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.