Wake Up by Jack Kerouac Read Free Book Online

night when everything was ready, he said, “Saddle then my horse, and quickly bring it here. I wish to reach the deathless city; my heart is fixed beyond all change, resolved I am and bound by sacred oath.”
    Quietly they rode out the royal gate. Looking back once, the trembling Prince cried: “If I escape not birth, old age, and death, for evermore I pass not thus along.”
    Master and servant rode through the forest of the night. At dawn, arriving at a spot, they dismounted and rested. “You have borne me well!” said the Prince patting his horse. And to his servant: “Ever have you followed after me when riding, and deeply have I felt my debt of thanks—I only knew you as a man truehearted—But with many words I cannot hold you here, so let me say in brief to you, we have now ended our relationship: take, then, my horse and ride back again; for me, during the long night past, that place I sought to reach now I have obtained!”
    Seeing that the servant was full of reluctance and remorse, the Prince handed him a precious jewel. “O Kandaka, take this gem, and going back to where my father is, take the jewel and lay it reverently before him, to signify my heart’s relation to him: and then, for me, request the king to stifle every fickle feeling of affection, and say that I, to escape from birth and age and death, have entered on the wild forest of painful discipline; not that I may get a heavenly birth, much less because I have no tenderness of heart, or that I cherish any cause of bitterness but only that I seek the way of ultimate escape.
    “My very ancestors, victorious kings, thinking their throne established and immovable, have handed down to me their kingly wealth; I, thinking only on religion, put it all away; I rejoice to have acquired religious wealth.
    “And if you say that I am young and tender, and that the time for seeking is not come, you ought to know that to seek true religion, there is never a time not fit; impermanence and fickleness, the hate of death, these ever follow us, and therefore I embrace the present day, convinced that now is the time to seek.”
    Poor Kandaka cried.
    “You should overcome this sorrowful mood, it is for you to comfort yourself; all creatures, each in its way, foolishly arguing that all things are constant, would influence me today not to forsake my kin and relatives; but when dead and come to be a ghost, how then, let them say, can I be kept?”
    These were words of a potential, dazzling, pure Sage yet coming from the lips of a youthful and gentle prince they were like weights of sorrow to those who loved him and coveted his continuing regard. But there was no other way; his relationship with the world had to be snapped.
    “People from the beginning have erred thus,” he said, “binding themselves in society and by the ties of love and then, as after a dream, all is dispersed. You may make known my words, ‘When I have escaped from the sad ocean of birth and death, then afterwards I will come back again; but I am resolved, if I obtain not my quest, my body shall perish in the mountain wilds.’”
    Then he took his glittering sword and cut off his beautiful golden hair, and attached the sword together with some precious jewels to the saddle of his swift footed war horse: “Follow closely after Kandaka. Do not let sorrow rise within, I grieve indeed at losing you, my gallant steed. Your merit now has gained its end: you shall enjoy for long a respite from an evil birth.” And off he clapped them, servant and horse, and stood alone in the forest, bare headed, empty handed, like a Vajra-god ready and waiting yet already victorious.
    “My adornments now are gone forever, there only now remain these silken garments, which are not in keeping with a hermit’s life.”
    A man passed by in ragged clothes. Gotama called out, “That dress of thine belikes me much, as if it were not foul, and this my dress I’ll give thee in exchange.” The man, whom Gotama took to be