Siddhartha saw it, and grinned.
“Bow down to me!” he whispered gently into Govinda’s ear. “Bow down to me here! Yes, closer! Very close! Kiss me on the forehead, Govinda!”
Govinda was puzzled but, drawn by the great love and trust he had for his friend, did as he was told, he bowed down close to him and touched his forehead with his lips, and something wonderful happened to him. His thoughts remained with the wonderful words that Siddhartha had spoken, he strove in vain to remove time from his thoughts and to see nirvana and sansara as one, he felt even a certain disdain for his friend’s words which competed with the enormous love and veneration he felt for him, and while all this was going on this is what happened to him:
He could no longer see his friend’s face, instead he saw other faces, many other faces, a long sequence of them, a flowing river of faces, hundreds of them, thousands of them, all of them came and went yet all of them seemed to be there at the same time, all of them were in continuous change yet all of them were Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp with its mouth permanently gaping in pain, a fish that was dying as its eyes broke open, he saw the face of a new-born child, wrinkly, red and contorted in its tears, he saw the face of a murderer, saw him as he thrust the knife into his victim’s body - he saw, at the same moment, this criminal as he knelt in chains and how the executioner struck off his head with a blow of his sword - he saw the bodies of men and women naked and struggling in positions of fervent love - he saw corpses stretched out, still, cold, empty - he saw the heads of animals, of pigs, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds - he saw gods, he saw Krsna, he saw Agni - he saw all these forms and all these faces connected with each other in a thousand places, helping each other, loving each other, hating each other, destroying each other, giving birth to them anew, each of them was a death wish, a passionate torturous acknowledgement of the past, but none of them did die but only transformed itself, underwent continual rebirths, each time receiving a new face although no time passed between one face and the next - and all these forms and all these faces rested, flowed, appeared, swam one way and flowed in between each other and above all of this there was always something thin, something that had no essence but nonetheless existed, like a thin piece of glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or a shape or a mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha’s smiling face which he, Govinda, was at that very moment touching with his lips. And so it was that Govinda saw the smile on the mask, the smile of unity over and above the forms as they rushed past, the smile of simultaneity over the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha’s was exactly the same, was exactly identical, calm, fine, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, the thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the buddha, the smile he had seen and venerated a hundred times himself. Govinda knew that this was how the perfect ones smiled.
He no longer knew whether time existed, he no longer knew whether this vision had lasted one second or a hundred years, he no longer knew whether a Siddhartha or a Gotama or an I and you existed. It was as if his deepest part had been struck with an arrow from the divine, causing a wound that tasted so sweet, his innermost part was enchanted, was dissolved. Govinda continued to stand there bent over Siddhartha’s quiet face, the face he had just kissed, the face that had just been the theatre for all forms, all becoming, all existence. That face, that under its surface had shown the depths of the thousands, remained unchanged, it bore a peaceful smile, a smile that was gentle and tender, perhaps very benevolent, perhaps very mocking, just like the smile on the face of the noble one.
Govinda bowed deeply, tears that he was unaware of ran from his eyes and over his aged face, the sense of deepest love burnt in him like a fire, the humblest veneration burnt in his heart. He bowed deeply, touching the ground in front of Siddhartha who sat motionless, whose smile reminded him of everything in his life he had ever loved, of everything in his life that had been worthwhile to him, and holy.
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