“What do you think, Govinda,” Siddhartha once asked him as they were on their way to beg. “Do you think we have made any progress? Have we reached any of our targets?”
Govinda answered, “We have learned things, and we continue to learn. You will be a great samana, Siddhartha. You have learned every exercise very quickly, and the old samanas have been amazed at you. One day, Siddhartha, you will be a holy man.”
Siddhartha said, “That is not how I see it, my friend. All that I have learned so far I could have learned much faster and much easier in any bar where the whores are, my friend, among all the cheats and the gamblers.”
Govinda said, “That is what you say, my friend, but you know that Siddhartha is not some cattle driver, and that a samana is not some drunkard. The drunk can numb his senses, he can find escape and rest for a short time, but then he comes back from his stupor and finds that all is as it was before. He makes himself no wiser, he has gathered no knowledge any sort, he has climbed not one step higher.”
Siddhartha smiled and said, “I don’t know, I’ve never been a drunkard. But I do know that in all my exercises and contemplations I have only ever found a brief respite from suffering, and remained just as far away from wisdom and liberation as a child in its mother’s womb. I do know that, Govinda, I do know that.”
Another time, when Siddhartha and Govinda came out of the woods together and down to the village to beg for food for their brothers and teachers, Siddhartha began to speak and said, “What about now, Govinda, do you think we are on the right path? Are we getting any closer to knowledge? Are we getting any closer to liberation? Or are we just going round in circles - we, who are trying to escape the circle of life?”
Govinda said, “We have learnt many things, Siddhartha, and there is still a lot more to learn. We are not going round in circles, we are mounting higher, the circle is a spiral, we have already climbed up many steps.”
Siddhartha answered, “How old do you think our eldest samana is, our venerable teacher?”
Govinda said, “He must be about sixty, our eldest samana.”
And Siddhartha, “He has reached the age of sixty, and he still has not reached Nirvana. He will be seventy, and then eighty, and you and me, we will become old in the same way and we will do our exercises, and we will fast, and we will meditate. But we will never reach Nirvana, he will not, we will not. Govinda, of all the samanas that there are, I do not think any one of them is likely to reach Nirvana. We find consolation, we find respite from pain, we learn the skills with which we deceive ourselves. But that which is essential, the way of ways, that is what we are not finding.”