“As you please,” the venerable one spoke politely.

“Too bold is my speech,” Siddhartha continued, “but I do not want to leave the exalted one without having honestly told him my thoughts.  Does it please the venerable one to listen to me for one moment longer?”

Silently, the Buddha nodded his approval.

Quoth Siddhartha:  “One thing, oh most venerable one, I have admired in your teachings most of all.  Everything in your teachings is perfectly clear, is proven; you are presenting the world as a perfect chain, a chain which is never and nowhere broken, an eternal chain the links of which are causes and effects.  Never before, this has been seen so clearly; never before, this has been presented so irrefutably; truly, the heart of every Brahman has to beat stronger with love, once he has seen the world through your teachings perfectly connected, without gaps, clear as a crystal, not depending on chance, not depending on gods.  Whether it may be good or bad, whether living according to it would be suffering or joy, I do not wish to discuss, possibly this is not essential—­but the uniformity of the world, that everything which happens is connected, that the great and the small things are all encompassed by the same forces of time, by the same law of causes, of coming into being and of dying, this is what shines brightly out of your exalted teachings, oh perfected one.  But according to your very own teachings, this unity and necessary sequence of all things is nevertheless broken in one place, through a small gap, this world of unity is invaded by something alien, something new, something which had not been there before, and which cannot be demonstrated and cannot be proven:  these are your teachings of overcoming the world, of salvation.  But with this small gap, with this small breach, the entire eternal and uniform law of the world is breaking apart again and becomes void.  Please forgive me for expressing this objection.”

Quietly, Gotama had listened to him, unmoved.  Now he spoke, the perfected one, with his kind, with his polite and clear voice:  “You’ve heard the teachings, oh son of a Brahman, and good for you that you’ve thought about it thus deeply.  You’ve found a gap in it, an error.  You should think about this further.  But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words.  There is nothing to opinions, they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone can support them or discard them.  But the teachings, you’ve heard from me, are no opinion, and their goal is not to explain the world to those who seek knowledge.  They have a different goal; their goal is salvation from suffering.  This is what Gotama teaches, nothing else.”