Chapter: AWAKENING


When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one,
stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this
grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him.  He pondered
about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly
walking along.  He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he
let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place
where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to
him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn
into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to
emit like rays of light what is inside of them.

Slowly walking along, Siddhartha pondered.  He realized that he was no
youth any more, but had turned into a man.  He realized that one thing
had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no
longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth
and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to
teachings.  He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his
path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one,
Buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept
his teachings.

Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself:  "But what
is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers,
and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach
you?"  And he found:  "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which
I sought to learn.  It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which
I sought to overcome.  But I was not able to overcome it, could only
deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it.  Truly, no
thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own
self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being
separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha!  And
there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about
Siddhartha!"

Having been pondering while slowly walking along, he now stopped as
these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought sprang
forth from these, a new thought, which was:  "That I know nothing about
myself, that Siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to me, stems
from one cause, a single cause:  I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing
from myself!  I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to
dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of
all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine part, the
ultimate part.  But I have lost myself in the process."

Siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around, a smile filled his face
and a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his
head down to his toes.  And it was not long before he walked again,
walked quickly like a man who knows what he has got to do.

"Oh," he thought, taking a deep breath, "now I would not let Siddhartha
escape from me again!  No longer, I want to begin my thoughts and my
life with Atman and with the suffering of the world.  I do not want to
kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins.
Neither Yoga-Veda shall teach me any more, nor Atharva-Veda, nor the
ascetics, nor any kind of teachings.  I want to learn from myself, want
to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha."

He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time.
Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious
was the world!  Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky
and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it
was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was
he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself.  All of this,
all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the
first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no
longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental
diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman,
who scorns diversity, who seeks unity.  Blue was blue, river was river,
and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and
divine lived hidden, so it was still that very divinity's way and
purpose, to be here yellow, here blue, there sky, there forest, and here
Siddhartha.  The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere
behind the things, they were in them, in everything.

"How deaf and stupid have I been!" he thought, walking swiftly along.
"When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not
scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence,
and worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them,
letter by letter.  But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and
the book of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had
anticipated before I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called the
visible world a deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental
and worthless forms without substance.  No, this is over, I have
awakened, I have indeed awakened and have not been born before this
very day."

In thinking these thoughts, Siddhartha stopped once again, suddenly, as
if there was a snake lying in front of him on the path.

Because suddenly, he had also become aware of this:  He, who was indeed
like someone who had just woken up or like a new-born baby, he had to
start his life anew and start again at the very beginning.  When he had
left in this very morning from the grove Jetavana, the grove of that
exalted one, already awakening, already on the path towards himself,
he had every intention, regarded as natural and took for granted, that
he, after years as an ascetic, would return to his home and his father.
But now, only in this moment, when he stopped as if a snake was lying on
his path, he also awoke to this realization:  "But I am no longer the
one I was, I am no ascetic any more, I am not a priest any more, I am no
Brahman any more.  Whatever should I do at home and at my father's
place?  Study?  Make offerings?  Practise meditation?  But all this is
over, all of this is no longer alongside my path."

Motionless, Siddhartha remained standing there, and for the time of
one moment and breath, his heart felt cold, he felt a cold in his chest,
as a small animal, a bird or a rabbit, would when seeing how alone he
was.  For many years, he had been without home and had felt nothing.
Now, he felt it.  Still, even in the deepest meditation, he had been
his father's son, had been a Brahman, of a high caste, a cleric.  Now,
he was nothing but Siddhartha, the awoken one, nothing else was left.
Deeply, he inhaled, and for a moment, he felt cold and shivered.
Nobody was thus alone as he was.  There was no nobleman who did not
belong to the noblemen, no worker that did not belong to the workers,
and found refuge with them, shared their life, spoke their language.
No Brahman, who would not be regarded as Brahmans and lived with them,
no ascetic who would not find his refuge in the caste of the Samanas,
and even the most forlorn hermit in the forest was not just one and
alone, he was also surrounded by a place he belonged to, he also
belonged to a caste, in which he was at home.  Govinda had become a
monk, and a thousand monks were his brothers, wore the same robe as he,
believed in his faith, spoke his language.  But he, Siddhartha, where
did he belong to?  With whom would he share his life?  Whose language
would he speak?

Out of this moment, when the world melted away all around him, when he
stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of a cold and
despair, Siddhartha emerged, more a self than before, more firmly
concentrated.  He felt:  This had been the last tremor of the awakening,
the last struggle of this birth.  And it was not long until he walked
again in long strides, started to proceed swiftly and impatiently,
heading no longer for home, no longer to his father, no longer back.

 As he walks away from Govinda, Siddhartha realizes that he is embarking on a new stage of life. He has walked away from all his teachers, even Buddha, because they cannot teach the nature of the self. Siddhartha decides to learn from himself alone. As he walks, Siddhartha sees his surroundings as real and beautiful, rather than an illusion that causes suffering. For the first time, Siddhartha is experiencing the world on its own terms, rather than scorning what it has to teach him. This is his awakening. Siddhartha decides he has to start anew on his quest for enlightenment. Concurrent to this decision is the realization that he is completely alone. He has left his father, he has left the Samanas, and he has left Govinda with the Yellow-Robed Men. He can no longer define himself in relation to other men because he has no community.

