Hermann Hesse

Much he learned from her red, smart mouth. Much he learned from her tender, supple hand. Him, who was, re­gard­ing love, still a boy and had a tend­ency to plunge blindly and in­sa­ti­ably into lust like into a bot­tom­less pit, him she taught, thor­oughly start­ing with the ba­sics, about that school of thought which teaches that pleas­ure can­not be taken without giv­ing pleas­ure, and that every ges­ture, every caress, every touch, every look, every spot of the body, how­ever small it was, had its secret, which would bring hap­pi­ness to those who know about it and un­leash it. She taught him that lov­ers must not part from one an­other after cel­eb­rat­ing love, without one ad­mir­ing the other, without be­ing just as de­feated as they have been vic­tori­ous, so that with none of them should start feel­ing fed up or bored and get that evil feel­ing of hav­ing ab­used or hav­ing been ab­used.

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. O 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.”

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, O 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 Brah­mins, year after year, and I have asked the holy Ve­das, year after year, and I have asked the de­voted Samanas, year after year. Per­haps, O 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, O 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, O 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.”