Decision to leave the city

Siddhartha's decision to leave the city is the decisive turning point that ends his long immersion in the world of the childlike people and sets him on the path to his final awakening. After years of living as a wealthy merchant, a lover of Kamala, and a gambler, he reaches a state of such profound disgust and despair that he can no longer continue the game. The decision is not a calculated plan but a spontaneous, irreversible act of renunciation, born from a dream and a sudden, overwhelming clarity that the life he has been living is worthless and dead.

The Collapse of the Worldly Life

Siddhartha had learned to trade, to wear beautiful clothes, to give orders to servants, and to bathe in perfumed waters. He had learned to eat tenderly prepared food, to drink wine, and to play dice. Yet, despite his riches and his house with a garden before the city by the river, his soul was not with the trade. The business was merely a game to provide money for Kamala, and his heart remained a spectator, never truly participating in the passions of the childlike people. Slowly, the disease of the soul that rich people have grabbed hold of him. He became angry and impatient, laughed too loud when he lost at dice, and his face assumed features of discontent, sickliness, and a lack of love. The bright, reliable voice inside him, which had once guided him, had fallen silent.

The Dream of the Dead Bird and the Final Disgust

The final rupture came after a night of revelry. Siddhartha had spent the evening with dancing girls and wine, acting superior though he no longer felt it, and went to bed close to weeping and despair. In a brief, half-conscious sleep, he dreamed of Kamala's rare singing bird in its golden cage. In the dream, the bird had become mute, and when he looked into the cage, it was dead and lay stiff on the ground. He took it out, weighed it in his hand, and threw it away into the street. In the same moment, he felt terribly shocked, his heart hurt as if he had thrown away all value and everything good. Waking from this dream, he was encompassed by a deep sadness. Worthless and pointless seemed the way he had been going through life; nothing alive, nothing delicious or worth keeping remained in his hands. He stood alone and empty like a castaway on the shore.

The Act of Leaving

With a gloomy mind, Siddhartha went to his pleasure-garden, locked the gate, and sat under a mango-tree, feeling death in his heart. He reviewed his entire life, realizing that for many long years he had lived without a high goal, without thirst, without elevation, content with small lustful pleasures yet never satisfied. The game of Sansara was over; he could not play it any more. Shivers ran over his body; inside him, something had died. That entire day he sat under the mango-tree, thinking of his father, Govinda, and Gotama. When night fell, he looked up at the stars and smiled a little, questioning whether it was really necessary, whether it was not a foolish game, that he owned a mango-tree and a garden. He rose, bid farewell to the mango-tree and the garden, and though he felt strong hunger, he smiled tiredly, shook himself, and bid farewell to his house, his chamber, and his bed. In the same hour of the night, Siddhartha left his garden, left the city, and never came back. Kamaswami had people look for him, thinking he had fallen into the hands of robbers, but Kamala was not astonished. She had always expected it, for he was a Samana, a man at home nowhere, a pilgrim.

The Significance of the Departure

This departure is not merely a flight from a bad life; it is the necessary death of the old Siddhartha. He had to pass through stupidity, vices, errors, disgust, and disappointments, to sink down to the most foolish thought of suicide, in order to be able to experience divine grace and hear Om again. He had to become a fool to find Atman in himself again. The decision to leave the city is the moment when the bird in his chest, which he thought had died, begins to sing again. It is the act that allows him to return to the river, to meet Vasudeva, and to finally learn the art of listening. The wound of his son's departure would later reopen this same pain, but the initial break with the world of Kamaswami and Kamala is the foundational renunciation that makes all subsequent spiritual growth possible.