Hermann Hesse - The Glass Bead Game

“I set out on my journey and made my way toward the place where his cell was said to be. But meanwhile Brother Joseph had been having the same experience as myself, and had done exactly what I was doing; he had taken flight in order to seek advice from me. When I ran into him, under to be sure odd circumstances, he was enough like the man I had expected for me to recognize him. But he was a fugitive; things had gone badly with him, as badly as for me, or perhaps worse, and he was not at all inclined to hear confessions. Rather, he was all agog to make a confession of his own, and to place his distress in another’s hands. That was a singular disappointment to me, and I was very sad. For if this Joseph, who did not recognize me, had also grown tired of his service and was in despair over the meaning of his life — did that not seem to mean that both of us amounted to nothing, that both of us had lived uselessly, were both failures?

“I am telling you what you already know — let me be brief. I stayed alone that night while you were shown hospitality by the cenobites. I meditated, and put myself into Joseph’s mind, and I thought: what will he do if he learns tomorrow that his errand is in vain and he has vainly placed his faith in Pugil; if he learns that Pugil too is a fugitive and subject to temptation? The more I put myself into his place, the sorrier I was for Joseph, and the more it seemed to me that God had sent him to me so that I might understand and cure him, and in doing so cure myself. After coming to this conclusion I was able to sleep; by then half the night was gone. Next day you joined up with me and have become my son.

“I wanted to tell you this story. I hear that you are weeping. Weep on; it will do you good. And since I have fallen into this unseemly talkative vein, do me the kindness to listen a little longer and take what I now say into your heart: Man is strange, can scarcely be relied on, and so it is not impossible that those sufferings and temptations will someday strike you once again and threaten to overcome you. May our Lord then send you as kindly, patient, and consoling a son and disciple as He has given to me in you. But as for the branch on the tree and the death of Judas Iscariot, visions of which the tempter sent you in those days, I can tell you one thing: it is not merely a folly and a sin to inflict such a death on oneself, although our Redeemer can well forgive even such a sin. But it also a terrible pity for a man to die in despair. God sends us despair not to kill us; He sends it to us to awaken new life in us. When on the other hand He sends us death, Joseph, when He frees us from the earth and from the body and summons us to Himself, that is a great joy. To be permitted to sleep when we are tired, to be allowed to drop a burden we have borne for a long time, is a precious, a wonderful thing. Since we have dug the grave — don’t forget the young palm you are to plant on it — ever since we began digging the grave I have been happier and more content than in many years.

“I have babbled on long, my son; you must be tired. Go to sleep; go to your hut. God be with you!”

On the following day Dion did not appear for the morning prayer, nor did he call Joseph. When Joseph grew alarmed and looked into Dion’s hut, he found the old man in his last sleep. His face was illumined with a childlike, radiant smile.

Joseph buried him. He planted the tree on the grave and lived to see the year in which the tree bore its first fruit.

WHEN VISHNU, OR rather Vishnu in his avatar as Rama, fought his savage battles with the prince of demons, one of his parts took on human shape and thus entered the cycle of forms once more. His name was Ravana and he lived as a warlike prince by the Great Ganges. Ravana had a son named Dasa. But the mother of Dasa died young, and the prince took another wife. Soon this beauteous and ambitious lady had a son of her own, and she resented the young Dasa. Although he was the firstborn, she determined to see her own son Nala inherit the rulership when the time came. And so she contrived to estrange Dasa’s father from him, and meant to dispose of the boy at the first opportunity. But one of Ravana’s court Brahmans, Vasudeva the Sacrificer, became privy to her plan. He was sorry for the boy who, moreover, seemed to him to possess his mother’s bent for piety and feeling for justice. So the Brahman kept an eye on Dasa, to see that the boy came to no harm until he could put him out of reach of his stepmother.

Now Rajah Ravana owned a herd of cows dedicated to Brahma. These were regarded as sacred, and frequent offerings of their milk and butter were made to the god. The best pastures in the country were reserved for these cows.

One day a herdsman of these sacred cows came to the palace to deliver a batch of butter and report that there were signs of drought in the region where the herd had been grazing. Hence the band of herdsmen were going to lead the cows up into the mountains, where water and grass were available even in the driest of times.

The Brahman had known the herdsman for many years as a friendly and reliable man. He took him into his confidence. Next day, when little Prince Dasa could not be found, only Vasudeva and the herdsman knew the secret of his disappearance. The herdsman took the boy Dasa into the hills with him. They caught up with the slowly moving herd, and Dasa gladly joined the band of herdsmen. He helped to guard and drive the cows, learned to milk, played with the calves, and idled about in the mountain meadows, drinking sweet milk, his bare feet smeared with cow-dung. He liked the life of the herdsmen, learned to know the forest and its trees and fruits, loved the mango, the wild fig, and the varinga tree, plucked the sweet lotus root out of green forest pools, on feast days wore a wreath of the red blossoms of the flame-of-the-woods. He became acquainted with the ways of all the animals of the wilderness, learned how to shun the tiger, to make friends with the clever mongoose and the placid hedgehog, and to while away the rainy seasons in the dusky shelter of a makeshift hut where the boys played games, recited verse, or wove baskets and reed mats. Dasa did not completely forget his former home and his former life, but soon these seemed to him like a dream.

One day, when the herd had moved on to another region, Dasa went into the forest to look for honey. Ever since he had come to know the woods he had loved them, and this particular forest seemed to him uncommonly beautiful. The rays of sunlight wound through leaves and branches like golden serpents; the noises of the forest, bird calls, rustle of treetops, jabber of monkeys, twined into a lovely, mildly luminescent network resembling the light amid the branches. Smells, too, similarly joined and parted again, the perfumes of flowers, varieties of wood, leaves, waters, mosses, animals, fruits, earth and mold, pungent and sweet, wild and intimate, stimulating and soothing, gay and sad. In some unseen gorge a stream gurgled; a velvety green butterfly with black and yellow markings danced over white flowers; deep among the blue shadows of the trees a branch broke and leaves dropped heavily into leaves, or a stag bellowed in the darkness, or an irritable she-ape scolded her family.

Dasa forgot about looking for honey. While listening to the singing of several jewel-bright small birds, he noticed a trail running between tall ferns that stood like a dense miniature forest within the great forest. It was the narrowest of footpaths, and he silently and cautiously pressed between the ferns and followed where it led. After a while he came upon a great banyan tree with many trunks. Beneath it stood a small hut, a kind of tent woven of fern leaves. Beside the hut a man sat motionless. His back was straight as a rod and his hands lay between his crossed feet. Under the white hair and broad forehead his eyes, still and sightless, were focused on the ground. They were open, but looking inward. Dasa realized that this was a holy man, a yogi. He had seen others before; they were men favored by the gods. It was good to bring them gifts and pay them respect. But this man here, sitting before his beautifully made and well-concealed fern hut, so perfectly motionless, so lost in meditation, more strongly attracted the boy and seemed to him rarer and more venerable than any of the others he had seen. He seemed to be floating above the ground as he sat there, and it was as if his abstracted gaze saw and knew everything. An aura of holiness surrounded him, a magic circle of dignity, a flame of concentrated intensity and a wave of radiant yoga energies, which the boy could not pass through, which he would not have dared to breach by a word of greeting or a cry. The majesty of his form, the light from within which radiated from his face, the composure and bronze unassailability of his features, emanated waves and rays in the midst of which he sat enthroned like a moon; and the accumulated spiritual force, the calmly concentrated will, wove such a spell around him that Dasa sensed that here was someone who, by a mere wish or thought, without even raising his eyes, could kill and restore to life.