That evening, Siddhartha and Govinda approach the samanas and are accepted to join them. They give away their clothes and wear loin cloths instead. This begins a life of fasting and abstinence from the world. The sight of worldly people and possessions and property become a sham to Siddhartha. It all tortures him. His one goal is now to become empty of all desire, all worldliness, and, in doing this, extinguish the ‘self’ in order for his true essence to awaken.
Through the dry and rainy seasons, Siddhartha suffers the pain of burning and freezing, and sores from walking, but he withstands everything, until the pains fade. He learns to control his breath, to slow it right down until he is hardly breathing. He learns the art of unselfing meditation, loosing his soul from memories and senses. He feels like he embodies the creatures around him, the heron and even the dead jackal, through the whole life cycle. He transforms, from creature to plant to weather to self again. No matter how totally he seems to leave himself, he always returns, and feels himself in an inescapable cycle.
Siddhartha asks Govinda, who has been living this painful samana life along with him, whether he thinks they have made progress. Govinda thinks Siddhartha is learning quickly and will become a great samana, even a saint, but Siddhartha himself is not so sure. He thinks he could have learned just as much among criminals in the red light district or an ox driver! Govinda thinks this is a joke. How could the same selflessness be learned there? But Siddhartha tells him that the abandonment of the self that he has learned as a samana does not differ that much from the abandonment of an ox driver having an ale after a hard day’s work. The drinker’s escape is momentary though, thinks Govinda, and surely the ascension that they are learning to achieve is more profound. Siddhartha is cynical.
On another occasion, Siddhartha questions if they are really approaching higher knowledge or whether they are going round in circles themselves. He makes the point that the eldest samana teacher has not yet reached Nirvana. They don’t seem to be getting any closer to their goal. Siddhartha, slightly mockingly, tells Govinda that he has decided to leave the samana path, because he doesn’t trust that learning from even the wisest samanas is any better than learning from a monkey or some such creature. He isn’t even sure that there is any value in learning at all.
Govinda doesn’t understand how Siddhartha could say such things. It terrifies him to doubt everything he has valued as holy. What would be left without this holiness? he thinks. He recites a verse about how holy bliss cannot be uttered in words. Siddhartha thinks deeply about the problem but it does not appear clearly to him.
After three years leading the samana life, a rumor reaches Siddhartha and Govinda of a Sublime teacher, called Gautama, the Buddha, who had also wandered through the land as an ascetic, and whose legend has all the Brahmins enthralled. Many believe that the Buddha can heal the sick. Some have even heard that he had encountered the devil and won.
BY- Kaushiki 
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