Siddhartha (Modern Library Classics) by Hermann Hesse

Author:Hermann Hesse [Hesse, Hermann]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307423696
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

SANSARA

For a long time Siddhartha had been living the worldly life with its pleasures but was not part of it. His senses, which he had suffocated during parched years of Samana existence, had once more awoken—he had tasted great riches, voluptuousness, power—yet in his heart he had remained a Samana for a long time. Kamala, that clever woman, had been right about this. Always the arts of thinking, waiting, and fasting had guided him in his life, and those who lived a worldly existence—the child people—had remained foreign to him, as he was to them.

The years flew by, and Siddhartha, swaddled in well-being, scarcely felt their passing. He had grown rich, he had long since acquired a house of his own, servants of his own, and a garden beside the river outside of town. People liked him, they came to him when they needed money or counsel, but no one was close to him except Kamala.

That noble, bright awakeness he had experienced once, at the height of his youth, in the days following Gautama’s sermon, after his parting from Govinda—that eager expectancy, that proud standing alone without teachers or doctrines, that supple readiness to hear the divine voice within his own heart—had gradually faded into memory; it had been transitory. Distant and faint was the sound of the holy fountainhead that had once been near, that had once murmured inside him. To be sure, much of what he had learned—from the Samanas, from Gautama, from his father the Brahmin—had remained with him for a long time: moderate living, enjoyment of thought, hours devoted to samadhi, secret knowledge of the Self, that eternal being that is neither body nor consciousness. Much of this had remained with him, but one thing after another had settled to the bottom and been covered with dust. Just as a potter’s wheel, once set in motion, will continue to spin for a long time, only slowly wearying and coming to rest, so had the wheel of asceticism, the wheel of thought, and the wheel of differentiation gone on spinning for a long time in Siddhartha’s soul, and they were spinning still, but this spin was growing slow and hesitant; it was coming to a standstill. Slowly, as moisture seeps into the dying tree trunk, slowly filling it up and making it rot, worldliness and lethargy had crept into Siddhartha’s soul, filling it slowly, making it heavy, making it weary, putting it to sleep. At the same time, however, his senses had come to life; they had learned many things, experienced many things.

Siddhartha had learned to conduct business, to wield power over people, to take pleasure with a woman; he had learned to wear nice clothes, give orders to servants, and bathe in sweet-smelling water. He had learned to eat dishes prepared with delicacy and care, even fish, even flesh and fowl, spices and sweets, and to drink wine, which brings lethargy and forgetfulness. He had learned to throw dice and play chess, to be entertained by dancing girls, have himself carried about in a sedan chair, sleep in a soft bed.

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