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