live? If you would tell me something of these, you would gladden my heart."
Spoke Siddhartha: "I have had thoughts, yes, and insights, now and then. I have sometimes, for an hour or for a day, felt knowledge within me, as one feels life in one's heart. They were certain thoughts, but it would be hard for me to communicate them to you. See, my Govinda, this is one of the thoughts I have found: wisdom is not communicable. Wisdom which a wise man attempts to communicate always sounds like foolishness."
"Are you jesting?" asked Govinda.
"I am not jesting. I say what I have found. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, one can live it, one can be borne by it, one can work wonders with it, but one cannot say it or teach it. This was what I sometimes already suspected as a youth, what drove me away from the teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you will again take for jest or for foolishness, but which is my best thought. It is this: the opposite of every truth is equally true! Namely thus: a truth can always only be expressed and wrapped in words when it is one-sided. One-sided is everything that can be thought with thoughts and said with words, everything is one-sided, everything is half, everything lacks wholeness, roundness, unity. When the sublime Gotama spoke of the world in teaching, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into illusion and truth, into suffering and redemption. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other path for one who would teach. The world itself, however, the being around us and within us, is never one-sided. Never is a human being, or a deed, entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, never is a human being entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does indeed seem so, because we are subject to illusion, that time is something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this again and again. And if time is not real, then the span which seems to lie between world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between evil and good, is also an illusion."
"How so?" asked Govinda anxiously.
"Listen well, dear one, listen well! The sinner, who I am and who you are, he is a sinner, but he will one day be Brahma again, he will one day attain Nirvana, will be Buddha—and now see: this 'one day' is illusion, is only a simile! The sinner is not on the way to Buddhahood, he is not engaged in a development, although our thinking cannot imagine things otherwise. No, in the sinner is, is now and today already, the future Buddha, his future is all already there, you have in him, in you, in everyone, the becoming, the possible, the hidden Buddha to revere. The world, friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or engaged on a slow path to perfection: no, it is in every moment perfect, all sin already bears grace within it, all small children already have the old man within them, all infants the death, all dying the eternal life. It is possible for no human being to see from another how far he is on his path, in the robber and dice-player Buddha waits, in the Brahman the robber waits. There is, in deep meditation, the possibility of suspending time, of seeing all past, present, and becoming life as simultaneous, and there all is good, all is perfect, all is Brahman. Therefore that which is seems good to me, death seems to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like folly, all must be so, all needs only my assent, only my willingness, my loving accord, thus it is good for me, can only further me, can never harm me. I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I greatly needed sin, I needed lust, the striving after goods, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn to give up resistance, to learn to love the world, to no longer compare it with any world wished by me, imagined by me, a kind of perfection devised by me, but to leave it as it is, and to love it, and gladly to belong to it.—This, o Govinda, are some of the thoughts which have come into my mind."
Siddhartha bent down, picked up a stone from the ground and weighed it in his hand.
"This here," he said playfully, "is a stone, and in a certain time it may perhaps become earth, and from earth become plant, or animal or human. Now earlier I would have said: this stone is merely a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of Maya; but because it can perhaps in the cycle of transformations also become human and spirit, therefore I also grant it validity. Thus I might have thought earlier. Today, however, I think: this stone is stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is also Buddha, I do not revere and love it because it could once become this or that, but because it is all long since and always—and precisely this, that it is stone, that it appears to me now and today as stone, precisely for this I love it, and see worth and meaning in each of its veins and hollows, in the yellow, in the grey, in the hardness, in the sound it gives when I tap it, in the dryness or moisture of its surface. There are stones which feel like oil or like soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and each is particular and prays the Om in its own way, each is Brahman, yet at the same time and equally it is stone, is oily or juicy, and precisely this pleases me and seems wonderful and worthy of worship.—But let me say no more of this. Words do not agree with the secret meaning, it always becomes a little different when one speaks of it, a little falsified, a little foolish—yes, and this too is very good and pleases me greatly, I am also very much in accord with the fact that what is a man's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another."
Silently Govinda listened.
"Why did you tell me that about the stone?" he asked after a pause, hesitantly.
"It happened without intention. Or perhaps it was meant thus, that I love just the stone, and the river, and all these things which we behold and from which we can learn. I can love a stone, Govinda, and also a tree or a piece of bark. Those are things, and things one can love. Words, however, I cannot love. Therefore doctrines are nothing for me, they have no hardness, no softness, no colors, no edges, no smell, no taste, they have nothing but words. Perhaps this is what hinders you from finding peace, perhaps it is the many words. For even redemption and virtue, even Sansara and Nirvana are mere words, Govinda. There is no thing which would be Nirvana; there is only the word Nirvana."
Spoke Govinda: "Not only a word, friend, is Nirvana. It is a thought."
Siddhartha continued: "A thought, it may be so. I must confess to you, dear one: I do not distinguish very much between thoughts and words. Frankly, I do not think much of thoughts either. I think more of things. Here on this ferryboat, for example, a man was my predecessor and teacher, a holy man, who for many years simply believed in the river, in nothing else. He had noticed that the river's voice spoke to him, from it he learned, it raised and taught him, the river seemed to him a god, for many years he did not know that every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle is exactly as divine and knows and can teach as much as the revered river. But when this holy man went into the forests, then he knew everything, knew more than you and I, without teacher, without books, only because he had believed in the river."
Govinda said: "But is that which you call 'things' something real, something essential? Is it not only the deception of Maya, only image and appearance? Your stone, your tree, your river—are they realities?"
"Also this," spoke Siddhartha, "does not trouble me greatly. Whether things be appearance or not, I too am then appearance, and thus they are ever my equals. This is what makes them so dear and worthy of reverence to me: they are my equals. Therefore I can love them. And this is now a doctrine at which you will laugh: love, o Govinda, seems to me the chief thing of all. To see through the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the business of great thinkers. I, however, care only to be able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and myself, to be able to regard it and myself and all beings with love and admiration and awe."
"This I understand," spoke Govinda. "But precisely this the Sublime One recognized as deception. He enjoins goodwill, consideration, compassion, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to bind our heart in love to earthly things."
"I know it," said Siddhartha; his smile shone golden. "I know it, Govinda. And see, there we are in the thicket of opinions, in the strife over words. For I cannot deny that my words of love stand in contradiction, in apparent contradiction, to Gotama's words. Precisely therefore I distrust words so greatly, for I know this contradiction is deception. I know that I am at one with Gotama. How should he not know love, he who recognized all human existence in its transitoriness, in its emptiness, and yet loved men so greatly that he spent a long, toilsome life solely to help them, to teach them! Also in him, also in your great teacher, the thing is dearer to me than the words, his doing and living more important than his speaking, the gesture of his hand more important than his opinions. Not in speaking, not in thinking do I see his greatness, only in doing, in living."
Long the two old men were silent. Then spoke Govinda, bowing in farewell: "I thank you, Siddhartha, that you have told me some of your thoughts. They are in part strange thoughts, not all of them became immediately intelligible to me. Be this as it may, I thank you, and I wish you quiet days."
(Secretly to himself he thought: This Siddhartha is a wondrous man, wondrous thoughts he speaks, foolish his teaching sounds. Differently sounds the pure teaching of the Sublime One, clearer, purer, more intelligible, nothing strange, foolish or ludicrous is contained in it. But differently than his thoughts seem to me Siddhartha's hands and feet, his eyes, his brow, his breath, his smile, his greeting, his gait. Never more, since our sublime Gotama passed into Nirvana, never more have I met a man from whom I felt: this is a saint. Only him, this Siddhartha, have I found so. Though his teaching be strange, though his words sound foolish, his glance and his hand, his skin and his hair, everything about him radiates a purity, radiates a calm, radiates a cheerfulness and gentleness and holiness, which I have seen in no other man since the last death of our sublime teacher.)
As Govinda thus thought, and a conflict was in his heart, he bowed again to Siddhartha, drawn by love. Deeply he bowed before the quietly sitting one.
"Siddhartha," he spoke, "we have become old men. Hardly will either of us see the other again in this form. I see, beloved, that you have found peace. I confess that I have not found it. Tell me, revered one, yet a word, give me something to grasp, something I can understand! Give me something for my way. It is often burdensome, my way, often dark, Siddhartha."
Siddhartha was silent and looked at him with the ever same, quiet smile. Staring, Govinda looked into his face, with fear, with longing, suffering and eternal seeking were written in his gaze, eternal not-finding.
Siddhartha saw it, and smiled.
"Bend down to me!" he whispered softly into Govinda's ear. "Bend down to me! So, closer yet! Quite near! Kiss me on the brow, Govinda!"
But while Govinda, astonished, and yet drawn by great love and presentiment, obeyed his words, bent near to him and touched his brow with his lips, something wonderful happened to him. While his thoughts still lingered on Siddhartha's wondrous words, while he still vainly and with resistance strove to think away time, to imagine Nirvana and Sansara as one, while even a certain contempt for the friend's words strove with an immense love and reverence within him, this happened to him:
He no longer saw his friend Siddhartha's face, he saw instead other faces, many, a long row, a streaming river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and passed, and yet all seemed to be present at once, which all constantly changed and renewed, and which yet all were Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with infinitely painfully opened mouth, a dying fish, with failing eyes—he saw the face of a newborn child, red and full of wrinkles, twisted to crying—he saw the face of a murderer, saw him thrust a knife into the body of a man—he saw, in the same second, this criminal kneel bound and his head struck off by the executioner with a sword-stroke—he saw the bodies of men and women naked in postures and struggles of raging love—he saw corpses outstretched, still, cold, empty—he saw animal heads, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all these shapes and faces in a thousand relations to one another, each helping the other, loving them, hating them, destroying them, newly bearing them, each was a willing to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none died, each only transformed, was ever newly born, got ever a new face, without yet any time lying between one and the other face—and all these shapes and faces rested, flowed, generated, swam along and streamed into one another, and over all was constantly something thin, essenceless, yet existing, drawn like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or form or mask of water, and this mask smiled, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, at this very same moment touched with his lips. And, so saw Govinda, this smile of the mask, this smile of unity over the streaming shapes, this smile of simultaneity over the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was exactly the same, was exactly like the quiet, fine, impenetrable smile, perhaps kindly, perhaps mocking, wise, manifold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he himself had seen it a hundred times with reverence. Thus, knew Govinda, smiled the perfected ones.
No longer knowing whether there be time, whether this vision had lasted a second or a hundred years, no longer knowing whether there be a Siddhartha, whether there be a Gotama, whether there be I and You, in his innermost like wounded by a divine arrow, whose wound tastes sweet, in his innermost enchanted and dissolved, Govinda stood yet a little while, bent over Siddhartha's quiet face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all shapes, all becoming, all being. The countenance was unchanged, after the depth of the thousandfold had closed again beneath its surface, he smiled quietly, smiled gently and softly, perhaps very kindly, perhaps very mockingly, exactly as he had smiled, the Sublime One.
Deeply bowed Govinda, tears ran, of which he knew nothing, over his old face, like a fire burned the feeling of innermost love, of humblest reverence in his heart. Deeply he bowed, to the earth, before the motionlessly sitting one, whose smile reminded him of all that he had ever loved in his life, that had ever been dear and holy to him in his life.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”