“You’ve heard it laugh,” he said.  “But you haven’t heard everything.  Let’s listen, you’ll hear more.”

They listened.  Softly sounded the river, singing in many voices.  Siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in the moving water:  his father appeared, lonely, mourning for his son; he himself appeared, lonely, he also being tied with the bondage of yearning to his distant son; his son appeared, lonely as well, the boy, greedily rushing along the burning course of his young wishes, each one heading for his goal, each one obsessed by the goal, each one suffering.  The river sang with a voice of suffering, longingly it sang, longingly, it flowed towards its goal, lamentingly its voice sang.

“Do you hear?” Vasudeva’s mute gaze asked.  Siddhartha nodded.

“Listen better!” Vasudeva whispered.

Siddhartha made an effort to listen better.  The image of his father, his own image, the image of his son merged, Kamala’s image also appeared and was dispersed, and the image of Govinda, and other images, and they merged with each other, turned all into the river, headed all, being the river, for the goal, longing, desiring, suffering, and the river’s voice sounded full of yearning, full of burning woe, full of unsatisfiable desire.  For the goal, the river was heading, Siddhartha saw it hurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and of all people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters were hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake, the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal was followed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to the sky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a source, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on once again.  But the longing voice had changed.  It still resounded, full of suffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and of suffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices, a thousand voices.

Siddhartha listened.  He was now nothing but a listener, completely concentrated on listening, completely empty, he felt, that he had now finished learning to listen.  Often before, he had heard all this, these many voices in the river, today it sounded new.  Already, he could no longer tell the many voices apart, not the happy ones from the weeping ones, not the ones of children from those of men, they all belonged together, the lamentation of yearning and the laughter of the knowledgeable one, the scream of rage and the moaning of the dying ones, everything was one, everything was intertwined and connected, entangled a thousand times.  And everything together, all voices, all goals, all yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all of this together was the world.  All of it together was the flow of events, was the music of life.  And when Siddhartha was listening attentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when he neither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tie his soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, but when he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om:  the perfection.