Gotama

In the town of Savathi every child knew the name of the exalted Buddha, and every house was ready to fill the alms bowl of Gotama’s disciples, who begged in silence. Near the town lay Gotama’s favorite place to stay, the grove of Jetavana, which the rich merchant Anathapindika, a devoted worshiper of the Exalted One, had given to him and his followers as a gift.

All the stories and answers the two young ascetics received in their search for Gotama’s dwelling place had pointed toward this region. And when they arrived in Savathi, food was offered to them at the very first house before whose door they stopped to beg, and they accepted the food, and Siddhartha asked the woman who handed them the food:

“Gladly, charitable one, gladly would we learn where the Buddha is staying, the most venerable one, for we are two Samanas from the forest and have come to see him, the Perfected One, and to hear the teaching from his mouth.”

The woman spoke: “Truly, you have stopped at the right place, you Samanas from the forest. Know that the Exalted One is staying in Jetavana, in the garden of Anathapindika. There, pilgrims, you may spend the night, for there is room enough there for the countless people who stream in to hear the teaching from his mouth.”

Govinda rejoiced at this, and full of joy he cried: “Well then, so we have reached our goal and our road is at an end! But tell us, mother of pilgrims, do you know him, the Buddha, have you seen him with your own eyes?”

The woman spoke: “Many times I have seen him, the Exalted One. On many days I have seen him walk through the lanes, silent, in his yellow cloak, seen him hold out his alms bowl silently at the doors of the houses, seen him carry the filled bowl away.”

Govinda listened, enchanted, and wanted to ask and hear much more. But Siddhartha urged him to go on. They said their thanks and went and hardly needed to ask the way, for not a few pilgrims, and monks from Gotama’s community as well, were on their way to Jetavana. And when they arrived there in the night, there was a constant coming and calling and talking of people who sought shelter and were given it. The two Samanas, used to life in the forest, quickly and silently found a place to sleep and rested there until morning.

At sunrise they saw with astonishment what a great crowd, believers and the curious, had spent the night here. On all the paths of the glorious grove walked monks in yellow robes; under the trees they sat here and there, sunk in contemplation—or in spiritual conversation; the shady gardens looked like a town, full of people, swarming like bees. Most of the monks went out with their alms bowls to collect food in the town for the midday meal, the only meal of the day. The Buddha himself, the Enlightened One, also made the begging round in the morning.

Siddhartha saw him, and he recognized him at once, as though a god had pointed him out. He saw him, a simple man in a yellow robe, carrying the alms bowl in his hand, walking quietly along.

“Look here!” Siddhartha said softly to Govinda. “This one here is the Buddha.”

Govinda looked attentively at the monk in the yellow robe, who seemed in no way different from the hundreds of other monks. And soon Govinda too recognized: This is he. And they followed him and watched him.

The Buddha went his way modestly and sunk in thought; his quiet face was neither cheerful nor sad; it seemed to smile softly inward. With a hidden smile, quiet, calm, not unlike a healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore his robe and set down his feet just as all his monks did, according to precise rule. But his face and his step, his quietly lowered gaze, his quietly hanging hand, and even every finger of his quietly hanging hand spoke peace, spoke perfection, did not seek, did not imitate, breathed gently in an unwithering calm, in an unwithering light, an untouchable peace.

So Gotama walked toward the town to collect alms, and the two Samanas recognized him solely by the perfection of his calm, by the stillness of his form, in which no seeking, no willing, no imitating, no striving could be seen, only light and peace.

“Today we shall hear the teaching from his mouth,” said Govinda.

Siddhartha did not answer. He was not very curious about the teaching; he did not believe it would teach him anything new, for he, like Govinda, had heard the content of this Buddha’s teaching again and again, though only in reports at second and third hand. But he looked attentively at Gotama’s head, at his shoulders, at his feet, at his quietly hanging hand, and it seemed to him that every joint of every finger of this hand was teaching; it spoke, breathed, exhaled, shone truth. This man, this Buddha, was truthful down to the gesture of his last finger. This man was holy. Never had Siddhartha revered a person so, never had he loved a person as he loved this one.

The two followed the Buddha as far as the town and returned in silence, for they themselves intended to abstain from food that day. They saw Gotama return, saw him take his meal in the circle of his disciples—what he ate would not have filled a bird—and saw him withdraw into the shade of the mango trees.

But in the evening, when the heat abated and everything in the camp came to life and gathered, they heard the Buddha teach. They heard his voice, and it too was perfect, was of perfect calm, was full of peace. Gotama taught the teaching of suffering, of the origin of suffering, of the way to the ending of suffering. Calmly and clearly his quiet speech flowed. Life was suffering, the world was full of suffering, but deliverance from suffering had been found: whoever walked the way of the Buddha found deliverance. In a gentle yet firm voice the Exalted One spoke, taught the four main tenets, taught the eightfold path; patiently he went the accustomed way of teaching, of examples, of repetitions; bright and quiet his voice hovered over the listeners, like a light, like a starry sky.

When the Buddha—night had already fallen—ended his discourse, a number of pilgrims stepped forward and asked to be received into the community, took refuge in the teaching. And Gotama received them, saying: “You have heard the teaching well, it has been well proclaimed. Come forward, then, and walk in holiness, to make an end of all suffering.”

Behold, then Govinda too stepped forward, the shy one, and spoke: “I too take my refuge in the Exalted One and in his teaching,” and asked to be received among the disciples, and was received.

Right after that, when the Buddha had withdrawn for the night’s rest, Govinda turned to Siddhartha and spoke eagerly: “Siddhartha, it is not my place to reproach you. We have both heard the Exalted One, we have both heard the teaching. Govinda has heard the teaching, he has taken refuge in it. But you, honored friend, do you not want to walk the path of deliverance too? Will you hesitate, will you wait still longer?”

Siddhartha woke as if from sleep when he heard Govinda’s words. For a long time he looked into Govinda’s face. Then he spoke softly, in a voice without mockery: “Govinda, my friend, now you have taken the step, now you have chosen the way. Always, O Govinda, you have been my friend; always you have walked one step behind me. Often I have thought: Will Govinda not for once take a step alone, without me, out of his own soul? See, now you have become a man and choose your way yourself. May you walk it to the end, O my friend! May you find deliverance!”

Govinda, who did not yet fully understand, repeated his question with a note of impatience: “Speak, I beg you, my dear! Tell me, since it cannot be otherwise, that you too, my learned friend, will take your refuge in the exalted Buddha!”

Siddhartha laid his hand on Govinda’s shoulder: “You did not hear my blessing, O Govinda. I repeat it: May you walk this way to the end! May you find deliverance!”

At that moment Govinda realized that his friend had left him, and he began to weep.

“Siddhartha!” he cried plaintively.

Siddhartha spoke kindly to him: “Do not forget, Govinda, that you now belong to the Buddha’s Samanas! You have renounced home and parents, renounced your origins and property, renounced your own will, renounced friendship. So the teaching wills it, so the Exalted One wills it. So you yourself have willed it. Tomorrow, O Govinda, I will leave you.”

For a long time the friends walked in the woods; for a long time they lay and could not find sleep. And again and again Govinda pressed his friend to tell him why he would not take refuge in Gotama’s teaching, what fault he found in this teaching. But each time Siddhartha turned him away and said: “Be content, Govinda! The teaching of the Exalted One is very good; how could I find a fault in it?”

Very early in the morning a follower of the Buddha, one of his oldest monks, went through the garden and called to him all those who as novices had taken refuge in the teaching, to clothe them in the yellow robe and instruct them in the first teachings and duties of their state. Then Govinda tore himself away, embraced the friend of his youth once more, and joined the procession of novices.

But Siddhartha walked through the grove, lost in thought.

Then Gotama, the Exalted One, met him, and when Siddhartha greeted him with reverence and the Buddha’s gaze was so full of kindness and stillness, the young man took courage and asked the Venerable One for permission to speak to him. Silently the Exalted One nodded his consent.

Siddhartha spoke: “Yesterday, O Exalted One, I was granted the privilege of hearing your wonderful teaching. I came from far away with my friend to hear the teaching. And now my friend will stay with your people; he has taken refuge in you. But I am setting out on my pilgrimage anew.”

“As you please,” the Venerable One said courteously.

“My speech is too bold,” Siddhartha went on, “but I would not like to leave the Exalted One without having told him my thoughts in sincerity. Will the Venerable One grant me a hearing a moment longer?”

Silently the Buddha nodded his consent.

Siddhartha spoke: “One thing, O most Venerable One, I have admired in your teaching above all. Everything in your teaching is perfectly clear, is proved; as a perfect chain, a chain never and nowhere broken, you show the world as an eternal chain, joined of causes and effects. Never has this been seen so clearly, never presented so irrefutably; truly, the heart of every Brahmin must beat higher in his body when, through your teaching, he beholds the world as a perfect whole, without a gap, clear as crystal, not dependent on chance, not dependent on gods. Whether it is good or evil, whether life in it is suffering or joy, may be left open; it may be that this is not essential—but the unity of the world, the connectedness of all that happens, the enclosing of all things great and small by the same stream, by the same law of causes, of becoming and dying, this shines brightly from your exalted teaching, O Perfected One. But now, according to that same teaching of yours, this unity and consistency of all things is nevertheless broken in one place; through a small gap something strange flows into this world of unity, something new, something that was not there before and that cannot be shown and cannot be proved: that is your teaching of the overcoming of the world, of deliverance. But with this small gap, with this small breach, the whole eternal and unified law of the world is broken and undone again. Forgive me for voicing this objection.”

Gotama had listened to him quietly, unmoved. Now he spoke, the Perfected One, in his kind, his courteous and clear voice: “You have heard the teaching, O Brahmin’s son, and it is well for you that you have thought about it so deeply. You have found a gap in it, a flaw. May you go on thinking about it. But let me warn you, you who are so eager for knowledge, against the thicket of opinions and against the quarrel over words. Opinions are of no importance; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish; anyone can cling to them or reject them. But the teaching you have heard from me is not an opinion, and its goal is not to explain the world to those eager for knowledge. Its goal is something else; its goal is deliverance from suffering. That is what Gotama teaches, nothing else.”

“Do not be angry with me, O Exalted One,” said the young man. “I did not speak to you so in order to seek a quarrel with you, a quarrel over words. You are truly right: opinions matter little. But let me say this one thing more: I have not doubted you for a moment. I have not doubted for a moment that you are Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal, toward which so many thousands of Brahmins and Brahmins’ sons are on their way. You have found deliverance from death. It came to you out of your own seeking, on your own way, through thoughts, through meditation, through insight, through enlightenment. It did not come to you through teaching! And—this is my thought, O Exalted One—no one attains deliverance through teaching! To no one, O Venerable One, will you be able to convey and tell in words and through teaching what happened to you in the hour of your enlightenment! The teaching of the enlightened Buddha contains much; it teaches many to live righteously, to avoid evil. But one thing this teaching, so clear, so venerable, does not contain: it does not contain the secret of what the Exalted One himself experienced, he alone among the hundreds of thousands. This is what I thought and understood when I heard the teaching. This is why I am continuing my wandering—not to seek another, a better teaching, for I know there is none, but to leave all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal alone, or die. But often, O Exalted One, I will think of this day and of this hour when my eyes saw a holy man.”

The Buddha’s eyes looked quietly at the ground; quietly, in perfect equanimity, his inscrutable face shone.

“May your thoughts,” the Venerable One spoke slowly, “not be errors! May you reach the goal! But tell me: have you seen the crowd of my Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in the teaching? And do you believe, Samana from afar, do you believe that it would be better for all of them to leave the teaching and return to the life of the world and its pleasures?”

“Such a thought is far from me,” cried Siddhartha. “May they all stay with the teaching, may they reach their goal! It is not my place to judge another’s life. Only for myself, for myself alone, must I judge, must I choose, must I refuse. Deliverance from the self is what we Samanas seek, O Exalted One. If I were one of your disciples now, O Venerable One, I fear it might happen to me that my self would come to rest and be delivered only in appearance, only deceptively, but that in truth it would live on and grow great, for then I would have made the teaching, would have made my discipleship, my love for you, the community of the monks, into my self!”

With a half smile, with an unshaken brightness and friendliness, Gotama looked the stranger in the eye and dismissed him with a barely visible gesture.

“You are clever, O Samana,” the Venerable One spoke.

“You know how to speak cleverly, my friend. Beware of too much cleverness!”

The Buddha walked away, and his gaze and his half smile remained engraved forever in Siddhartha’s memory.

I have never yet seen a person look and smile, sit and walk like that, he thought; truly, I too wish I could look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so venerable, so hidden, so open, so childlike and mysterious. Truly, only a person who has pressed through into the innermost of his self looks and walks like that. Well, I too will seek to press through into the innermost of my self.

I have seen a man, thought Siddhartha, one single man, before whom I had to lower my eyes. Before no other will I lower my eyes again, before no other. No teaching will tempt me any longer, since this man’s teaching has not tempted me.

The Buddha has robbed me, thought Siddhartha, he has robbed me, and he has given me still more. He has robbed me of my friend, of the one who believed in me and now believes in him, who was my shadow and is now Gotama’s shadow. But he has given me Siddhartha, myself.