Siddhartha
I have crossed a long time ago on my way to the childlike people, a
friendly ferryman had guided me then, he is the one I want to go to,
starting out from his hut, my path had led me at that time into a new
life, which had now grown old and is dead—my present path, my present
new life, shall also take its start there!
Tenderly, he looked into the rushing water, into the transparent green,
into the crystal lines of its drawing, so rich in secrets. Bright
pearls he saw rising from the deep, quiet bubbles of air floating on
the reflecting surface, the blue of the sky being depicted in it. With
a thousand eyes, the river looked at him, with green ones, with white
ones, with crystal ones, with sky-blue ones. How did he love this
water, how did it delight him, how grateful was he to it! In his heart
he heard the voice talking, which was newly awaking, and it told him:
Love this water! Stay near it! Learn from it! Oh yes, he wanted to
learn from it, he wanted to listen to it. He who would understand this
water and its secrets, so it seemed to him, would also understand many
other things, many secrets, all secrets.
But out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one
touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran,
and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and
yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand
this! He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it
stirring, a distant memory, divine voices.
Siddhartha rose, the workings of hunger in his body became unbearable.
In a daze he walked on, up the path by the bank, upriver, listened to
the current, listened to the rumbling hunger in his body.
When he reached the ferry, the boat was just ready, and the same
ferryman who had once transported the young Samana across the river,
stood in the boat, Siddhartha recognised him, he had also aged very
much.
“Would you like to ferry me over?” he asked.
The ferryman, being astonished to see such an elegant man walking along
and on foot, took him into his boat and pushed it off the bank.
“It’s a beautiful life you have chosen for yourself,” the passenger
spoke. “It must be beautiful to live by this water every day and to
cruise on it.”
With a smile, the man at the oar moved from side to side: “It is
beautiful, sir, it is as you say. But isn’t every life, isn’t every
work beautiful?”
“This may be true. But I envy you for yours.”
“Ah, you would soon stop enjoying it. This is nothing for people
wearing fine clothes.”
Siddhartha laughed. “Once before, I have been looked upon today because
of my clothes, I have been looked upon with distrust. Wouldn’t you,
ferryman, like to accept these clothes, which are a nuisance to me,
from me? For you must know, I have no money to pay your fare.”
“You’re joking, sir,” the ferryman laughed.
“I’m not joking, friend. Behold, once before you have ferried me across
this water in your boat for the immaterial reward of a good deed. Thus,
do it today as well, and accept my clothes for it.”
“And do you, sir, intent to continue travelling without clothes?”
“Ah, most of all I wouldn’t want to continue travelling at all. Most of
all I would rather you, ferryman, gave me an old loincloth and kept me
with you as your assistant, or rather as your trainee, for I’ll have to
learn first how to handle the boat.”
For a long time, the ferryman looked at the stranger, searching.
“Now I recognise you,” he finally said. “At one time, you’ve slept in
my hut, this was a long time ago, possibly more than twenty years ago,
and you’ve been ferried across the river by me, and we parted like good
friends. Haven’t you been a Samana? I can’t think of your name any
more.”
“My name is Siddhartha, and I was a Samana, when you’ve last seen me.”
“So be welcome, Siddhartha. My name is Vasudeva. You will, so I hope,
be my guest today as well and sleep in my hut, and tell me, where
you’re coming from and why these beautiful clothes are such a nuisance
to you.”
They had reached the middle of the river, and Vasudeva pushed the oar
with more strength, in order to overcome the current. He worked calmly,
his eyes fixed in on the front of the boat, with brawny arms.
Siddhartha sat and watched him, and remembered, how once before, on
that last day of his time as a Samana, love for this man had stirred in
his heart. Gratefully, he accepted Vasudeva’s invitation. When they had
reached the bank, he helped him to tie the boat to the stakes; after
this, the ferryman asked him to enter the hut, offered him bread and
water, and Siddhartha ate with eager pleasure, and also ate with eager
pleasure of the mango fruits Vasudeva offered him.
Afterwards, it was almost the time of the sunset, they sat on a log by
the bank, and Siddhartha told the ferryman about where he originally
came from and about his life, as he had seen it before his eyes today,
in that hour of despair. Until late at night, lasted his tale.
Vasudeva listened with great attention. Listening carefully, he let
everything enter his mind, birthplace and childhood, all that learning,
all that searching, all joy, all distress. This was among the
ferryman’s virtues one of the greatest: like only a few, he knew how to
listen. Without him having spoken a word, the speaker sensed how
Vasudeva let his words enter his mind, quiet, open, waiting, how he did
not lose a single one, awaited not a single one with impatience, did
not add his praise or rebuke, was just listening. Siddhartha felt, what
a happy fortune it is, to confess to such a listener, to bury in his
heart his own life, his own search, his own suffering.
But in the end of Siddhartha’s tale, when he spoke of the tree by the
river, and of his deep fall, of the holy Om, and how he had felt such a
love for the river after his slumber, the ferryman listened with twice
the attention, entirely and completely absorbed by it, with his eyes
closed.
But when Siddhartha fell silent, and a long silence had occurred, then
Vasudeva said: “It is as I thought. The river has spoken to you. It is
your friend as well, it speaks to you as well. That is good, that is
very good. Stay with me, Siddhartha, my friend. I used to have a wife,
her bed was next to mine, but she has died a long time ago, for a long
time, I have lived alone. Now, you shall live with me, there is space
and food for both.”
“I thank you,” said Siddhartha, “I thank you and accept. And I also
thank you for this, Vasudeva, for listening to me so well! These people
are rare who know how to listen. And I did not meet a single one who
knew it as well as you did. I will also learn in this respect from
you.”
“You will learn it,” spoke Vasudeva, “but not from me. The river has
taught me to listen, from it you will learn it as well. It knows
everything, the river, everything can be learned from it. See, you’ve
already learned this from the water too, that it is good to strive
downwards, to sink, to seek depth. The rich and elegant Siddhartha is
becoming an oarsman’s servant, the learned Brahman Siddhartha becomes a
ferryman: this has also been told to you by the river. You’ll learn
that other thing from it as well.”
Quoth Siddhartha after a long pause: “What other thing, Vasudeva?”
Vasudeva rose. “It is late,” he said, “let’s go to sleep. I can’t tell
you that other thing, oh friend. You’ll learn it, or perhaps you know
it already. See, I’m no learned man, I have no special skill in
speaking, I also have no special skill in thinking. All I’m able to do
is to listen and to be godly, I have learned nothing else. If I was
able to say and teach it, I might be a wise man, but like this I am
only a ferryman, and it is my task to ferry people across the river. I
have transported many, thousands; and to all of them, my river has been
nothing but an obstacle on their travels. They travelled to seek money
and business, and for weddings, and on pilgrimages, and the river was
obstructing their path, and the ferryman’s job was to get them quickly
across that obstacle. But for some among thousands, a few, four or
five, the river has stopped being an obstacle, they have heard its
voice, they have listened to it, and the river has become sacred to
them, as it has become sacred to me. Let’s rest now, Siddhartha.”
Siddhartha stayed with the ferryman and learned to operate the boat,
and when there was nothing to do at the ferry, he worked with Vasudeva
in the rice-field, gathered wood, plucked the fruit off the
banana-trees. He learned to build an oar, and learned to mend the boat,
and to weave baskets, and was joyful because of everything he learned,
and the days and months passed quickly. But more than Vasudeva could
teach him, he was taught by the river. Incessantly, he learned from it.
Most of all, he learned from it to listen, to pay close attention with
a quiet heart, with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without a
wish, without judgement, without an opinion.
In a friendly manner, he lived side by side with Vasudeva, and
occasionally they exchanged some words, few and at length thought about
words. Vasudeva was no friend of words; rarely, Siddhartha succeeded in
persuading him to speak.
“Did you,” so he asked him at one time, “did you too learn that secret
from the river: that there is no time?”
Vasudeva’s face was filled with a bright smile.
“Yes, Siddhartha,” he spoke. “It is this what you mean, isn’t it: that
the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the
waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains,
everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not
the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?”
“This it is,” said Siddhartha. “And when I had learned it, I looked at
my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only
separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a
shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha’s previous births were
no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing
was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is
present.”
Siddhartha spoke with ecstasy; deeply, this enlightenment had delighted
him. Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting
oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything
hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome
time, as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one’s
thoughts? In ecstatic delight, he had spoken, but Vasudeva smiled at
him brightly and nodded in confirmation; silently he nodded, brushed
his hand over Siddhartha’s shoulder, turned back to his work.
And once again, when the river had just increased its flow in the rainy
season and made a powerful noise, then said Siddhartha: “Isn’t it so,
oh friend, the river has many voices, very many voices? Hasn’t it the
voice of a king, and of a warrior, and of a bull, and of a bird of the
night, and of a woman giving birth, and of a sighing man, and a
thousand other voices more?”
“So it is,” Vasudeva nodded, “all voices of the creatures are in its
voice.”
“And do you know,” Siddhartha continued, “what word it speaks, when you
succeed in hearing all of its ten thousand voices at once?”
Happily, Vasudeva’s face was smiling, he bent over to Siddhartha and
spoke the holy Om into his ear. And this had been the very thing which
Siddhartha had also been hearing.
And time after time, his smile became more similar to the ferryman’s,
became almost just as bright, almost just as thoroughly glowing with
bliss, just as shining out of thousand small wrinkles, just as alike to
a child’s, just as alike to an old man’s. Many travellers, seeing the