He watched the sun rise above wooded mountains and set above the distant palm-lined shore. At night he saw the stars arranged in formation on the sky and the crescent moon drifting like a boat on a sea of blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, cliffs, herbs and flowers, stream and river, the flash of dew in morning bushes, distant high mountains blue and pale; birds were singing, so were bees, and wind blew silvery through the rice paddies. All these things, various and many-hued, had always been there—the sun and moon had always shone, rivers had always rushed, and bees had always buzzed—but all of it had formerly been nothing for Siddhartha but a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, to be regarded with distrust, penetrated by thought, and destroyed, since it was not true Being: Being lay beyond the visible. But now his liberated eye dwelled in this realm, saw and recognized the visible, and was searching for a home in this world; no longer was it in search of Being, no longer were its efforts directed toward the Beyond.
