Important Quotations Explained
1. “Siddhartha,”
he said, “why are you waiting?”
“You know why.”
“Will you go on standing and waiting until it is day, noon,
evening?”
“I will stand and wait.”
“You will grow tired, Siddhartha.”
“I will grow tired.”
“You will fall asleep, Siddhartha.”
“I will not fall asleep.”
“You will die, Siddhartha.”
“I will die.”
2. Siddhartha
learned a great deal from the Samanas; he learned many ways of losing
the Self. He traveled along the path of self-denial through pain,
through voluntary suffering and conquering of pain, through hunger,
thirst and fatigue. He traveled the way of self-denial through meditation,
through the emptying of the mind through all images. Along these
and other paths did he learn to travel. He lost his Self a thousand
times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the
paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to
it.
3.
“[T]here is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not
contain; it does not contain the secret of what the Illustrious
One himself experienced—he alone among hundreds of thousands. That
is what I thought and realized when I heard your teachings. That
is why I am going on my way—not to seek another doctrine, for I
know there is none, but to leave all doctrines and all teachers
and to reach my goal alone—or die.”
4. His
face resembled that of another person, whom he had once known and
loved and even feared. It resembled the face of his father, the
Brahmin. He remembered how once, as a youth, he had compelled his
father to let him go and join the ascetic, how he had taken leave
of him, how he had gone and never returned. Had not his father also
suffered the same pain that he was now suffering for his son?
5. No
longer knowing whether time existed, whether this display had lasted
a second or a hundred years, whether there was a Siddhartha, or
a Gotama, a Self and others, wounded deeply by a divine arrow which
gave him pleasure, deeply enchanted and exalted, Govinda stood yet
a while bending over Siddhartha's peaceful face which he had just kissed,
which had just been the stage of all present and future forms. His
countenance was unchanged after the mirror of the thousand-fold
forms had disappeared from the surface. He smiled peacefully and
gently, perhaps very graciously, perhaps very mockingly, exactly
as the Illustrious One had smiled.
