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?”