Govinda

Once, during a period of rest, Govinda was staying with other monks in the pleasure grove that the courtesan Kamala had given to Gotama’s disciples. He heard talk of an old ferryman who lived by the river a day’s journey from the grove and whom many took for a wise man. When Govinda went on his way, he chose the road to the ferry, eager to see this ferryman. For though he had lived by the rule all his life, and was also regarded with reverence by the younger monks for his age and his modesty, the restlessness and the seeking had not been extinguished in his heart.

He came to the river; he asked the old man to take him across, and when they got out of the boat on the other side, he said to the old man: “You do much good to us monks and pilgrims; you have already taken many of us across. Are you too not a seeker after the right path, ferryman?”

Siddhartha spoke, smiling out of his old eyes: “Do you call yourself a seeker, O venerable one, though you are already far on in years and wear the robe of Gotama’s monks?”

“I am old, it is true,” said Govinda, “but I have not stopped seeking. I will never stop seeking; that seems to be my destiny. You too, it seems to me, have sought. Will you tell me a word, honored sir?”

Siddhartha spoke: “What could I have to tell you, venerable one? Perhaps that you seek too much? That for all your seeking you do not come to finding?”

“How so?” asked Govinda.

“When someone seeks,” said Siddhartha, “it easily happens that his eye sees only the thing he is seeking, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything into himself, because he always thinks only of what he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is possessed by the goal. Seeking means having a goal. But finding means being free, standing open, having no goal. You, venerable one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving after your goal you do not see many things that stand right before your eyes.”

“I do not yet quite understand,” Govinda begged, “what do you mean by that?”

Siddhartha spoke: “Once, O venerable one, many years ago, you were already at this river once, and found a sleeper by the river, and sat down beside him to watch over his sleep. But you did not recognize the sleeper, O Govinda.”

Astonished, like someone under a spell, the monk looked into the ferryman’s eyes.

“Are you Siddhartha?” he asked in a timid voice. “I would not have recognized you this time either! I greet you warmly, Siddhartha; warmly I rejoice to see you once more! You have changed greatly, friend.—And so now you have become a ferryman?”

Siddhartha laughed kindly. “A ferryman, yes. Some people, Govinda, have to change a great deal, have to wear all kinds of garments; I am one of them, my dear. Be welcome, Govinda, and stay the night in my hut.”

Govinda stayed the night in the hut and slept on the bed that had once been Vasudeva’s bed. He put many questions to the friend of his youth; Siddhartha had to tell him much about his life.

When it was time the next morning to start the day’s journey, Govinda said, not without hesitation, these words: “Before I go on my way, Siddhartha, permit me one more question. Do you have a teaching? Do you have a faith, or a knowledge, that you follow, that helps you to live and to do right?”

Siddhartha spoke: “You know, my dear, that even as a young man, back when we lived with the penitents in the forest, I came to distrust teachings and teachers and to turn my back on them. I have held to that. Nevertheless I have had many teachers since then. A beautiful courtesan was my teacher for a long time, and a rich merchant was my teacher, and some dice players. Once a wandering disciple of the Buddha was my teacher too; he sat beside me when I had fallen asleep in the forest, on his pilgrimage. From him too I have learned; to him too I am grateful, very grateful. But most of all I have learned here from this river, and from my predecessor, the ferryman Vasudeva. He was a very simple man, Vasudeva; he was no thinker, but he knew what is necessary as well as Gotama did; he was a perfect man, a saint.”

Govinda said: “You still love a little mockery, O Siddhartha, it seems to me. I believe you, and I know that you have not followed any teacher. But have you yourself not found, if not a teaching, then certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you to live? If you would tell me something of these, you would gladden my heart.”

Siddhartha spoke: “I have had thoughts, yes, and insights, now and again. Sometimes, for an hour or for a day, I have felt knowledge in me, as one feels life in one’s heart. There were a number of thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. Look, my Govinda, this is one of my thoughts that I have found: wisdom cannot be conveyed. Wisdom that a wise man tries to convey always sounds like foolishness.”

“Are you joking?” asked Govinda.

“I am not joking. I am telling you what I have found. Knowledge can be conveyed, 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 and teach it. That is what I sometimes sensed even as a youth, what drove me away from the teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you will again take for a joke or for foolishness, but which is my best thought. It is this: of every truth the opposite is just as true! That is to say: a truth can only be spoken and wrapped in words when it is one-sided. Everything that can be thought with thoughts and said with words is one-sided, all one-sided, all half, all lacking wholeness, roundness, unity. When the exalted Gotama spoke of the world in his teaching, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, into illusion and truth, into suffering and deliverance. One cannot do otherwise; there is no other way for someone who wants to teach. But the world itself, what is around us and within us, is never one-sided. Never is a person, or a deed, wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a person wholly holy or wholly sinful. It does seem so, because we are subject to the 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 that seems to lie between the world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between evil and good, is also an illusion.”

“How is that?” asked Govinda anxiously.

“Listen well, my dear, listen well! The sinner that I am and that you are is a sinner, but he will one day be Brahma again, he will one day reach Nirvana, will be Buddha—and now see: this ‘one day’ is illusion, is only a figure of speech! The sinner is not on the way to Buddhahood, he is not in the course of a development, though our thinking does not know how to picture things any other way. No, in the sinner, now and today, the future Buddha already is; his future is all already there; you are to revere in him, in yourself, in everyone, the Buddha who is becoming, the possible, the hidden Buddha. The world, friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or on a slow path toward perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment; all sin already carries grace within it, all little children already have the old man in them, all infants death, all the dying eternal life. It is not possible for any person to see of another how far along his way he is; in the robber and the dice player the Buddha is waiting; in the Brahmin the robber is waiting. In deep meditation there is the possibility of putting time out of existence, of seeing all life that was, is, and will be as simultaneous, and there everything is good, everything perfect, everything is Brahman. That is why what is seems good to me; death seems good to me as well as life, sin as well as holiness, cleverness as well as folly; everything must be as it is; everything needs only my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, and then it is good for me, can only further me, can never harm me. I have learned in my body and in my soul that I needed sin very much; I needed lust, the striving for possessions, vanity, and needed the most shameful despair, in order to learn to give up resisting, in order to learn to love the world, in order no longer to compare it with some world I wished for, imagined, some kind of perfection I had thought up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to be glad to belong to it.—These, O Govinda, are some of the thoughts that 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, playing with it, “is a stone, and in a certain time it will perhaps be soil, and from soil it will become plant, or animal or human being. In the past I would have said: This stone is merely a stone; it is worthless; it belongs to the world of Maya; but because in the cycle of transformations it can perhaps also become human being and spirit, I grant it value too. So I might have thought in the past. But today I think: this stone is stone, it is also animal, it is also God, it is also Buddha; I revere and love it not because it might one day become this or that, but because it has long been and always is everything—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 every one of its veins and hollows, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it gives when I tap it, in the dryness or dampness of its surface. There are stones that feel like oil or like soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and each is special and prays the Om in its own way; each is Brahman, but at the same time and just as much it is stone, is oily or juicy, and precisely that pleases me and seems wonderful to me and worthy of worship.—But let me say no more about it. Words do not do the secret meaning any good; everything always becomes a little different at once when one speaks it aloud, a little falsified, a little foolish—yes, and this too is very good and pleases me very much; I am very much in agreement with this too, that what is one person’s treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another.”

Govinda listened in silence.

“Why did you tell me that about the stone?” he asked hesitantly after a pause.

“It was without intention. Or perhaps what I meant was that I love just this stone, and the river, and all these things we look at and can learn from. I can love a stone, Govinda, and a tree too, or a piece of bark. Those are things, and things can be loved. But words I cannot love. That is why teachings 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 keeps you from finding peace; perhaps it is the many words. For deliverance and virtue too, Samsara and Nirvana too, are mere words, Govinda. There is no thing that would be Nirvana; there is only the word Nirvana.”

Govinda spoke: “Nirvana is not just a word, friend. It is a thought.”

Siddhartha went on: “A thought, it may be so. I must confess to you, my dear: I do not distinguish much between thoughts and words. To be frank, 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; he learned from it; it brought him up 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 just as divine and knows just as much and can teach just as much as the revered river. But when this holy man went into the forests, he knew everything, knew more than you and I, without teachers, without books, only because he had believed in the river.”

Govinda said: “But is what you call ‘things’ something real, then, something with essence? Is it not only the deception of Maya, only image and appearance? Your stone, your tree, your river—are they realities?”

“This too,” said Siddhartha, “does not trouble me much. Whether things are appearance or not, then I too am appearance, after all, and so they are always my equals. That is what makes them so dear and worthy of reverence to me: they are my equals. That is why I can love them. And this now is a teaching you will laugh at: love, O Govinda, seems to me the main thing of all. To see through the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be the business of great thinkers. But my only concern is to be able to love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and myself, to be able to look at it and myself and all beings with love and admiration and reverence.”

“This I understand,” said Govinda. “But this very thing he, the Exalted One, recognized as deception. He commands benevolence, forbearance, compassion, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to bind our hearts in love to earthly things.”

“I know,” said Siddhartha; his smile shone golden. “I know, Govinda. And look, here we are in the middle of the thicket of opinions, in the quarrel over words. For I cannot deny that my words about love stand in contradiction, in apparent contradiction, to Gotama’s words. That is exactly why I distrust words so much, for I know this contradiction is an illusion. I know that I am at one with Gotama. How could He not know love, He who recognized all human existence in its transience, in its nothingness, and nevertheless loved people so much that he spent a long, laborious life solely on helping them, on teaching them! With him too, with your great teacher too, the thing is dearer to me than the words, his deeds and life more important than his speech, the gesture of his hand more important than his opinions. Not in his speaking, not in his thinking do I see his greatness, only in his deeds, in his life.”

For a long time the two old men were silent. Then Govinda spoke, bowing to take his leave: “I thank you, Siddhartha, for telling me something of your thoughts. Some of them are strange thoughts; not all of them have become clear to me at once. Be that as it may, I thank you, and I wish you peaceful days.”

(But secretly he thought to himself: This Siddhartha is a strange person; he speaks strange thoughts; his teaching sounds foolish. The pure teaching of the Exalted One sounds different, clearer, purer, more understandable; there is nothing strange, foolish, or ridiculous in it. But Siddhartha’s hands and feet, his eyes, his brow, his breathing, his smile, his greeting, his walk seem to me different from his thoughts. Never again since our exalted Gotama entered Nirvana, never again have I met a person of whom I felt: this is a holy man. Only him, this Siddhartha, have I found to be so. Though his teaching may be strange, though his words may sound foolish, his gaze and his hand, his skin and his hair, everything about him radiates a purity, radiates a calm, radiates a serenity and gentleness and holiness that I have seen in no other person since the last death of our exalted teacher.)

As Govinda thought this, and there was a conflict in his heart, he bowed once more toward Siddhartha, drawn by love. Deeply he bowed before the one sitting there so calmly.

“Siddhartha,” he said, “we have become old men. It is unlikely that either of us will see the other again in this form. I see, beloved friend, that you have found peace. I confess that I have not found it. Tell me one more word, honored friend; give me something to take with me that I can grasp, that I can understand! Give me something to take on my way. It is often hard, my way, often dark, Siddhartha.”

Siddhartha was silent and looked at him with the same quiet smile as ever. Govinda stared 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 in Govinda’s ear. “Bend down close to me! So, still closer! Very close! Kiss me on the forehead, Govinda!”

But while Govinda, astonished and yet drawn by great love and intimation, obeyed his words, bent close to him and touched his forehead with his lips, something wonderful happened to him. While his thoughts still lingered over Siddhartha’s strange words, while he was still striving in vain and with reluctance to think time away, to imagine Nirvana and Samsara as one, while even a certain contempt for his friend’s words was struggling in him with an enormous love and reverence, this happened to him:

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha; instead he saw other faces, many, a long row, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and passed away, and yet all seemed to be there at once, which all continually changed and renewed themselves, and which were yet all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with its mouth opened in infinite pain, a dying fish, with breaking eyes—he saw the face of a newborn child, red and full of wrinkles, screwed up to cry—he saw the face of a murderer, saw him plunge a knife into a person’s body—he saw, in the same second, this criminal kneeling in bonds and his head being struck off by the executioner with one blow of the sword—he saw the bodies of men and women naked in the positions and struggles of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, still, cold, empty—he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all these figures and faces in a thousand relations to one another, each helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving birth to it anew; each was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transience, and yet none died; each only transformed itself, was always born anew, always received a new face, without any time having passed between one face and the other—and all these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and streamed into one another, and over them all was continually drawn something thin, without substance, yet existing, like thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask smiled, and this mask was Siddhartha’s smiling face, which he, Govinda, was touching with his lips at this very same moment. And, so Govinda saw, this smile of the mask, this smile of unity above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneity above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha’s was exactly the same, was exactly the same quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps kind, perhaps mocking, wise, thousandfold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he himself had seen it a hundred times with reverence. So, Govinda knew, the Perfected Ones smile.

No longer knowing whether there was time, whether this vision had lasted a second or a hundred years, no longer knowing whether there was a Siddhartha, whether there was a Gotama, whether there was I and you, wounded in his innermost as if by a divine arrow whose wound tastes sweet, enchanted and dissolved in his innermost, Govinda stood a little while longer, bent over Siddhartha’s quiet face, which he had just kissed, which had just been the stage of all forms, all becoming, all being. The face was unchanged, after the depths of the thousandfold had closed again beneath its surface; he smiled quietly, smiled softly and gently, perhaps very kindly, perhaps very mockingly, exactly as he had smiled, the Exalted One.

Govinda bowed deeply; tears he knew nothing of ran down his old face; like a fire the feeling of the most heartfelt love, of the humblest reverence, burned in his heart. Deeply he bowed, down to the ground, before the one sitting motionless, whose smile reminded him of everything he had ever loved in his life, of everything that had ever been precious and holy to him in his life.