prompt:
Chapter: OM

For a long time, the wound continued to burn.  Many a traveller
Siddhartha had to ferry across the river who was accompanied by a son or
a daughter, and he saw none of them without envying him, without
thinking:  "So many, so many thousands possess this sweetest of good
fortunes--why don't I?  Even bad people, even thieves and robbers have
children and love them, and are being loved by them, all except for me."
Thus simply, thus without reason he now thought, thus similar to the
childlike people he had become.

Differently than before, he now looked upon people, less smart, less
proud, but instead warmer, more curious, more involved.  When he ferried
travellers of the ordinary kind, childlike people, businessmen,
warriors, women, these people did not seem alien to him as they used to:
he understood them, he understood and shared their life, which was not
guided by thoughts and insight, but solely by urges and wishes, he felt
like them.  Though he was near perfection and was bearing his final
wound, it still seemed to him as if those childlike people were his
brothers, their vanities, desires for possession, and ridiculous aspects
were no longer ridiculous to him, became understandable, became lovable,
even became worthy of veneration to him.  The blind love of a mother
for her child, the stupid, blind pride of a conceited father for his
only son, the blind, wild desire of a young, vain woman for jewelry and
admiring glances from men, all of these urges, all of this childish
stuff, all of these simple, foolish, but immensely strong, strongly
living, strongly prevailing urges and desires were now no childish
notions for Siddhartha any more, he saw people living for their sake,
saw them achieving infinitely much for their sake, travelling,
conducting wars, suffering infinitely much, bearing infinitely much, and
he could love them for it, he saw life, that what is alive, the
indestructible, the Brahman in each of their passions, each of their
acts.  Worthy of love and admiration were these people in their blind
loyalty, their blind strength and tenacity.  They lacked nothing, there
was nothing the knowledgeable one, the thinker, had to put him above them
except for one little thing, a single, tiny, small thing: the
consciousness, the conscious thought of the oneness of all life.  And
Siddhartha even doubted in many an hour, whether this knowledge, this
thought was to be valued thus highly, whether it might not also perhaps
be a childish idea of the thinking people, of the thinking and childlike
people.  In all other respects, the worldly people were of equal rank
to the wise men, were often far superior to them, just as animals too
can, after all, in some moments, seem to be superior to humans in their
tough, unrelenting performance of what is necessary.

Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in Siddhartha the realisation, the
knowledge, what wisdom actually was, what the goal of his long search
was.  It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret
art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of
oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness.  Slowly this
blossomed in him, was shining back at him from Vasudeva's old, childlike
face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world,
smiling, oneness.

But the wound still burned, longingly and bitterly Siddhartha thought of
his son, nurtured his love and tenderness in his heart, allowed the
pain to gnaw at him, committed all foolish acts of love.  Not by itself,
this flame would go out.

And one day, when the wound burned violently, Siddhartha ferried across
the river, driven by a yearning, got off the boat and was willing to go
to the city and to look for his son.  The river flowed softly and
quietly, it was the dry season, but its voice sounded strange: it
laughed!  It laughed clearly.  The river laughed, it laughed brightly
and clearly at the old ferryman.  Siddhartha stopped, he bent over the
water, in order to hear even better, and he saw his face reflected in
the quietly moving waters, and in this reflected face there was
something, which reminded him, something he had forgotten, and as he
thought about it, he found it: this face resembled another face, which
he used to know and love and also fear.  It resembled his father's face,
the Brahman.  And he remembered how he, a long time ago, as a young man,
had forced his father to let him go to the penitents, how he had bed his
farewell to him, how he had gone and had never come back.  Had his
father not also suffered the same pain for him, which he now suffered
for his son?  Had his father not long since died, alone, without having
seen his son again?  Did he not have to expect the same fate for
himself?  Was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid matter, this
repetition, this running around in a fateful circle?

The river laughed.  Yes, so it was, everything came back, which had not
been suffered and solved up to its end, the same pain was suffered over
and over again.  But Siddhartha went back into the boat and ferried back
to the hut, thinking of his father, thinking of his son, laughed at by
the river, at odds with himself, tending towards despair, and not less
tending towards laughing along at (?? ueber) himself and the entire
world.

Alas, the wound was not blossoming yet, his heart was still fighting his
fate, cheerfulness and victory were not yet shining from his suffering.
Nevertheless, he felt hope, and once he had returned to the hut, he felt
an undefeatable desire to open up to Vasudeva, to show him everything,
the master of listening, to say everything.

Vasudeva was sitting in the hut and weaving a basket.  He no longer used
the ferry-boat, his eyes were starting to get weak, and not just his
eyes; his arms and hands as well.  Unchanged and flourishing was only
the joy and the cheerful benevolence of his face.

Siddhartha sat down next to the old man, slowly he started talking.
What they had never talked about, he now told him of, of his walk to
the city, at that time, of the burning wound, of his envy at the sight
of happy fathers, of his knowledge of the foolishness of such wishes, of
his futile fight against them.  He reported everything, he was able to
say everything, even the most embarrassing parts, everything could be
said, everything shown, everything he could tell.  He presented his
wound, also told how he fled today, how he ferried across the water,
a childish run-away, willing to walk to the city, how the river had
laughed.

While he spoke, spoke for a long time, while Vasudeva was listening
with a quiet face, Vasudeva's listening gave Siddhartha a stronger
sensation than ever before, he sensed how his pain, his fears flowed
over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him from
his counterpart.  To show his wound to this listener was the same as
bathing it in the river, until it had cooled and become one with the
river.  While he was still speaking, still admitting and confessing,
Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Vasudeva, no
longer a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless
listener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree the rain,
that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself,
that he was the eternal itself.  And while Siddhartha stopped thinking
of himself and his wound, this realisation of Vasudeva's changed
character took possession of him, and the more he felt it and entered
into it, the less wondrous it became, the more he realised that
everything was in order and natural, that Vasudeva had already been like
this for a long time, almost forever, that only he had not quite
recognised it, yes, that he himself had almost reached the same state.
He felt, that he was now seeing old Vasudeva as the people see the
gods, and that this could not last; in his heart, he started bidding his
farewell to Vasudeva.  Thoroughout all this, he talked incessantly.

When he had finished talking, Vasudeva turned his friendly eyes, which
had grown slightly weak, at him, said nothing, let his silent love and
cheerfulness, understanding and knowledge, shine at him.  He took
Siddhartha's hand, led him to the seat by the bank, sat down with him,
smiled at the river.

"You've heard it laugh," he said.  "But you haven't heard everything.
Let's listen, you'll hear more."

They listened.  Softly sounded the river, singing in many voices.
Siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in the
moving water: his father appeared, lonely, mourning for his son; he
himself appeared, lonely, he also being tied with the bondage of
yearning to his distant son; his son appeared, lonely as well, the boy,
greedily rushing along the burning course of his young wishes, each
one heading for his goal, each one obsessed by the goal, each one
suffering.  The river sang with a voice of suffering, longingly it sang,
longingly, it flowed towards its goal, lamentingly its voice sang.

"Do you hear?" Vasudeva's mute gaze asked.  Siddhartha nodded.

"Listen better!" Vasudeva whispered.

Siddhartha made an effort to listen better.  The image of his father,
his own image, the image of his son merged, Kamala's image also appeared
and was dispersed, and the image of Govinda, and other images, and they
merged with each other, turned all into the river, headed all, being the
river, for the goal, longing, desiring, suffering, and the river's voice
sounded full of yearning, full of burning woe, full of unsatisfiable
desire.  For the goal, the river was heading, Siddhartha saw it
hurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and of
all people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters were
hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake,
the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal was
followed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to the
sky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a
source, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on once
again.  But the longing voice had changed.  It still resounded, full of
suffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and of
suffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices,
a thousand voices.

Siddhartha listened.  He was now nothing but a listener, completely
concentrated on listening, completely empty, he felt, that he had now
finished learning to listen.  Often before, he had heard all this, these
many voices in the river, today it sounded new.  Already, he could no
longer tell the many voices apart, not the happy ones from the weeping
ones, not the ones of children from those of men, they all belonged
together, the lamentation of yearning and the laughter of the
knowledgeable one, the scream of rage and the moaning of the dying ones,
everything was one, everything was intertwined and connected, entangled
a thousand times.  And everything together, all voices, all goals, all
yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all
of this together was the world.  All of it together was the flow of
events, was the music of life.  And when Siddhartha was listening
attentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when he
neither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tie
his soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, but
when he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the great
song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om:
the perfection.

"Do you hear," Vasudeva's gaze asked again.

Brightly, Vasudeva's smile was shining, floating radiantly over all the
wrinkles of his old face, as the Om was floating in the air over all the
voices of the river.  Brightly his smile was shining, when he looked at
his friend, and brightly the same smile was now starting to shine on
Siddhartha's face as well.  His wound blossomed, his suffering was
shining, his self had flown into the oneness.

In this hour, Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate, stopped suffering.
On his face flourished the cheerfulness of a knowledge, which is no
longer opposed by any will, which knows perfection, which is in
agreement with the flow of events, with the current of life, full of
sympathy for the pain of others, full of sympathy for the pleasure of
others, devoted to the flow, belonging to the oneness.

When Vasudeva rose from the seat by the bank, when he looked into
Siddhartha's eyes and saw the cheerfulness of the knowledge shining
in them, he softly touched his shoulder with his hand, in this careful
and tender manner, and said:  "I've been waiting for this hour, my dear.
Now that it has come, let me leave.  For a long time, I've been waiting
for this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman.  Now
it's enough.  Farewell, hut, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!"

Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell.

"I've known it," he said quietly.  "You'll go into the forests?"

"I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke Vasudeva
with a bright smile.

With a bright smile, he left; Siddhartha watched him leaving.  With deep
joy, with deep solemnity he watched him leave, saw his steps full of
peace, saw his head full of lustre, saw his body full of light.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: This sequence begins with the wound motif and traces Siddhartha's recovery from the sickness he felt because of his son. Its primary material concerns the sense of simultaneity and unity within Siddhartha, expressed by the river's utterance of OM. It ends with Siddhartha's succeeding Vasudeva as the ferryman of the river. Still suffering from his wound, Siddhartha hears the sublime laugh of the river. He sees his face reflected in the river and he recognizes his father in it, thereby effecting a unity with his father, who also experienced Siddhartha's "wound." Siddhartha's solitary meditation beside the river is broken by a compelling desire to go to Vasudeva, to confess his wound and its source to Vasudeva, and to disclose his guilt feelings. Vasudeva, the sublime listener whose very presence is transcendent, becomes like the river itself; Siddhartha's baring his soul to him has the effect of bathing his wound in the river. Vasudeva tells Siddhartha that, even though he has heard the ten thousand voices of the river and its laugh, he will hear yet something more from it. Siddhartha then sees many pictures and hears a voice of sorrow in the river. As he watches and listens, the text moves into a beautiful lyric passage embodying the liquid, eternal feel of the river itself. Siddhartha now feels that he has completely mastered the art of listening as he listens further and hears the voices of the river coalesce into perfection: OM. Following this experience, he sees Vasudeva's smile and realizes that his wound has healed.


prompt:
Chapter: GOVINDA

Together with other monks, Govinda used to spend the time of rest
between pilgrimages in the pleasure-grove, which the courtesan Kamala
had given to the followers of Gotama for a gift.  He heard talk of an
old ferryman, who lived one day's journey away by the river, and
who was regarded as a wise man by many.  When Govinda went back on his
way, he chose the path to the ferry, eager to see the ferryman.
Because, though he had lived his entire life by the rules, though he was
also looked upon with veneration by the younger monks on account of his
age and his modesty, the restlessness and the searching still had not
perished from his heart.

He came to the river and asked the old man to ferry him over, and when
they got off the boat on the other side, he said to the old man:
"You're very good to us monks and pilgrims, you have already ferried
many of us across the river.  Aren't you too, ferryman, a searcher for
the right path?"

Quoth Siddhartha, smiling from his old eyes:  "Do you call yourself a
searcher, oh venerable one, though you are already of an old in years
and are wearing the robe of Gotama's monks?"

"It's true, I'm old," spoke Govinda, "but I haven't stopped searching.
Never I'll stop searching, this seems to be my destiny.  You too, so it
seems to me, have been searching.  Would you like to tell me something,
oh honourable one?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "What should I possibly have to tell you, oh
venerable one?  Perhaps that you're searching far too much?  That in all
that searching, you don't find the time for finding?"

"How come?" asked Govinda.

"When someone is searching," said Siddhartha, "then it might easily
happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches
for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind,
because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search,
because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal.  Searching
means: having a goal.  But finding means: being free, being open, having
no goal.  You, oh venerable one, are perhaps indeed a searcher, because,
striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are
directly in front of your eyes."

"I don't quite understand yet," asked Govinda, "what do you mean by
this?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "A long time ago, oh venerable one, many years ago,
you've once before been at this river and have found a sleeping man by
the river, and have sat down with him to guard his sleep.  But, oh
Govinda, you did not recognise the sleeping man."

Astonished, as if he had been the object of a magic spell, the monk
looked into the ferryman's eyes.

"Are you Siddhartha?" he asked with a timid voice.  "I wouldn't have
recognised you this time as well!  From my heart, I'm greeting you,
Siddhartha; from my heart, I'm happy to see you once again!  You've
changed a lot, my friend.--And so you've now become a ferryman?"

In a friendly manner, Siddhartha laughed.  "A ferryman, yes.  Many
people, Govinda, have to change a lot, have to wear many a robe, I am
one of those, my dear.  Be welcome, Govinda, and spend the night in my
hut."

Govinda stayed the night in the hut and slept on the bed which used to
be Vasudeva's bed.  Many questions he posed to the friend of his youth,
many things Siddhartha had to tell him from his life.

When in the next morning the time had come to start the day's journey,
Govinda said, not without hesitation, these words:  "Before I'll
continue on my path, Siddhartha, permit me to ask one more question.
Do you have a teaching?  Do you have a faith, or a knowledge, you
follow, which helps you to live and to do right?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "You know, my dear, that I already as a young man, in
those days when we lived with the penitents in the forest, started to
distrust teachers and teachings and to turn my back to them.  I have
stuck with this.  Nevertheless, I have had many teachers since then.  A
beautiful courtesan has been my teacher for a long time, and a rich
merchant was my teacher, and some gamblers with dice.  Once, even a
follower of Buddha, travelling on foot, has been my teacher; he sat with
me when I had fallen asleep in the forest, on the pilgrimage.  I've also
learned from him, I'm also grateful to him, 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 person, Vasudeva, he was no
thinker, but he knew what is necessary just as well as Gotama, he was a
perfect man, a saint."

Govinda said:  "Still, oh Siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as
it seems to me.  I believe in you and know that you haven't followed a
teacher.  But haven't you found something by yourself, though you've
found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights,
which are your own and which help you to live?  If you would like to
tell me some of these, you would delight my heart."

Quoth Siddhartha:  "I've had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and
again.  Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt
knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one's heart.  There have
been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you.
Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found:
wisdom cannot be passed on.  Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on
to someone always sounds like foolishness."

"Are you kidding?" asked Govinda.

"I'm not kidding.  I'm telling you what I've found.  Knowledge can be
conveyed, but not wisdom.  It can be found, it can be lived, it is
possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it
cannot be expressed in words and taught.  This was what I, even as a
young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the
teachers.  I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as
a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought.  It says:  The
opposite of every truth is just as true!  That's like this: any truth
can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided.
Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with
words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness,
roundness, oneness.  When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of
the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception
and truth, into suffering and salvation.  It cannot be done differently,
there is no other way for him who wants to teach.  But the world itself,
what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided.  A person or
an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never
entirely holy or entirely sinful.  It does really seem like this,
because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real.
Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often
again.  And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between
the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between
evil and good, is also a deception."

"How come?" asked Govinda timidly.

"Listen well, my dear, listen well!  The sinner, which I am and which
you are, is a sinner, but in times to come he will be Brahma again, he
will reach the Nirvana, will be Buddha--and now see: these 'times to
come' are a deception, are only a parable!  The sinner is not on his
way to become a Buddha, he is not in the process of developing, though
our capacity for thinking does not know how else to picture these
things.  No, within the sinner is now and today already the future
Buddha, his future is already all there, you have to worship in him, in
you, in everyone the Buddha which is coming into being, the possible,
the hidden Buddha.  The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect, or
on a slow path towards perfection: no, it is perfect in every moment,
all sin already carries the divine forgiveness in itself, all small
children already have the old person in themselves, all infants already
have death, all dying people the eternal life.  It is not possible for
any person to see how far another one has already progressed on his
path; in the robber and dice-gambler, the Buddha is waiting; in the
Brahman, the robber is waiting.  In deep meditation, there is the
possibility to put time out of existence, to see all life which was,
is, and will be as if it was simultaneous, and there everything is
good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman.  Therefore, I see
whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness,
wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only
requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be
good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever
harm me.  I have experienced on my body and on my soul that I needed sin
very much, I needed lust, the desire for possessions, vanity, and needed
the most shameful despair, in order to learn how to give up all
resistance, in order to learn how to love the world, in order to stop
comparing it to some world I wished, I imagined, some kind of perfection
I had made up, but to leave it as it is and to love it and to enjoy
being a part of it.--These, oh Govinda, are some of the thoughts which
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 will, after a
certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a
plant or animal or human being.  In the past, I would have said:  This
stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the
Maja; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a
spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it
importance.  Thus, I would perhaps have thought in the past.  But today
I think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is
also Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because it could turn into
this or that, but rather because it is already and always everything--
and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it appears to me now
and today as a stone, this is why I love it and see worth and purpose in
each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the
hardness, in the sound it makes when I knock at it, in the dryness or
wetness of its surface.  There are stones which feel like oil or soap,
and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is special and
prays the Om in its own way, each one is Brahman, but simultaneously and
just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and this is this very fact
which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship.--But let me
speak no more of this.  The words are not good for the secret meaning,
everything always becomes a bit different, as soon as it is put into
words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly--yes, and this is also very
good, and I like it a lot, I also very much agree with this, that this
what is one man's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to
another person."

Govinda listened silently.

"Why have you told me this about the stone?" he asked hesitantly after
a pause.

"I did it without any specific intention.  Or perhaps what I meant was,
that love this very stone, and the river, and all these things we are
looking at and from which we can learn.  I can love a stone, Govinda,
and also a tree or a piece of bark.  This are things, and things can be
loved.  But I cannot love words.  Therefore, teachings are no good for
me, they have no hardness, no softness, no colours, no edges, no smell,
no taste, they have nothing but words.  Perhaps it are these which keep
you from finding peace, perhaps it are the many words.  Because
salvation and virtue as well, Sansara and Nirvana as well, are mere
words, Govinda.  There is no thing which would be Nirvana; there is just
the word Nirvana."

Quoth Govinda:  "Not just a word, my friend, is Nirvana.  It is a
thought."

Siddhartha continued:  "A thought, it might be so.  I must confess to
you, my dear: I don't differentiate much between thoughts and words.
To be honest, I also have no high opinion of thoughts.  I have a better
opinion of things.  Here on this ferry-boat, for instance, a man has
been my predecessor and teacher, a holy man, who has for many years
simply believed in the river, nothing else.  He had noticed that the
river's spoke to him, he learned from it, it educated and taught him,
the river seemed to be a god to him, for many years he did not know that
every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle was just as divine and
knows just as much and can teach just as much as the worshipped river.
But when this holy man went into the forests, he knew everything, knew
more than you and me, without teachers, without books, only because he
had believed in the river."

Govinda said:  "But is that what you call `things', actually something
real, something which has existence?  Isn't it just a deception of the
Maja, just an image and illusion?  Your stone, your tree, your river--
are they actually a reality?"

"This too," spoke Siddhartha, "I do not care very much about.  Let the
things be illusions or not, after all I would then also be an illusion,
and thus they are always like me.  This is what makes them so dear and
worthy of veneration for me: they are like me.  Therefore, I can love
them.  And this is now a teaching you will laugh about: love, oh
Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all.  To
thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be
the thing great thinkers do.  But I'm only interested in being able to
love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to
look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great
respect."

"This I understand," spoke Govinda.  "But this very thing was discovered
by the exalted one to be a deception.  He commands benevolence,
clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our
heart in love to earthly things."

"I know it," said Siddhartha; his smile shone golden.  "I know it,
Govinda.  And behold, with this we are right in the middle of the
thicket of opinions, in the dispute about words.  For I cannot deny, my
words of love are in a contradiction, a seeming contradiction with
Gotama's words.  For this very reason, I distrust in words so much, for
I know, this contradiction is a deception.  I know that I am in
agreement with Gotama.  How should he not know love, he, who has
discovered all elements of human existence in their transitoriness, in
their meaninglessness, and yet loved people thus much, to use a long,
laborious life only to help them, to teach them!  Even with him, even
with your great teacher, I prefer the thing over the words, place more
importance on his acts and life than on his speeches, more on the
gestures of his hand than his opinions.  Not in his speech, not in his
thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life."

For a long time, the two old men said nothing.  Then spoke Govinda,
while bowing for a farewell:  "I thank you, Siddhartha, for telling me
some of your thoughts.  They are partially strange thoughts, not all
have been instantly understandable to me.  This being as it may, I thank
you, and I wish you to have calm days."

(But secretly he thought to himself:  This Siddhartha is a bizarre
person, he expresses bizarre thoughts, his teachings sound foolish.
So differently sound the exalted one's pure teachings, clearer, purer,
more comprehensible, nothing strange, foolish, or silly is contained in
them.  But different from his thoughts seemed to me Siddhartha's hands
and feet, his eyes, his forehead, his breath, his smile, his greeting,
his walk.  Never again, after our exalted Gotama has become one with the
Nirvana, never since then have I met a person of whom I felt: this is a
holy man!  Only him, this Siddhartha, I have found to be like this.  May
his teachings be strange, may his words sound foolish; out of his gaze
and his hand, his skin and his hair, out of every part of him shines a
purity, shines a calmness, shines a cheerfulness and mildness and
holiness, which I have seen in no other person since the final death of
our exalted teacher.)

As Govinda thought like this, and there was a conflict in his heart, he
once again bowed to Siddhartha, drawn by love.  Deeply he bowed to him
who was calmly sitting.

"Siddhartha," he spoke, "we have become old men.  It is unlikely for
one of us to see the other again in this incarnation.  I see, beloved,
that you have found peace.  I confess that I haven't found it.  Tell me,
oh honourable one, one more word, give me something on my way which I
can grasp, which I can understand!  Give me something to be with me on
my path.  It is often hard, my path, often dark, Siddhartha."

Siddhartha said nothing and looked at him with the ever unchanged,
quiet smile.  Govinda stared at his face, with fear, with yearning,
suffering, and the eternal search was visible in his look, eternal
not-finding.

Siddhartha saw it and smiled.

"Bend down to me!" he whispered quietly in Govinda's ear.  "Bend down to
me!  Like this, even closer!  Very close!  Kiss my forehead, Govinda!"

But while Govinda with astonishment, and yet drawn by great love and
expectation, obeyed his words, bent down closely to him and touched his
forehead with his lips, something miraculous happened to him.  While his
thoughts were still dwelling on Siddhartha's wondrous words, while he
was still struggling in vain and with reluctance to think away time, to
imagine Nirvana and Sansara as one, while even a certain contempt for
the words of his friend was fighting in him against an immense love and
veneration, this happened to him:

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw
other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of
hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all
seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and
renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha.  He saw the
face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the
face of a dying fish, with fading eyes--he saw the face of a new-born
child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying--he saw the face
of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another
person--he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling
and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his
sword--he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps
of frenzied love--he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void--
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 of these
figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one
helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth
to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of
transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed,
was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time
having passed between the one and the other face--and all of these
figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along
and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by
something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like
a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of
water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling
face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips.
And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of
oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above
the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely
the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate,
impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold
smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great
respect a hundred times.  Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones
are smiling.

Not knowing any more whether time existed, whether the vision had lasted
a second or a hundred years, not knowing any more whether there existed
a Siddhartha, a Gotama, a me and a you, feeling in his innermost self
as if he had been wounded by a divine arrow, the injury of which tasted
sweet, being enchanted and dissolved in his innermost self, Govinda
still stood for a little while bent over Siddhartha's quiet face, which
he had just kissed, which had just been the scene of all manifestations,
all transformations, all existence.  The face was unchanged, after under
its surface the depth of the thousandfoldness had closed up again, he
smiled silently, smiled quietly and softly, perhaps very benevolently,
perhaps very mockingly, precisely as he used to smile, the exalted one.

Deeply, Govinda bowed; tears he knew nothing of, ran down his old face;
like a fire burnt the feeling of the most intimate love, the humblest
veneration in his heart.  Deeply, he bowed, touching the ground, before
him who was sitting motionlessly, whose smile reminded him of everything
he had ever loved in his life, what had ever been valuable and holy to
him in his life.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: As this sequence begins, Govinda has arrived to cross the river, meeting Siddhartha, who is now an old man. Siddhartha's eyes smile as did Vasudeva's many years earlier. A superlative dialogue between them follows in which Siddhartha declares that in order to find one's goal, one must be free. The goal, Nirvana, is so elusive as to defy formulation, and too much seeking on the conscious level can make fulfillment impossible. Govinda knows that Siddhartha has found his own way and realizes that he did it without the formal system of Buddhist doctrine. As the Buddha tried long ago, Siddhartha now tries to express how he found his way, but verbalization cannot create or invoke the intuitive, transcendent experience for Govinda. As Siddhartha invites Govinda to stay with him in his hut for the night, we come to another close-up time sequence. On the following morning, after Govinda asks Siddhartha about any doctrine which he might have, Siddhartha tries to explain how he attained inner peace from Vasudeva and the river rather than from teachers. He then draws the distinction between knowledge and wisdom, remarking that wisdom cannot be imparted from one man to another. Knowledge may be acquired from teachers, but wisdom must come from direct experience. Siddhartha then offers his thoughts on truth, suggesting that if an attempt is made at putting truth into words, something is always inherently missing. Verbalization eliminates that other side of a truth which defies verbalization. All that is thought and expressed verbally is, in fact, only a half-truth. Also, in every truth which is complete, not only does the truth which appears exist, but its antithesis also inherently exists. This section reveals that not only Samana life left its mark on Siddhartha, but that his brief contact with the Buddha left its mark also. Buddhist doctrine is predicated on the antithetical elements of Nirvana and sansara; all truth possesses these two opposites -- the truth side and the illusion side, all things being imbued with salvation and suffering. The speech concludes in a final excursus on time: If time is not real, then the line between this world and eternity is also not real. Siddhartha uses the example of a stone and suggests that because it is but one part of the whole cycle of life and thereby has transmigratory potential, it is consequently not just a stone but at once God and Buddha. We come back to the idea that all things return -- that the stone has been all else and we again become all else. Words, however, are not endowed with transmigratory potential. Thoughts, which are also mere verbalizations, are not so endowed either. After once again extolling Vasudeva, Siddhartha concludes his discourse by declaring that love is the most important thing in the world. We can sense that he feels that Gotama Buddha also embraced love -- despite his verbalizations to the contrary, and Siddhartha projects this contradiction as just cause for being distrustful of words. He extols Gotama, but Govinda admits that he still has not found peace. Govinda has a sudden, transcendent, verbally inexpressible experience in the awesome presence of Siddhartha, much like that which Siddhartha had in the presence of Vasudeva years earlier. When Siddhartha summons Govinda to kiss him on the forehead, Govinda feels as if he is touching eternity, a kind of mystical transference from Siddhartha, and he sees in Siddhartha's beatific smile a continuous stream of thousands of faces much like those Siddhartha saw many years earlier in the river. Like Siddhartha, Govinda attains Nirvana, reaching the depths of the ancestral soul of man, the Jungian collective unconscious.


prompt:
Chapter: FIRST PART To Romain Rolland, my dear friend THE SON OF THE BRAHMAN

In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the
boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree
is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young
falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman.  The sun
tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing,
performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings.  In the mango
grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when
his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father,
the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked.  For a long time,
Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men,
practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of
reflection, the service of meditation.  He already knew how to speak the
Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while
inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all
the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of
the clear-thinking spirit.  He already knew to feel Atman in the depths
of his being, indestructible, one with the universe.

Joy leapt in his father's heart for his son who was quick to learn,
thirsty for knowledge; he saw him growing up to become great wise man
and priest, a prince among the Brahmans.

Bliss leapt in his mother's breast when she saw him, when she saw him
walking, when she saw him sit down and get up, Siddhartha, strong,
handsome, he who was walking on slender legs, greeting her with perfect
respect.

Love touched the hearts of the Brahmans' young daughters when
Siddhartha walked through the lanes of the town with the luminous
forehead, with the eye of a king, with his slim hips.

But more than all the others he was loved by Govinda, his friend, the
son of a Brahman.  He loved Siddhartha's eye and sweet voice, he loved
his walk and the perfect decency of his movements, he loved everything
Siddhartha did and said and what he loved most was his spirit, his
transcendent, fiery thoughts, his ardent will, his high calling.
Govinda knew: he would not become a common Brahman, not a lazy official
in charge of offerings; not a greedy merchant with magic spells; not a
vain, vacuous speaker; not a mean, deceitful priest; and also not a
decent, stupid sheep in the herd of the many.  No, and he, Govinda, as
well did not want to become one of those, not one of those tens of
thousands of Brahmans.  He wanted to follow Siddhartha, the beloved,
the splendid.  And in days to come, when Siddhartha would become a god,
when he would join the glorious, then Govinda wanted to follow him as
his friend, his companion, his servant, his spear-carrier, his shadow.

Siddhartha was thus loved by everyone.  He was a source of joy for
everybody, he was a delight for them all.

But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no
delight in himself.  Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden,
sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his
limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of
the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and
joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart.  Dreams and restless thoughts
came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from
the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came
to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices,
breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him,
drop by drop, from the teachings of the old Brahmans.

Siddhartha had started to nurse discontent in himself, he had started
to feel that the love of his father and the love of his mother, and also
the love of his friend, Govinda, would not bring him joy for ever and
ever, would not nurse him, feed him, satisfy him.  He had started to
suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, that the wise
Brahmans had already revealed to him the most and best of their wisdom,
that they had already filled his expecting vessel with their richness,
and the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was
not calm, the heart was not satisfied.  The ablutions were good, but
they were water, they did not wash off the sin, they did not heal the
spirit's thirst, they did not relieve the fear in his heart.  The
sacrifices and the invocation of the gods were excellent--but was that
all?  Did the sacrifices give a happy fortune?  And what about the gods?
Was it really Prajapati who had created the world?  Was it not the
Atman, He, the only one, the singular one?  Were the gods not creations,
created like me and you, subject to time, mortal?  Was it therefore
good, was it right, was it meaningful and the highest occupation to make
offerings to the gods?  For whom else were offerings to be made, who
else was to be worshipped but Him, the only one, the Atman?  And where
was Atman to be found, where did He reside, where did his eternal heart
beat, where else but in one's own self, in its innermost part, in its
indestructible part, which everyone had in himself?  But where, where
was this self, this innermost part, this ultimate part?  It was not
flesh and bone, it was neither thought nor consciousness, thus the
wisest ones taught.  So, where, where was it?  To reach this place, the
self, myself, the Atman, there was another way, which was worthwhile
looking for?  Alas, and nobody showed this way, nobody knew it, not the
father, and not the teachers and wise men, not the holy sacrificial
songs!  They knew everything, the Brahmans and their holy books, they
knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than
everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of
inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the
gods, they knew infinitely much--but was it valuable to know all of
this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the
solely important thing?

Surely, many verses of the holy books, particularly in the Upanishades
of Samaveda, spoke of this innermost and ultimate thing, wonderful
verses.  "Your soul is the whole world", was written there, and it was
written that man in his sleep, in his deep sleep, would meet with his
innermost part and would reside in the Atman.  Marvellous wisdom was in
these verses, all knowledge of the wisest ones had been collected here
in magic words, pure as honey collected by bees.  No, not to be looked
down upon was the tremendous amount of enlightenment which lay here
collected and preserved by innumerable generations of wise Brahmans.--
But where were the Brahmans, where the priests, where the wise men or
penitents, who had succeeded in not just knowing this deepest of all
knowledge but also to live it?  Where was the knowledgeable one who wove
his spell to bring his familiarity with the Atman out of the sleep into
the state of being awake, into the life, into every step of the way,
into word and deed?  Siddhartha knew many venerable Brahmans, chiefly
his father, the pure one, the scholar, the most venerable one.  His
father was to be admired, quiet and noble were his manners, pure his
life, wise his words, delicate and noble thoughts lived behind its brow
--but even he, who knew so much, did he live in blissfulness, did he
have peace, was he not also just a searching man, a thirsty man?  Did he
not, again and again, have to drink from holy sources, as a thirsty man,
from the offerings, from the books, from the disputes of the Brahmans?
Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day,
strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day?  Was not
Atman in him, did not the pristine source spring from his heart?  It had
to be found, the pristine source in one's own self, it had to be
possessed!  Everything else was searching, was a detour, was getting
lost.

Thus were Siddhartha's thoughts, this was his thirst, this was his
suffering.

Often he spoke to himself from a Chandogya-Upanishad the words:
"Truly, the name of the Brahman is satyam--verily, he who knows such a
thing, will enter the heavenly world every day."  Often, it seemed near,
the heavenly world, but never he had reached it completely, never he had
quenched the ultimate thirst.  And among all the wise and wisest men, he
knew and whose instructions he had received, among all of them there was
no one, who had reached it completely, the heavenly world, who had
quenched it completely, the eternal thirst.

"Govinda," Siddhartha spoke to his friend, "Govinda, my dear, come with
me under the Banyan tree, let's practise meditation."

They went to the Banyan tree, they sat down, Siddhartha right here,
Govinda twenty paces away.  While putting himself down, ready to speak
the Om, Siddhartha repeated murmuring the verse:

Om is the bow, the arrow is soul,
The Brahman is the arrow's target,
That one should incessantly hit.

After the usual time of the exercise in meditation had passed, Govinda
rose.  The evening had come, it was time to perform the evening's ablution.
He called Siddhartha's name.  Siddhartha did not answer.  Siddhartha sat
there lost in thought, his eyes were rigidly focused towards a very
distant target, the tip of his tongue was protruding a little between
the teeth, he seemed not to breathe.  Thus sat he, wrapped up in
contemplation, thinking Om, his soul sent after the Brahman as an arrow.

Once, Samanas had travelled through Siddhartha's town, ascetics on a
pilgrimage, three skinny, withered men, neither old nor young, with
dusty and bloody shoulders, almost naked, scorched by the sun,
surrounded by loneliness, strangers and enemies to the world, strangers
and lank jackals in the realm of humans.  Behind them blew a hot scent
of quiet passion, of destructive service, of merciless self-denial.

In the evening, after the hour of contemplation, Siddhartha spoke to
Govinda:  "Early tomorrow morning, my friend, Siddhartha will go to the
Samanas.  He will become a Samana."

Govinda turned pale, when he heard these words and read the decision in
the motionless face of his friend, unstoppable like the arrow shot from
the bow.  Soon and with the first glance, Govinda realized:  Now it is
beginning, now Siddhartha is taking his own way, now his fate is
beginning to sprout, and with his, my own.  And he turned pale like a
dry banana-skin.

"O Siddhartha," he exclaimed, "will your father permit you to do that?"

Siddhartha looked over as if he was just waking up.  Arrow-fast he read
in Govinda's soul, read the fear, read the submission.

"O Govinda," he spoke quietly, "let's not waste words.  Tomorrow, at
daybreak I will begin the life of the Samanas.  Speak no more of it."

Siddhartha entered the chamber, where his father was sitting on a mat of
bast, and stepped behind his father and remained standing there, until
his father felt that someone was standing behind him.  Quoth the
Brahman:  "Is that you, Siddhartha?  Then say what you came to say."

Quoth Siddhartha: "With your permission, my father.  I came to tell you
that it is my longing to leave your house tomorrow and go to the
ascetics.  My desire is to become a Samana.  May my father not oppose
this."

The Brahman fell silent, and remained silent for so long that the stars
in the small window wandered and changed their relative positions, 'ere
the silence was broken.  Silent and motionless stood the son with his
arms folded, silent and motionless sat the father on the mat, and the
stars traced their paths in the sky.  Then spoke the father:  "Not
proper it is for a Brahman to speak harsh and angry words.  But
indignation is in my heart.  I wish not to hear this request for a
second time from your mouth."

Slowly, the Brahman rose; Siddhartha stood silently, his arms folded.

"What are you waiting for?" asked the father.

Quoth Siddhartha:  "You know what."

Indignant, the father left the chamber; indignant, he went to his bed
and lay down.

After an hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman stood
up, paced to and fro, and left the house.  Through the small window of
the chamber he looked back inside, and there he saw Siddhartha standing,
his arms folded, not moving from his spot.  Pale shimmered his bright
robe.  With anxiety in his heart, the father returned to his bed.

After another hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman
stood up again, paced to and fro, walked out of the house and saw that
the moon had risen.  Through the window of the chamber he looked back
inside; there stood Siddhartha, not moving from his spot, his arms
folded, moonlight reflecting from his bare shins.  With worry in his
heart, the father went back to bed.

And he came back after an hour, he came back after two hours, looked
through the small window, saw Siddhartha standing, in the moon light,
by the light of the stars, in the darkness.  And he came back hour after
hour, silently, he looked into the chamber, saw him standing in the same
place, filled his heart with anger, filled his heart with unrest, filled
his heart with anguish, filled it with sadness.

And in the night's last hour, before the day began, he returned, stepped
into the room, saw the young man standing there, who seemed tall and
like a stranger to him.

"Siddhartha," he spoke, "what are you waiting for?"

"You know what."

"Will you always stand that way and wait, until it'll becomes morning,
noon, and evening?"

"I will stand and wait.

"You will become tired, Siddhartha."

"I will become tired."

"You will fall asleep, Siddhartha."

"I will not fall asleep."

"You will die, Siddhartha."

"I will die."

"And would you rather die, than obey your father?"

"Siddhartha has always obeyed his father."

"So will you abandon your plan?"

"Siddhartha will do what his father will tell him to do."

The first light of day shone into the room.  The Brahman saw that
Siddhartha was trembling softly in his knees.  In Siddhartha's face he
saw no trembling, his eyes were fixed on a distant spot.  Then his
father realized that even now Siddhartha no longer dwelt with him in his
home, that he had already left him.

The Father touched Siddhartha's shoulder.

"You will," he spoke, "go into the forest and be a Samana.  When
you'll have found blissfulness in the forest, then come back and teach
me to be blissful.  If you'll find disappointment, then return and let
us once again make offerings to the gods together.  Go now and kiss your
mother, tell her where you are going to.  But for me it is time to go to
the river and to perform the first ablution."

He took his hand from the shoulder of his son and went outside.
Siddhartha wavered to the side, as he tried to walk.  He put his limbs
back under control, bowed to his father, and went to his mother to do as
his father had said.

As he slowly left on stiff legs in the first light of day the still
quiet town, a shadow rose near the last hut, who had crouched there,
and joined the pilgrim--Govinda.

"You have come," said Siddhartha and smiled.

"I have come," said Govinda.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Siddhartha grows up in a serene natural atmosphere of dense woods on a pleasant riverbank. He is a handsome boy who has been taught spiritual matters by his father. He converses with religious men and practices the art of contemplation and meditation, engaging in debates with his friend Govinda, who loves everything about Siddhartha, including his actions, thoughts, and physical being. Govinda knows that his friend will not become an ordinary Brahmin indulging merely in sacrificial rites or conceited oratory. Govinda also hopes that he himself does not become like an ordinary Brahmin, just one among ten thousand others of their kind. Siddhartha is basically not happy. Although he carries on with the usual rituals, such as bathing and offering sacrifices, restlessness overpowers him. He wants to find a source of peace within himself. As usual, Siddhartha and Govinda go to the banyan tree where they practice meditation. When the customary time for meditation is over, Govinda calls out to his friend. Siddhartha does not reply, for he is absorbed in deep meditation or "Om." His soul is aimed at Brahman. One day the Samanas pass by Siddhartha's village. Indigent and nearly naked, they practice severe self-denial. Siddhartha tells Govinda that he will join the Samanas the next day. Govinda's face turns pale because Siddhartha has decided to go his own way and make his own destiny. Siddhartha then goes to his father to seek his permission. His father initially expresses displeasure. Finally, he gives him permission to join the Samanas. Siddhartha bids his mother good- bye. As Siddhartha leaves at daybreak, Govinda too joins him.


prompt:
Chapter: WITH THE SAMANAS

In the evening of this day they caught up with the ascetics, the skinny
Samanas, and offered them their companionship and--obedience.  They
were accepted.

Siddhartha gave his garments to a poor Brahman in the street.  He wore
nothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak.
He ate only once a day, and never something cooked.  He fasted for
fifteen days.  He fasted for twenty-eight days.  The flesh waned from
his thighs and cheeks.  Feverish dreams flickered from his enlarged
eyes, long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggy
beard grew on his chin.  His glance turned to ice when he encountered
women; his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a city
of nicely dressed people.  He saw merchants trading, princes hunting,
mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians
trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for
seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children--and all of this
was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank,
it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and
beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction.  The world tasted
bitter.  Life was torture.

A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of
thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow.
Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an
emptied heard, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was
his goal.  Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every
desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part
of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my
self, the great secret.

Silently, Siddhartha exposed himself to burning rays of the sun directly
above, glowing with pain, glowing with thirst, and stood there, until he
neither felt any pain nor thirst any more.  Silently, he stood there in
the rainy season, from his hair the water was dripping over freezing
shoulders, over freezing hips and legs, and the penitent stood there,
until he could not feel the cold in his shoulders and legs any more,
until they were silent, until they were quiet.  Silently, he cowered in
the thorny bushes, blood dripped from the burning skin, from festering
wounds dripped pus, and Siddhartha stayed rigidly, stayed motionless,
until no blood flowed any more, until nothing stung any more, until
nothing burned any more.

Siddhartha sat upright and learned to breathe sparingly, learned to
get along with only few breathes, learned to stop breathing.  He
learned, beginning with the breath, to calm the beat of his heart,
leaned to reduce the beats of his heart, until they were only a few and
almost none.

Instructed by the oldest of the Samanas, Siddhartha practised
self-denial, practised meditation, according to a new Samana rules.
A heron flew over the bamboo forest--and Siddhartha accepted the heron
into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, was a heron, ate fish,
felt the pangs of a heron's hunger, spoke the heron's croak, died a
heron's death.  A dead jackal was lying on the sandy bank, and
Siddhartha's soul slipped inside the body, was the dead jackal, lay on
the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyaenas, was
skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown
across the fields.  And Siddhartha's soul returned, had died, had
decayed, was scattered as dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of
the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he
could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an
eternity without suffering began.  He killed his senses, he killed his
memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an
animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every
time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again,
turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new
thirst.

Siddhartha learned a lot when he was with the Samanas, many ways leading
away from the self he learned to go.  He went the way of self-denial
by means of pain, through voluntarily suffering and overcoming pain,
hunger, thirst, tiredness.  He went the way of self-denial by means of
meditation, through imagining the mind to be void of all conceptions.
These and other ways he learned to go, a thousand times he left his
self, for hours and days he remained in the non-self.  But though the
ways led away from the self, their end nevertheless always led back to
the self.  Though Siddhartha fled from the self a thousand times, stayed
in nothingness, stayed in the animal, in the stone, the return was
inevitable, inescapable was the hour, when he found himself back in the
sunshine or in the moonlight, in the shade or in the rain, and was once
again his self and Siddhartha, and again felt the agony of the cycle which
had been forced upon him.

By his side lived Govinda, his shadow, walked the same paths, undertook
the same efforts.  They rarely spoke to one another, than the service
and the exercises required.  Occasionally the two of them went through
the villages, to beg for food for themselves and their teachers.

"How do you think, Govinda," Siddhartha spoke one day while begging
this way, "how do you think did we progress?  Did we reach any goals?"

Govinda answered:  "We have learned, and we'll continue learning.
You'll be a great Samana, Siddhartha.  Quickly, you've learned every
exercise, often the old Samanas have admired you.  One day, you'll be
a holy man, oh Siddhartha."

Quoth Siddhartha:  "I can't help but feel that it is not like this, my
friend.  What I've learned, being among the Samanas, up to this day,
this, oh Govinda, I could have learned more quickly and by simpler
means.  In every tavern of that part of a town where the whorehouses
are, my friend, among carters and gamblers I could have learned it."

Quoth Govinda:  "Siddhartha is putting me on.  How could you have
learned meditation, holding your breath, insensitivity against hunger
and pain there among these wretched people?"

And Siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself:  "What is
meditation?  What is leaving one's body?  What is fasting?  What is
holding one's breath?  It is fleeing from the self, it is a short
escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the
senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life.  The same escape,
the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the
inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk.  Then
he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life
any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses.  When he falls
asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha
and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises,
staying in the non-self.  This is how it is, oh Govinda."

Quoth Govinda:  "You say so, oh friend, and yet you know that Siddhartha
is no driver of an ox-cart and a Samana is no drunkard.  It's true that
a drinker numbs his senses, it's true that he briefly escapes and rests,
but he'll return from the delusion, finds everything to be unchanged, has
not become wiser, has gathered no enlightenment,--has not risen several
steps."

And Siddhartha spoke with a smile:  "I do not know, I've never been a
drunkard.  But that I, Siddhartha, find only a short numbing of the
senses in my exercises and meditations and that I am just as far removed
from wisdom, from salvation, as a child in the mother's womb, this I
know, oh Govinda, this I know."

And once again, another time, when Siddhartha left the forest together
with Govinda, to beg for some food in the village for their brothers and
teachers, Siddhartha began to speak and said:  "What now, oh Govinda,
might we be on the right path?  Might we get closer to enlightenment?
Might we get closer to salvation?  Or do we perhaps live in a circle--
we, who have thought we were escaping the cycle?"

Quoth Govinda:  "We have learned a lot, Siddhartha, there is still
much to learn.  We are not going around in circles, we are moving up,
the circle is a spiral, we have already ascended many a level."

Siddhartha answered:  "How old, would you think, is our oldest Samana,
our venerable teacher?"

Quoth Govinda:  "Our oldest one might be about sixty years of age."

And Siddhartha:  "He has lived for sixty years and has not reached the
nirvana.  He'll turn seventy and eighty, and you and me, we will grow
just as old and will do our exercises, and will fast, and will meditate.
But we will not reach the nirvana, he won't and we won't.  Oh Govinda,
I believe out of all the Samanas out there, perhaps not a single one,
not a single one, will reach the nirvana.  We find comfort, we find
numbness, we learn feats, to deceive others.  But the most important
thing, the path of paths, we will not find."

"If you only," spoke Govinda, "wouldn't speak such terrible words,
Siddhartha!  How could it be that among so many learned men, among so
many Brahmans, among so many austere and venerable Samanas, among so
many who are searching, so many who are eagerly trying, so many holy
men, no one will find the path of paths?"

But Siddhartha said in a voice which contained just as much sadness as
mockery, with a quiet, a slightly sad, a slightly mocking voice:  "Soon,
Govinda, your friend will leave the path of the Samanas, he has walked
along your side for so long.  I'm suffering of thirst, oh Govinda, and
on this long path of a Samana, my thirst has remained as strong as ever.
I always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.
I have asked the Brahmans, year after year, and I have asked the holy
Vedas, year after year, and I have asked the devote Samanas, year after
year.  Perhaps, oh Govinda, it had been just as well, had been just as
smart and just as profitable, if I had asked the hornbill-bird or the
chimpanzee.  It took me a long time and am not finished learning this
yet, oh Govinda: that there is nothing to be learned!  There is indeed
no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as `learning'.  There
is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is Atman,
this is within me and within you and within every creature.  And so I'm
starting to believe that this knowledge has no worser enemy than the
desire to know it, than learning."

At this, Govinda stopped on the path, rose his hands, and spoke:  "If
you, Siddhartha, only would not bother your friend with this kind of
talk!  Truly, you words stir up fear in my heart.  And just consider:
what would become of the sanctity of prayer, what of the venerability of
the Brahmans' caste, what of the holiness of the Samanas, if it was as
you say, if there was no learning?!  What, oh Siddhartha, what would
then become of all of this what is holy, what is precious, what is
venerable on earth?!"

And Govinda mumbled a verse to himself, a verse from an Upanishad:

He who ponderingly, of a purified spirit, loses himself in the
meditation of Atman, unexpressable by words is his blissfulness of his
heart.

But Siddhartha remained silent.  He thought about the words which
Govinda had said to him and thought the words through to their end.

Yes, he thought, standing there with his head low, what would remain of
all that which seemed to us to be holy?  What remains?  What can stand
the test?  And he shook his head.

At one time, when the two young men had lived among the Samanas for
about three years and had shared their exercises, some news, a rumour, a
myth reached them after being retold many times:  A man had appeared,
Gotama by name, the exalted one, the Buddha, he had overcome the
suffering of the world in himself and had halted the cycle of rebirths.
He was said to wander through the land, teaching, surrounded by
disciples, without possession, without home, without a wife, in the
yellow cloak of an ascetic, but with a cheerful brow, a man of bliss,
and Brahmans and princes would bow down before him and would become his
students.

This myth, this rumour, this legend resounded, its fragrants rose up,
here and there; in the towns, the Brahmans spoke of it and in the
forest, the Samanas; again and again, the name of Gotama, the Buddha
reached the ears of the young men, with good and with bad talk, with
praise and with defamation.

It was as if the plague had broken out in a country and news had been
spreading around that in one or another place there was a man, a wise
man, a knowledgeable one, whose word and breath was enough to heal
everyone who had been infected with the pestilence, and as such news
would go through the land and everyone would talk about it, many would
believe, many would doubt, but many would get on their way as soon as
possible, to seek the wise man, the helper, just like this this myth
ran through the land, that fragrant myth of Gotama, the Buddha, the
wise man of the family of Sakya.  He possessed, so the believers said,
the highest enlightenment, he remembered his previous lives, he had
reached the nirvana and never returned into the cycle, was never again
submerged in the murky river of physical forms.  Many wonderful and
unbelievable things were reported of him, he had performed miracles,
had overcome the devil, had spoken to the gods.  But his enemies and
disbelievers said, this Gotama was a vain seducer, he would spent his
days in luxury, scorned the offerings, was without learning, and knew
neither exercises nor self-castigation.

The myth of Buddha sounded sweet.  The scent of magic flowed from these
reports.  After all, the world was sick, life was hard to bear--and
behold, here a source seemed to spring forth, here a messenger seemed
to call out, comforting, mild, full of noble promises.  Everywhere
where the rumour of Buddha was heard, everywhere in the lands of India,
the young men listened up, felt a longing, felt hope, and among the
Brahmans' sons of the towns and villages every pilgrim and stranger was
welcome, when he brought news of him, the exalted one, the Sakyamuni.

The myth had also reached the Samanas in the forest, and also
Siddhartha, and also Govinda, slowly, drop by drop, every drop laden
with hope, every drop laden with doubt.  They rarely talked about it,
because the oldest one of the Samanas did not like this myth.  He had
heard that this alleged Buddha used to be an ascetic before and had
lived in the forest, but had then turned back to luxury and worldly
pleasures, and he had no high opinion of this Gotama.

"Oh Siddhartha," Govinda spoke one day to his friend.  "Today, I was
in the village, and a Brahman invited me into his house, and in his
house, there was the son of a Brahman from Magadha, who has seen the
Buddha with his own eyes and has heard him teach.  Verily, this made
my chest ache when I breathed, and thought to myself:  If only I would
too, if only we both would too, Siddhartha and me, live to see the
hour when we will hear the teachings from the mouth of this perfected
man!  Speak, friend, wouldn't we want to go there too and listen to the
teachings from the Buddha's mouth?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "Always, oh Govinda, I had thought, Govinda would
stay with the Samanas, always I had believed his goal was to live to be
sixty and seventy years of age and to keep on practising those feats and
exercises, which are becoming a Samana.  But behold, I had not known
Govinda well enough, I knew little of his heart.  So now you, my
faithful friend, want to take a new path and go there, where the Buddha
spreads his teachings."

Quoth Govinda:  "You're mocking me.  Mock me if you like, Siddhartha!
But have you not also developed a desire, an eagerness, to hear these
teachings?  And have you not at one time said to me, you would not walk
the path of the Samanas for much longer?"

At this, Siddhartha laughed in his very own manner, in which his voice
assumed a touch of sadness and a touch of mockery, and said:  "Well,
Govinda, you've spoken well, you've remembered correctly.  If you
only remembered the other thing as well, you've heard from me, which is
that I have grown distrustful and tired against teachings and learning,
and that my faith in words, which are brought to us by teachers, is
small.  But let's do it, my dear, I am willing to listen to these
teachings--though in my heart I believe that we've already tasted the
best fruit of these teachings."

Quoth Govinda:  "Your willingness delights my heart.  But tell me, how
should this be possible?  How should the Gotama's teachings, even before
we have heard them, have already revealed their best fruit to us?"

Quoth Siddhartha:  "Let us eat this fruit and wait for the rest, oh
Govinda!  But this fruit, which we already now received thanks to the
Gotama, consisted in him calling us away from the Samanas!  Whether he
has also other and better things to give us, oh friend, let us await
with calm hearts."

On this very same day, Siddhartha informed the oldest one of the Samanas
of his decision, that he wanted to leave him.  He informed the oldest
one with all the courtesy and modesty becoming to a younger one and a
student.  But the Samana became angry, because the two young men wanted
to leave him, and talked loudly and used crude swearwords.

Govinda was startled and became embarrassed.  But Siddhartha put his
mouth close to Govinda's ear and whispered to him:  "Now, I want to show
the old man that I've learned something from him."

Positioning himself closely in front of the Samana, with a concentrated
soul, he captured the old man's glance with his glances, deprived him of
his power, made him mute, took away his free will, subdued him under his
own will, commanded him, to do silently, whatever he demanded him to do.
The old man became mute, his eyes became motionless, his will was
paralysed, his arms were hanging down; without power, he had fallen
victim to Siddhartha's spell.  But Siddhartha's thoughts brought the
Samana under their control, he had to carry out, what they commanded.
And thus, the old man made several bows, performed gestures of blessing,
spoke stammeringly a godly wish for a good journey.  And the young men
returned the bows with thanks, returned the wish, went on their way with
salutations.

On the way, Govinda said:  "Oh Siddhartha, you have learned more from
the Samanas than I knew.  It is hard, it is very hard to cast a spell
on an old Samana.  Truly, if you had stayed there, you would soon have
learned to walk on water."

"I do not seek to walk on water," said Siddhartha.  "Let old Samanas be
content with such feats!"

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: In the evening, both Siddhartha and Govinda catch up with the Samanas and join them. Instructed by the eldest of the Samanas, they practice tremendous self-denial and meditation. They travel the same path and make the same endeavors, but seldom speak. One day Govinda tells Siddhartha that he will be a great Samana, a holy man. Siddhartha, however, is uncertain; he doubts whether they have really progressed in the search for truth in the company of the Samanas. He questions whether they are gaining knowledge and approaching salvation; sometimes he feels they are just going in circles, rather than escaping the cycle. Siddhartha then discovers that even the eldest Samana has not attained Nirvana. He begins to think he will not stay with the Samanas for long. After the two young men have spent nearly three years in the company of the Samanas, they hear that someone called Gotama has been preaching; he has become known as the Illustrious One and the Buddha. Supposedly, he has brought sorrow to its knees and has reached Nirvana. Siddhartha is surprised that Govinda has decided to go and listen to Buddha's teachings, yet he feels stifled by the life of the Samanas as well. He decides he must join Govinda in his search. Siddhartha informs the eldest Samana of his decision to leave. The Samana is annoyed and scolds him. Finally, however, the Samana Guru gives his blessings for the journey to both of them, but only after Siddhartha has hypnotized him into it. Siddhartha and Govinda thank him and depart.


prompt:
Chapter: GOTAMA

In the town of Savathi, every child knew the name of the exalted Buddha,
and every house was prepared to fill the alms-dish of Gotama's
disciples, the silently begging ones.  Near the town was Gotama's
favourite place to stay, the grove of Jetavana, which the rich merchant
Anathapindika, an obedient worshipper of the exalted one, had given him
and his people for a gift.

All tales and answers, which the two young ascetics had received in
their search for Gotama's abode, had pointed them towards this area.
And arriving at Savathi, in the very first house, before the door of
which they stopped to beg, food has been offered to them, and they
accepted the food, and Siddhartha asked the woman, who handed them the
food:

"We would like to know, oh charitable one, where the Buddha dwells, 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 teachings from his
mouth."

Quoth the woman:  "Here, you have truly come to the right place, you
Samanas from the forest.  You should know, in Jetavana, in the garden
of Anathapindika is where the exalted one dwells.  There you pilgrims
shall spent the night, for there is enough space for the innumerable,
who flock here, to hear the teachings from his mouth."

This made Govinda happy, and full of joy he exclaimed:  "Well so, thus
we have reached our destination, and our path has come to an end!  But
tell us, oh mother of the pilgrims, do you know him, the Buddha, have
you seen him with your own eyes?"

Quoth the woman:  "Many times I have seen him, the exalted one.  On many
days, I have seen him, walking through the alleys in silence, wearing
his yellow cloak, presenting his alms-dish in silence at the doors of
the houses, leaving with a filled dish."

Delightedly, Govinda listened and wanted to ask and hear much more.
But Siddhartha urged him to walk on.  They thanked and left and hardly
had to ask for directions, for rather many pilgrims and monks as well
from Gotama's community were on their way to the Jetavana.  And since
they reached it at night, there were constant arrivals, shouts, and
talk of those who sought shelter and got it.  The two Samanas,
accustomed to life in the forest, found quickly and without making any
noise a place to stay and rested there until the morning.

At sunrise, they saw with astonishment what a large crowd of believers
and curious people had spent the night here.  On all paths of the
marvellous grove, monks walked in yellow robes, under the trees they
sat here and there, in deep contemplation--or in a conversation about
spiritual matters, the shady gardens looked like a city, full of people,
bustling like bees.  The majority of the monks went out with their
alms-dish, to collect food in town for their lunch, the only meal of the
day.  The Buddha himself, the enlightened one, was also in the habit of
taking this walk to beg in the morning.

Siddhartha saw him, and he instantly recognised him, as if a god had
pointed him out to him.  He saw him, a simple man in a yellow robe,
bearing the alms-dish in his hand, walking silently.

"Look here!" Siddhartha said quietly to Govinda.  "This one is the
Buddha."

Attentively, Govinda looked at the monk in the yellow robe, who seemed
to be in no way different from the hundreds of other monks.  And soon,
Govinda also realized:  This is the one.  And they followed him and
observed him.

The Buddha went on his way, modestly and deep in his thoughts, his
calm face was neither happy nor sad, it seemed to smile quietly and
inwardly.  With a hidden smile, quiet, calm, somewhat resembling a
healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore the robe and placed his feet
just as all of his monks did, according to a precise rule.  But his
face and his walk, his quietly lowered glance, his quietly dangling hand
and even every finger of his quietly dangling hand expressed peace,
expressed perfection, did not search, did not imitate, breathed softly
in an unwhithering calm, in an unwhithering light, an untouchable peace.

Thus Gotama walked towards the town, to collect alms, and the two
Samanas recognised him solely by the perfection of his calm, by the
quietness of his appearance, in which there was no searching, no desire,
no imitation, no effort to be seen, only light and peace.

"Today, we'll hear the teachings from his mouth." said Govinda.

Siddhartha did not answer.  He felt little curiosity for the teachings,
he did not believe that they would teach him anything new, but he had,
just as Govinda had, heard the contents of this Buddha's teachings
again and again, though these reports only represented second- or
third-hand information.  But attentively he looked at Gotama's head,
his shoulders, his feet, his quietly dangling hand, and it seemed to
him as if every joint of every finger of this hand was of these
teachings, spoke of, breathed of, exhaled the fragrant of, glistened of
truth.  This man, this Buddha was truthful down to the gesture of his
last finger.  This man was holy.  Never before, Siddhartha had venerated
a person so much, never before he had loved a person as much as this
one.

They both followed the Buddha until they reached the town and then
returned in silence, for they themselves intended to abstain from
on this day.  They saw Gotama returning--what he ate could not even have
satisfied a bird's appetite, and they saw him retiring into the shade
of the mango-trees.

But in the evening, when the heat cooled down and everyone in the camp
started to bustle about and gathered around, they heard the Buddha
teaching.  They heard his voice, and it was also perfected, was of
perfect calmness, was full of peace.  Gotama taught the teachings of
suffering, of the origin of suffering, of the way to relieve suffering.
Calmly and clearly his quiet speech flowed on.  Suffering was life,
full of suffering was the world, but salvation from suffering had been
found:  salvation was obtained by him who would walk the path of the
Buddha.  With a soft, yet firm voice the exalted one spoke, taught the
four main doctrines, taught the eightfold path, patiently he went the
usual path of the teachings, of the examples, of the repetitions,
brightly and quietly his voice hovered over the listeners, like a light,
like a starry sky.

When the Buddha--night had already fallen--ended his speech, many a
pilgrim stepped forward and asked to accepted into the community, sought
refuge in the teachings.  And Gotama accepted them by speaking:  "You
have heard the teachings well, it has come to you well.  Thus join us
and walk in holiness, to put an end to all suffering."

Behold, then Govinda, the shy one, also stepped forward and spoke:  "I
also take my refuge in the exalted one and his teachings," and he asked
to accepted into the community of his disciples and was accepted.

Right afterwards, when the Buddha had retired for the night, Govinda
turned to Siddhartha and spoke eagerly:  "Siddhartha, it is not my place
to scold you.  We have both heard the exalted one, we have both
perceived the teachings.  Govinda has heard the teachings, he has taken
refuge in it.  But you, my honoured friend, don't you also want to walk
the path of salvation?  Would you want to hesitate, do you want to wait
any longer?"

Siddhartha awakened as if he had been asleep, when he heard Govinda's
words.  For a long time, he looked into Govinda's face.  Then he spoke
quietly, in a voice without mockery:  "Govinda, my friend, now you have
taken this step, now you have chosen this path.  Always, oh Govinda,
you've been my friend, you've always walked one step behind me.  Often I
have thought:  Won't Govinda for once also take a step by himself,
without me, out of his own soul?  Behold, now you've turned into a man
and are choosing your path for yourself.  I wish that you would go it up
to its end, oh my friend, that you shall find salvation!"

Govinda, not completely understanding it yet, repeated his question in
an impatient tone:  "Speak up, I beg you, my dear!  Tell me, since it
could not be any other way, that you also, my learned friend, will take
your refuge with the exalted Buddha!"

Siddhartha placed his hand on Govinda's shoulder:  "You failed to hear
my good wish for you, oh Govinda.  I'm repeating it:  I wish that you
would go this path up to its end, that you shall find salvation!"

In this moment, Govinda realized that his friend had left him, and he
started to weep.

"Siddhartha!" he exclaimed lamentingly.

Siddhartha kindly spoke to him:  "Don't forget, Govinda, that you are
now one of the Samanas of the Buddha!  You have renounced your home
and your parents, renounced your birth and possessions, renounced your
free will, renounced all friendship.  This is what the teachings
require, this is what the exalted one wants.  This is what you wanted
for yourself.  Tomorrow, oh Govinda, I'll leave you."

For a long time, the friends continued walking in the grove; for a long
time, they lay there and found no sleep.  And over and over again,
Govinda urged his friend, he should tell him why he would not want to
seek refuge in Gotama's teachings, what fault he would find in these
teachings.  But Siddhartha turned him away every time and said:  "Be
content, Govinda!  Very good are the teachings of the exalted one, how
could I find a fault in them?"

Very early in the morning, a follower of Buddha, one of his oldest
monks, went through the garden and called all those to him who had as
novices taken their refuge in the teachings, to dress them up in the
yellow robe and to instruct them in the first teachings and duties of
their position.  Then Govinda broke loose, embraced once again his
childhood friend and left with the novices.

But Siddhartha walked through the grove, lost in thought.

Then he happened to meet Gotama, the exalted one, and when he greeted
him with respect and the Buddha's glance was so full of kindness and
calm, the young man summoned his courage and asked the venerable one for
the permission to talk to him.  Silently the exalted one nodded his
approval.

Quoth Siddhartha:  "Yesterday, oh exalted one, I had been privileged to
hear your wondrous teachings.  Together with my friend, I had come from
afar, to hear your teachings.  And now my friend is going to stay with
your people, he has taken his refuge with you.  But I will again start
on my pilgrimage."

"As you please," the venerable one spoke politely.

"Too bold is my speech," Siddhartha continued, "but I do not want to
leave the exalted one without having honestly told him my thoughts.
Does it please the venerable one to listen to me for one moment longer?"

Silently, the Buddha nodded his approval.

Quoth Siddhartha:  "One thing, oh most venerable one, I have admired in
your teachings most of all.  Everything in your teachings is perfectly
clear, is proven; you are presenting the world as a perfect chain, a
chain which is never and nowhere broken, an eternal chain the links of
which are causes and effects.  Never before, this has been seen so
clearly; never before, this has been presented so irrefutably; truly,
the heart of every Brahman has to beat stronger with love, once he has
seen the world through your teachings perfectly connected, without gaps,
clear as a crystal, not depending on chance, not depending on gods.
Whether it may be good or bad, whether living according to it would be
suffering or joy, I do not wish to discuss, possibly this is not
essential--but the uniformity of the world, that everything which
happens is connected, that the great and the small things are all
encompassed by the same forces of time, by the same law of causes, of
coming into being and of dying, this is what shines brightly out of your
exalted teachings, oh perfected one.  But according to your very own
teachings, this unity and necessary sequence of all things is
nevertheless broken in one place, through a small gap, this world of
unity is invaded by something alien, something new, something which had
not been there before, and which cannot be demonstrated and cannot be
proven: these are your teachings of overcoming the world, of salvation.
But with this small gap, with this small breach, the entire eternal and
uniform law of the world is breaking apart again and becomes void.
Please forgive me for expressing this objection."

Quietly, Gotama had listened to him, unmoved.  Now he spoke, the
perfected one, with his kind, with his polite and clear voice:  "You've
heard the teachings, oh son of a Brahman, and good for you that you've
thought about it thus deeply.  You've found a gap in it, an error.  You
should think about this further.  But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge,
of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words.  There is nothing
to opinions, they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone
can support them or discard them.  But the teachings, you've heard from
me, are no opinion, and their goal is not to explain the world to those
who seek knowledge.  They have a different goal; their goal is salvation
from suffering.  This is what Gotama teaches, nothing else."

"I wish that you, oh exalted one, would not be angry with me," said the
young man.  "I have not spoken to you like this to argue with you, to
argue about words.  You are truly right, there is little to opinions.
But let me say this one more thing:  I have not doubted in you for a
single moment.  I have not doubted for a single moment that you are
Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal towards which
so many thousands of Brahmans and sons of Brahmans are on their way.
You have found salvation from death.  It has come to you in the course
of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through
meditation, through realizations, through enlightenment.  It has not
come to you by means of teachings!  And--thus is my thought, oh exalted
one,--nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings!  You will not
be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and
through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment!
The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it teaches many to
live righteously, to avoid evil.  But there is one thing which these so
clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain:  they do not contain
the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he
alone among hundreds of thousands.  This is what I have thought and
realized, when I have heard the teachings.  This is why I am continuing
my travels--not to seek other, better teachings, for I know there are
none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and to reach my
goal by myself or to die.  But often, I'll think of this day, oh exalted
one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a holy man."

The Buddha's eyes quietly looked to the ground; quietly, in perfect
equanimity his inscrutable face was smiling.

"I wish," the venerable one spoke slowly, "that your thoughts shall not
be in error, that you shall reach the goal!  But tell me:  Have you seen
the multitude of my Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in
the teachings?  And do you believe, oh stranger, oh Samana, do you
believe that it would be better for them all the abandon the teachings
and to return into the life the world and of desires?"

"Far is such a thought from my mind," exclaimed Siddhartha.  "I wish
that they shall all stay with the teachings, that they shall reach their
goal!  It is not my place to judge another person's life.  Only for
myself, for myself alone, I must decide, I must chose, I must refuse.
Salvation from the self is what we Samanas search for, oh exalted one.
If I merely were one of your disciples, oh venerable one, I'd fear that
it might happen to me that only seemingly, only deceptively my self
would be calm and be redeemed, but that in truth it would live on and
grow, for then I had replaced my self with the teachings, my duty to
follow you, my love for you, and the community of the monks!"

With half of a smile, with an unwavering openness and kindness,
Gotama looked into the stranger's eyes and bid him to leave with a
hardly noticeable gesture.

"You are wise, oh Samana.", the venerable one spoke.

"You know how to talk wisely, my friend.  Be aware of too much wisdom!"

The Buddha turned away, and his glance and half of a smile remained
forever etched in Siddhartha's memory.

I have never before seen a person glance and smile, sit and walk this
way, he thought; truly, I wish to be able to glance and smile, sit and
walk this way, too, thus free, thus venerable, thus concealed, thus
open, thus child-like and mysterious.  Truly, only a person who has
succeeded in reaching the innermost part of his self would glance and
walk this way.  Well so, I also will seek to reach the innermost part
of my self.

I saw a man, Siddhartha thought, a single man, before whom I would have
to lower my glance.  I do not want to lower my glance before any other,
not before any other.  No teachings will entice me any more, since this
man's teachings have not enticed me.

I am deprived by the Buddha, thought Siddhartha, I am deprived, and
even more he has given to me.  He has deprived me of my friend, the one
who had believed in me and now believes in him, who had been my shadow
and is now Gotama's shadow.  But he has given me Siddhartha, myself.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The two young men proceed to Jetavana, where Buddha, the Illustrious One, dwells. They spend the night there and in the morning, when the place is swarming with pilgrims, the men go off to seek their midday meal. Siddhartha recognizes the Buddha sitting with his disciples. He is eating such a meager quantity of food that even a bird would not have been satisfied with it. In the evening, Siddhartha and Govinda hear the Buddha preach. The Illustrious One speaks in a soft, but firm voice. He talks about the origin of suffering and the way to release it. Since suffering can be overcome, there is salvation from a life of pain for those who follow the way of the Buddha. He teaches the four main points in the Eightfold path. At the end of the day, many pilgrims, including Govinda, go forward and request the Buddha to accept them as his disciples; the Buddha blesses them all. Govinda is surprised that Siddhartha has not yet chosen to tread the path of salvation offered by the Illustrious One; but Siddhartha has not been moved. Early the next morning, Govinda embraces Siddhartha and sadly prepares to leave him to put on the yellow robe as instructed by the old monk. Siddhartha wishes his friend well. He then roams through the grove in thought, where he meets Gotama. Siddhartha requests permission to speak, and Gotama nods his assent. Siddhartha tells him that he and his friend have listened to his teachings the previous day. His friend has been moved and is going to stay with the Buddha. Siddhartha then says that he believes that the Buddha has presented a perfect picture of the world; according to him, the world is just a cause and effect cycle. Siddhartha tells the Buddha his own belief about salvation; he feels that nobody finds Nirvana by being taught, for it has to be learned through firsthand experience. Though Buddha's teachings explain how to live righteously and how to avoid evil, they do not express the secret of how the Illustrious One found salvation. Siddhartha says that he is going to find his own goal without the help of any doctrines or teachers, for he believes that it must come from within; he must learn how to conquer self. Siddhartha tells the Buddha that he will always remember the Illustrious One, his teachings, and the day he met him. The Buddha wishes Siddhartha luck in achieving his goal. He also asks him whether he thinks that it would be better for all his disciples to return to the life of worldly desires. Siddhartha says that he cannot judge for others. Even though he refuses to judge Govinda, he admits that he feels he has been robbed of his friend, who has been his shadow; now Govinda is to be the shadow of Gotama.