AWAKENING
As Siddhartha left the grove where the buddha, the perfect one, remained behind, where Govinda remained behind, he felt that he was also leaving behind his life so far, that it was separating itself from him. This sensation filled him completely, and he thought about it as he slowly walked on. He pondered deeply as if sinking through deep water, he allowed himself to drop to the bottom of this feeling to the place where its causes lay, as it seemed to him that identifying causes was to think, and that is the only way to make sensations into knowledge and avoid losing them altogether, the only way to make them substantial, the only way to make them shine and show what they contain.
He pondered as he walked slowly on. He concluded that he was no longer a youth but had become a man. He concluded that something had left him like a snake that sloughs its skin, that something within him was no longer there for him, something that had been with him all through his youth and had belonged to him: the wish to have a teacher and to hear teachings. He had even departed from last teacher who had come to him on his way, the highest and wisest of teachers, the holiest of them all, the buddha, he had had to separate himself from him, he had been unable to accept his teachings.
Siddhartha continued to ponder as he walked, and his movement became slower as he asked himself: But what was it that you wanted to learn from the teachers? What was it that those teachers who spent so much time giving you their lessons were nonetheless unable to teach you? And Siddhartha found an answer: What I wanted to learn was my self, I wanted to learn the meaning and the essence of my self. I wanted to be rid of my self, wanted to overcome my self. But I was not able to overcome it, was able only to cheat it, was able only to flee from it, to hide from it. There is truly nothing in the world that has occupied my thoughts as much as this self of mine, this puzzle that I am alive, that I am separate from one and all, severed from them, that I am Siddhartha! And there is nothing in the world that I know less about than myself, about Siddhartha!
Siddhartha walked more slowly as he pondered and then, gripped by these thoughts, came to a stop. And at that moment a new thought sprang out from them: There is a reason why I know nothing about myself, a cause for Siddhartha remaining so strange and unfamiliar to me, just one cause; I was in fear of myself, I was in flight from myself! I sought Atman, I sought Brahman, I had resolved to break my self apart, to flay it apart so that in its innermost, least known part I could find the kernel within all shells, Atman, life, the divine, the ultimate. But in the process I lost myself.
Siddhartha suddenly opened his eyes and looked around him, a smile covered his face, and a profound sense of waking from a long period of dreams flowed through him all the way down to his toes. And as soon as he began to walk on he walked quickly, like a man who knows what he has to do.
He took in a deep breath and thought to himself: “I will not let Siddhartha get away from me now! I will no longer let my thoughts and my life begin with Atman and the suffering of the world. I will no longer kill myself and dismember myself in order to see behind the ruins and find a secret there. I will no longer take teachings from yoga-veda, nor from atharva-veda, nor the ascetics nor any other kind of teaching. I will learn by myself alone, be a student of myself, learn to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha.”
He looked around him as if seeing the world for the first time. The world was beautiful, filled with many colours, strange and puzzling was the world! Blue here, yellow here, green here, sky and river flowed, trees and hills reached upwards, everything beautiful, everything puzzling and magic, and in the middle of it all was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the way to himself. All this, all this yellow and blue, river and wood, entered into Siddhartha through his eyes for the first time, it was no longer the sorcery of Mara, no longer the veil of maya, no longer the meaningless and random diversity of the world of delusion that the deep thinking brahmin despises, that the deep thinking brahmin scorns in his search for unity. Blue was blue, river was river, this was where the divine lived hidden, the blueness and the river lay within Siddhartha but this was how the divine showed itself and it was nonetheless one; yellow here, blue here, the sky there, the woods there, and here to be Siddhartha. Meaning and essence were not somewhere behind things, they were within them, in everything.
“I have been so deaf, so dull-witted!” he thought as he hurried forward. “When a man reads scripture in pursuit of its meaning he does not despise the ciphers and letters, calling them deceitful, random or meaningless shells, he reads it, he studies it and loves it, letter by letter. But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and the book of my own essence, I did despise the ciphers and letters for the sake of a meaning I thought I knew beforehand, when I saw the world, when I touched the world, I called it delusion, I called my eye and my tongue random and worthless appearances. No, this is in the past now, I have awoken, I have truly awoken and today I am born for the first time.”
As Siddhartha had this thought he suddenly stopped walking again, as if there lay a snake in front of him on the path, he also awoke to this insight: I am not now that which I once was, I am no longer an ascetic, I am no longer a priest, I am no longer a brahmin. So what should I do at home in the house of my father? Study? Perform sacrifices? Cultivate meditation? All this lies now in the past, all this is no longer on my path.