Kamala

Siddhartha learned something new at every step of his way, for the world was transformed and his heart was enchanted. He saw the sun rise over the wooded mountains and set over the distant palm-lined shore. At night he saw the stars ordered in the sky, and the crescent moon floating like a boat in the blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, herbs, flowers, brook and river, the glint of dew in the morning bushes, distant high mountains blue and pale; birds sang, and bees, wind blew silver in the rice field. All this, thousandfold and many-colored, had always been there; the sun and moon had always shone, rivers had always rushed and bees hummed, but in earlier times all this had been nothing for Siddhartha but a fleeting and deceptive veil before his eyes, regarded with distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought, since it was not essence, since essence lay beyond the visible. But now his liberated eye stayed on this side; it saw and recognized the visible, sought a home in this world, did not seek essence, aimed at no beyond. Beautiful was the world when one looked at it like this, so without seeking, so simply, so like a child. Beautiful were moon and stars, beautiful were brook and bank, forest and rock, goat and gold beetle, flower and butterfly. Beautiful and lovely it was to walk through the world like this, so childlike, so awake, so open to what was near, so without distrust. The sun burned differently on his head, the shade of the forest cooled differently, brook and cistern tasted different, pumpkin and banana tasted different. Short were the days, short the nights; every hour fled swiftly away like a sail on the sea, and under the sail a ship full of treasures, full of joys. Siddhartha saw a troop of monkeys moving through the high vault of the forest, high in the branches, and heard their wild, greedy song. Siddhartha saw a ram pursue a ewe and mate with her. In a reedy lake he saw the pike hunting in its evening hunger; ahead of it the young fish shot out of the water in shoals, fearful, fluttering, and flashing; strength and passion breathed urgently from the hasty whirlpools the impetuous hunter drew through the water.

All this had always been, and he had not seen it; he had not been part of it. Now he was part of it; he belonged to it. Light and shadow ran through his eye, star and moon ran through his heart.

On the way Siddhartha also remembered everything he had experienced in the garden of Jetavana, the teaching he had heard there, the divine Buddha, the parting from Govinda, the conversation with the Exalted One. He remembered his own words again, the words he had spoken to the Exalted One, every word, and with astonishment he became aware that he had said things there that at the time he had not yet really known. What he had said to Gotama, that his, the Buddha’s, treasure and secret was not the teaching but the inexpressible and unteachable thing he had once experienced in the hour of his enlightenment—this was the very thing he was now setting out to experience, was now beginning to experience. Now he had to experience himself. He had known for a long time, to be sure, that his self was Atman, of the same eternal essence as Brahman. But he had never really found this self, because he had tried to catch it in the net of thought. Though the body was certainly not the self, nor the play of the senses, neither was thinking, nor the intellect, nor learned wisdom, nor the learned art of drawing conclusions and spinning new thoughts out of thoughts already thought. No, this world of thought was also still on this side, and it led to no goal if one killed the accidental self of the senses but fattened the accidental self of thoughts and learning instead. Both, thoughts and senses alike, were pretty things; the ultimate meaning lay hidden behind both; both were to be listened to, both to be played with, neither to be scorned nor overvalued; from both the secret voices of the innermost were to be overheard. He wanted to strive for nothing except what the voice commanded him to strive for, to linger over nothing except where the voice advised it. Why had Gotama once, in the hour of hours, sat down under the bo tree, where enlightenment struck him? He had heard a voice, a voice in his own heart, which commanded him to seek rest under this tree, and he had not preferred mortification, sacrifice, bathing, or prayer, nor eating nor drinking, nor sleep nor dream; he had obeyed the voice. To obey like that, not an outer command, only the voice, to be ready like that, that was good, that was necessary; nothing else was necessary.

In the night, as he slept in the straw hut of a ferryman by the river, Siddhartha had a dream: Govinda stood before him in the yellow robe of an ascetic. Govinda looked sad; sadly he asked: Why did you leave me? Then he embraced Govinda, wrapped his arms around him, and as he drew him to his breast and kissed him, it was no longer Govinda but a woman, and from the woman’s robe a full breast swelled, at which Siddhartha lay and drank; sweet and strong tasted the milk of this breast. It tasted of woman and man, of sun and forest, of animal and flower, of every fruit, of every pleasure. It made him drunk and unconscious.—When Siddhartha woke, the pale river shimmered through the door of the hut, and in the forest an owl’s dark call sounded, deep and melodious.

When the day began, Siddhartha asked his host, the ferryman, to take him across the river. The ferryman took him across the river on his bamboo raft; the broad water shimmered reddish in the morning light.

“This is a beautiful river,” he said to his companion.

“Yes,” said the ferryman, “a very beautiful river; I love it more than anything. I have often listened to it, often looked into its eyes, and I have always learned from it. One can learn a great deal from a river.”

“I thank you, my benefactor,” said Siddhartha as he stepped onto the other bank. “I have no gift to give you for your hospitality, my dear, and no fare to pay. I am a man without a home, a Brahmin’s son and a Samana.”

“I saw that well enough,” said the ferryman, “and I expected no fare from you, and no gift. You will give me the gift another time.”

“Do you think so?” said Siddhartha merrily.

“Certainly. This too I have learned from the river: everything comes back! You too, Samana, will come back. Now farewell! May your friendship be my fare. May you remember me when you sacrifice to the gods.”

Smiling, they parted. Smiling, Siddhartha took pleasure in the friendship and friendliness of the ferryman. “He is like Govinda,” he thought, smiling; “everyone I meet on my way is like Govinda. All are grateful, though they themselves would have a claim to thanks. All are submissive, all like to be friends, like to obey, think little. People are children.”

Around midday he came through a village. In front of the mud huts children were rolling about in the lane, playing with pumpkin seeds and shells, shouting and scuffling, but they all fled shyly from the unfamiliar Samana. At the end of the village the road led through a brook, and at the edge of the brook a young woman knelt washing clothes. When Siddhartha greeted her, she raised her head and looked up at him with a smile, so that he saw the white of her eyes flash. He called a blessing over to her, as is customary among travelers, and asked how much farther it was to the big town. Then she stood up and came over to him; her moist mouth gleamed beautifully in her young face. She exchanged teasing words with him, asked whether he had eaten yet, and whether it was true that the Samanas slept alone in the forest at night and were not allowed to have women with them. As she spoke she placed her left foot on his right and made a movement such as a woman makes when she invites a man to that kind of love pleasure which the manuals call “climbing the tree.” Siddhartha felt his blood grow warm, and since his dream came back to him at that moment, he bent down a little to the woman and kissed the brown tip of her breast with his lips. Looking up, he saw her face smiling, full of desire, and her narrowed eyes pleading with longing.

Siddhartha too felt longing and the spring of sex stirring; but since he had never yet touched a woman, he hesitated for a moment, while his hands were already ready to reach for her. And at that moment he heard, with a shudder, the voice of his inner self, and the voice said no. Then all the magic left the young woman’s smiling face; he saw nothing more than the moist gaze of a female animal in heat. He stroked her cheek kindly, turned away from her, and vanished lightly into the bamboo thicket before the disappointed woman’s eyes.

On that day, before evening, he reached a large town, and he was glad, for he longed for people. He had lived in the forests for a long time, and the ferryman’s straw hut in which he had slept that night had been the first roof over his head in a long time.

Outside the town, by a beautiful fenced grove, the wanderer met a small train of servants, men and women, loaded with baskets. In their midst, in an ornamented sedan chair carried by four men, sat a woman on red cushions under a colorful canopy, the mistress. Siddhartha stopped at the entrance to the pleasure grove and watched the procession, saw the servants, the maids, the baskets, saw the sedan chair, and saw in the sedan chair the lady. Under black hair piled high he saw a very fair, very delicate, very clever face, a bright red mouth like a freshly opened fig, eyebrows groomed and painted in high arches, dark eyes clever and watchful, a fair, tall neck rising from a green and gold upper garment, resting fair hands, long and slender, with broad gold bracelets above the wrists.

Siddhartha saw how beautiful she was, and his heart laughed. He bowed deeply as the sedan chair came near, and straightening up again he looked into the fair, lovely face, read for a moment in the clever, high-arched eyes, breathed a waft of a fragrance he did not know. Smiling, the beautiful woman nodded, for a moment, and vanished into the grove, and behind her the servants.

So I enter this town, thought Siddhartha, under a lovely sign. He felt drawn to go into the grove at once, but he thought better of it, and only now did he become aware of how the servants and maids at the entrance had looked at him, how contemptuously, how distrustfully, how dismissively.

I am still a Samana, he thought, still an ascetic and beggar. I cannot stay like this; I cannot go into the grove like this. And he laughed.

He asked the next person who came along the road about the grove and the name of this woman, and learned that this was the grove of Kamala, the famous courtesan, and that besides the grove she owned a house in the town.

Then he entered the town. He had a goal now.

Pursuing his goal, he let the town swallow him up, drifted in the current of the lanes, stood still in squares, rested on the stone steps by the river. Toward evening he made friends with a barber’s assistant whom he had seen working in the shade of an archway, whom he found again praying in a temple of Vishnu, and to whom he told stories of Vishnu and Lakshmi. He slept the night by the boats on the river, and early in the morning, before the first customers came into the shop, he had the barber’s assistant shave his beard and cut his hair, comb his hair and anoint it with fine oil. Then he went to bathe in the river.

When the beautiful Kamala approached her grove in her sedan chair late in the afternoon, Siddhartha stood at the entrance, bowed, and received the courtesan’s greeting. But he beckoned to the servant who walked last in the train and asked him to tell his mistress that a young Brahmin wished to speak with her. After a while the servant came back, asked the one who was waiting to follow him, led him silently into a pavilion where Kamala lay on a couch, and left him alone with her.

“Weren’t you standing out there yesterday and greeting me?” asked Kamala.

“Yes, I saw you yesterday and greeted you.”

“But didn’t you have a beard yesterday, and long hair, and dust in your hair?”

“You observed well; you saw everything. You saw Siddhartha, the Brahmin’s son, who left his home to become a Samana and was a Samana for three years. But now I have left that path and have come to this town, and the first person I met, even before I entered the town, was you. I have come to you to say this, O Kamala! You are the first woman to whom Siddhartha speaks without lowered eyes. Never again will I lower my eyes when a beautiful woman meets me.”

Kamala smiled and played with her fan of peacock feathers. And asked: “And Siddhartha has come to me only to tell me this?”

“To tell you this, and to thank you for being so beautiful. And if it does not displease you, Kamala, I would like to ask you to be my friend and teacher, for I know nothing yet of the art in which you are a master.”

At that Kamala laughed aloud.

“It has never happened to me, friend, that a Samana from the forest came to me and wanted to learn from me! It has never happened to me that a Samana with long hair and in an old torn loincloth came to me! Many young men come to me, and there are Brahmins’ sons among them too, but they come in fine clothes, they come in fine shoes, they have perfume in their hair and money in their purses. That, Samana, is what the young men who come to me are like.”

Siddhartha spoke: “Already I am beginning to learn from you. I learned something yesterday as well. I have already shed my beard, I have combed my hair, I have oil in my hair. Little is still lacking, excellent one: fine clothes, fine shoes, money in my purse. Know that Siddhartha has set himself harder things than such trifles, and has achieved them. How should I not achieve what I set myself yesterday: to be your friend and to learn the joys of love from you! You will find me quick to learn, Kamala; I have learned harder things than what you are to teach me. And so: Siddhartha is not good enough for you as he is, with oil in his hair but without clothes, without shoes, without money?”

Laughing, Kamala cried: “No, my good man, he is not good enough yet. He must have clothes, pretty clothes, and shoes, pretty shoes, and plenty of money in his purse, and gifts for Kamala. Do you know now, Samana from the forest? Have you taken it in?”

“I have taken it in,” cried Siddhartha. “How should I not take in what comes from such a mouth! Your mouth is like a freshly opened fig, Kamala. My mouth too is red and fresh; it will suit yours, you will see.—But tell me, beautiful Kamala, are you not at all afraid of the Samana from the forest, who has come to learn love?”

“Why should I be afraid of a Samana, a stupid Samana from the forest, who comes from the jackals and does not even know yet what women are?”

“Oh, he is strong, the Samana, and he fears nothing. He could force you, pretty girl. He could carry you off. He could hurt you.”

“No, Samana, I am not afraid of that. Has any Samana or Brahmin ever been afraid that someone might come and seize him and rob him of his learning, and his piety, and his depth of mind? No, for they belong to him, and he gives of them only what he wants to give and to whom he wants to give it. That is how it is, exactly so with Kamala too, and with the joys of love. Beautiful and red is Kamala’s mouth, but try to kiss it against Kamala’s will, and you will not get one drop of sweetness from it, though it knows how to give so much that is sweet! You are quick to learn, Siddhartha, so learn this too: love can be begged, bought, received as a gift, found in the street, but it cannot be stolen. You have thought up the wrong way there. No, it would be a pity if a handsome young man like you went about it so wrongly.”

Siddhartha bowed with a smile. “It would be a pity, Kamala, how right you are! It would be a very great pity. No, not one drop of sweetness from your mouth shall be lost to me, nor to you from mine! So it is settled: Siddhartha will come back when he has what he still lacks: clothes, shoes, money. But tell me, lovely Kamala, can you not give me one small piece of advice?”

“Advice? Why not? Who would not gladly give advice to a poor, ignorant Samana who comes from the jackals in the forest?”

“Dear Kamala, then advise me: where should I go to find those three things most quickly?”

“Friend, many would like to know that. You must do what you have learned and have yourself paid for it with money, and clothes, and shoes. There is no other way for a poor man to come by money. What can you do?”

“I can think. I can wait. I can fast.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing. Yes, I can also make poems. Will you give me a kiss for a poem?”

“I will, if I like your poem. What is it called, then?”

Siddhartha, after reflecting for a moment, spoke these verses:

Into her shady grove stepped the beautiful Kamala,

At the grove’s entrance stood the brown Samana.

Deeply, as he beheld the lotus blossom,

He bowed, and smiling Kamala thanked him.

Lovelier, thought the young man, than offering to gods,

Lovelier is it to offer to beautiful Kamala.

Kamala clapped her hands loudly, so that the golden bracelets rang.

“Your verses are beautiful, brown Samana, and truly, I lose nothing if I give you a kiss for them.”

She drew him to her with her eyes; he bent his face down to hers and laid his mouth on the mouth that was like a freshly opened fig. Kamala kissed him for a long time, and with deep astonishment Siddhartha felt how she taught him, how wise she was, how she mastered him, pushed him away, lured him, and how behind this first kiss stood a long, a well-ordered, well-tested series of kisses, each different from the other, which still awaited him. Breathing deeply, he stood still, and at that moment he was like a child, astonished at the abundance of knowledge and of things worth learning that opened before his eyes.

“Your verses are very beautiful,” cried Kamala. “If I were rich, I would give you gold pieces for them. But it will be hard for you to earn as much money with verses as you need. For you need a lot of money if you want to be Kamala’s friend.”

“How you can kiss, Kamala!” stammered Siddhartha.

“Yes, that I can do, and that is why I lack no clothes, shoes, bracelets, and all beautiful things. But what will become of you? Can you do nothing but think, fast, make poems?”

“I also know the sacrificial songs,” said Siddhartha, “but I no longer want to sing them. I also know magic spells, but I no longer want to speak them. I have read the scriptures—”

“Stop,” Kamala interrupted him. “You can read? And write?”

“Certainly I can. Some people can.”

“Most cannot. I cannot either. It is very good that you can read and write, very good. You will still find a use for the magic spells too.”

At that moment a maid came running and whispered a message in her mistress’s ear.

“I have a visitor,” cried Kamala. “Hurry and disappear, Siddhartha; no one must see you here, remember that! Tomorrow I will see you again.”

But she ordered the maid to give the pious Brahmin a white upper garment. Without knowing what was happening to him, Siddhartha found himself pulled away by the maid, brought by roundabout paths to a garden house, presented with an upper garment, led into the bushes, and urgently told to get himself out of the grove at once without being seen.

Contentedly he did as he was told. Used to the forest, he made his way soundlessly out of the grove and over the hedge. Contentedly he returned to the town, carrying the rolled-up garment under his arm. At an inn where travelers stopped, he stood at the door, silently begged for food, silently accepted a piece of rice cake. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow, he thought, I will no longer ask anyone for food.

Pride suddenly flared up in him. He was no longer a Samana; it no longer became him to beg. He gave the rice cake to a dog and went without food.

“Simple is the life one leads here in the world,” thought Siddhartha. “It has no difficulties. Everything was hard, toilsome, and in the end hopeless when I was still a Samana. Now everything is easy, easy as the lessons in kissing Kamala gives me. I need clothes and money, nothing else; those are small, near goals; they do not disturb one’s sleep.”

He had long since found out where Kamala’s house in the town was; he presented himself there the next day.

“It is going well,” she called out to him. “You are expected at Kamaswami’s; he is the richest merchant in this town. If he likes you, he will take you into his service. Be clever, brown Samana. I have had others tell him about you. Be friendly toward him; he is very powerful. But do not be too modest! I do not want you to become his servant; you are to become his equal, or I will not be satisfied with you. Kamaswami is beginning to grow old and comfortable. If he likes you, he will entrust you with a great deal.”

Siddhartha thanked her and laughed, and when she learned that he had eaten nothing yesterday or today, she had bread and fruit brought and served him.

“You have been lucky,” she said as they parted; “one door after another opens for you. How does that come about? Do you have a charm?”

Siddhartha said: “Yesterday I told you that I knew how to think, to wait, and to fast, but you thought that was of no use. But it is of use for many things, Kamala; you will see. You will see that the stupid Samanas in the forest learn and can do many pretty things that you people cannot do. The day before yesterday I was still a shaggy beggar, yesterday I had already kissed Kamala, and soon I will be a merchant and have money and all those things you set store by.”

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “But how would you fare without me? What would you be if Kamala did not help you?”

“Dear Kamala,” said Siddhartha, drawing himself up to his full height, “when I came to you in your grove, I took the first step. It was my resolve to learn love from this most beautiful of women. From the moment I made that resolve, I also knew that I would carry it out. I knew that you would help me; at your first glance at the entrance of the grove I knew it already.”

“But what if I had not wanted to?”

“You did want to. Look, Kamala: when you throw a stone into the water, it hurries by the quickest way to the bottom of the water. That is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolve. Siddhartha does nothing; he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like the stone through the water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal draws him to itself, for he lets nothing into his soul that might resist the goal. That is what Siddhartha learned with the Samanas. It is what fools call magic, and they think it is brought about by demons. Nothing is brought about by demons; there are no demons. Anyone can work magic, anyone can reach his goals, if he can think, if he can wait, if he can fast.”

Kamala listened to him. She loved his voice; she loved the look in his eyes.

“Perhaps it is as you say, friend,” she said softly. “But perhaps it is also that Siddhartha is a handsome man, that his look pleases women, and that this is why good fortune comes to meet him.”

With a kiss Siddhartha took his leave. “May it be so, my teacher. May my look always please you, may good fortune always come to me from you!”