I WANT TO STAY by this river, thought Siddhartha; it is the same one that I crossed long ago on my way to the childlike people. A friendly ferryman guided me then; he is the one to whom I want to go. Beginning from his hut, my path at that time led me to a new life which has now grown old and dead. My present path and new life shall also have its start there!

He looked tenderly into the rushing water, the transparent green, the crystal lines of this secret-filled sketch. He saw bright pearls rising from the deep and quiet bubbles of air floating on the reflective surface that had the blue sky depicted upon it. The river looked at him with a thousand eyes: green ones, white ones, crystal ones, sky-blue ones. How he loved this water, how it delighted him, and how grateful he was to it! He heard the voice talking in his heart; it had awakened anew, and it told him: Love this water! Stay near it! Learn from it! Ah yes, he wanted to learn from it and listen to it. It seemed to him that he would understand this water and its secrets, and would also understand many other things, many secrets and all secrets.

But out of all the secrets of the river, he saw only one today, and it touched his soul. He saw that this water ran and ran incessantly, and nevertheless was always there at all times, the same and yet new every moment! The one who grasped this and understood this was great! He did not understand and grasp it, but felt some inkling of it stirring, a distant memory and divine voices.

Siddhartha rose up, and the hunger of his body became unbearable. He walked in a daze, up the path by the bank and up-river. He listened to the current and listened to the rumbling hunger in his body.

The boat was just ready when he reached the ferry, and the same ferryman who had once transported the young Samana across the river now stood in the boat. Siddhartha recognized him, and he had aged quite a bit.

“Do you want to ferry me over?” asked Siddhartha.

The ferryman, astonished to see such an elegant man walking along on foot, took him into his boat and pushed off from the bank.

“This is a beautiful life that you've chosen for yourself,” said the passenger. “It must be beautiful to live by the water every day and to move about upon it.”

The man at the oar moved it from side to side with a smile: “It is beautiful, sir, as you say. But isn't every life and every work beautiful?”

“This may be true, but I envy you yours.”

“Ah, you would stop enjoying it soon. This is no work for people who wear fine clothes.”

Siddhartha laughed. “I have already been looked upon once today with mistrust because of my clothes. Wouldn't you, ferryman, like to take these bothersome clothes from me? For, I'll have you know, I have no money to pay your fare.”

“You're joking, sir!” laughed the ferryman.

“I'm not joking, friend. See, you have already ferried me across this water once before, and did it only out of love. Do this again today, and accept my clothes in exchange for it.”

“And do you, sir, intend to travel on your way without clothes?”

“Eh, I would much prefer not to travel any farther at all. I would most like it if, ferryman, you were to give me an old loincloth and keep me with you as your assistant, or rather as your apprentice, because first I'll have to learn how to handle the boat.”

The ferryman looked at the stranger searchingly for a long time.

“I recognize you now,” he finally said. “You slept in my hut once a long time ago, possibly more than twenty years ago. I ferried you across the river and we parted like good friends. Weren't you a Samana? I can't recall what your name is any more.”

“My name is Siddhartha, and I was a Samana when last you saw me.”

“Welcome, then, Siddhartha. My name is Vasudeva. You will, I hope, be my guest today and sleep in my hut as well, and tell me where you're coming from and why these beautiful clothes are such a bother to you.”

They had reached the middle of the river, and Vasudeva used more strength to push the oar so that he could overcome the current. He worked his brawny arms calmly, fixing his eyes on the front of the boat. Siddhartha sat and watched him, remembering how, once before on his last day as a Samana, he had felt love for this man stir in his heart. He gratefully accepted Vasudeva's invitation. When they had reached the bank, Siddhartha helped him tie the boat to the stakes; after this, the ferryman asked Siddhartha to enter the hut; the ferryman then offered Siddhartha bread and water, and Siddhartha ate eagerly and with pleasure. He also eagerly ate with pleasure the mango fruits that Vasudeva offered him.

Afterwards, around sunset, they both sat on a log by the riverbank, and Siddhartha told the ferryman about where he originally came from. He also told him about his life as he had seen it before his eyes today in that hour of despair. His tale lasted late into the night.

Vasudeva listened with great attention. He let everything enter his mind as he listened carefully: birthplace and childhood, and all the learning, searching, joy, and distress. This among all the ferryman's virtues was one of the greatest: he knew how to listen as few others could. Without his saying a word, the speaker could sense how Vasudeva let words enter his mind, how he was quiet, open, and waiting, and how he did not lose a single word by impatience. He did not add his praise or rebuke, and simply listened. Siddhartha felt quite fortunate to be able to confess to a listener like this, to immerse his own life, his own search, and his own suffering in his heart.

Yet at the end of Siddhartha's tale, when he spoke about the tree by the river, about his deep fall, the holy “Om,” and how he had felt great love for the river after his slumber, the ferryman listened with twice as much attention. He was entirely and completely absorbed by it, and his eyes were closed.

But then Siddhartha fell silent and there was a long pause; Vasudeva then said: “It is as I thought. The river has spoken to you. It is your friend, too; it speaks to you as well. That is good, very good. Stay with me, Siddhartha, my friend. I used to have a wife, and her bed was next to mine, but she died a long time ago and I have lived alone for a long time. Now you shall live with me; there is space and food for both of us.

“I thank you,” said Siddhartha, “I thank you and accept. I also thank you for this, Vasudeva: for listening to me so well! People who know how to listen are rare, and I have never met a single one who could do this as well as you did. I would also like to learn from you in this regard.”

“You will learn it,” said Vasudeva, “but not from me. The river has taught me to listen, and you will learn it from the river as well. The river knows everything, and everything can be learned from it. See, you've already learned this from the water: that it is good to strive downwards, to sink and to seek depth. The rich and elegant Siddhartha is becoming an oarsman's servant, and the learned Brahmin Siddhartha is becoming a ferryman. This also has been told to you by the river. You'll learn that other thing from it as well.”

After a long pause, Siddhartha said: “What other thing, Vasudeva?”

Vasudeva arose. “It's late,” he said. “Let's go to sleep. I can't tell you that other thing, O friend. You'll learn it, or perhaps you know it already. See, I'm no scholar. I have no special skill in speaking or thinking. I only understand listening and piety; I've learned nothing else. If I were able to say and teach this, I might be a wise man, but as it stands I am only a ferryman, and it is my task to ferry people across the river. I have transported many people—thousands—and for all these, my river has been nothing more than an obstacle in their travels. They travel seeking money and business, and for weddings and pilgrimages, and the river obstructs their path, and it is the job of the ferryman to get them quickly across this obstacle. But for a few among the thousands—four or five—the river has stopped becoming an obstacle. They have heard its voice and listened to it, and the river has become as sacred to them as it is to me. Let's rest now, Siddhartha.”

Siddhartha stayed with the ferryman and learned how to operate the boat. When there was nothing to do at the ferry, he worked with Vasudeva in the rice field, gathered wood, and plucked fruit from the banana trees. He learned how to build an oar, mend the boat, and weave baskets. He was joyful because of all the things he learned, and the days and months passed quickly. But the river taught him more than Vasudeva could teach him. He learned from it incessantly. Above all, he learned to listen from it. He learned to pay attention closely with a quiet heart, with patience, and with an open soul devoid of passion, wishes, judgment, and opinions.

He lived side by side with Vasudeva in a friendly way, and they occasionally exchanged words that were few and well-considered. Vasudeva was no friend of words; it was rare that Siddhartha succeeded in persuading him to speak.

“Have you,” Siddhartha once asked him, “also learned the following secret from the river: that there is no time?”

Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile.

“Yes, Siddhartha,” he said. “It is even this that you mean: the river is everywhere at once, at the source and the mouth, at the waterfall, the ferry, the rapids, the sea, and the mountains. It is everywhere at once, and there only the present exists for it—not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”

“This is it,” said Siddhartha. “And when I learned it, I looked at my life and found that it also was a river, and that the boy Siddhartha was separated from the man Siddhartha and the old man Siddhartha by only a shadow, and not by something real. Siddhartha's previous births were also no past, and his death and subsequent return to Brahman was no future. Nothing was and nothing will be; everything is, and everything is present and has existence.”

Siddhartha spoke with ecstasy; this enlightenment had deeply delighted him. Ah, were not all sufferings then time, and were not all self-torments and personal fears time? Weren't all the difficult and hostile things in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time, and as soon as time could be thrust out of the mind? He had spoken with ecstatic delight. Vasudeva, however, just smiled at him brightly and, nodding silently in confirmation, he brushed his hand over Siddhartha's shoulder and turned back to his work.

Once more, when the river had just swelled in the rainy season and made powerful noise, Siddhartha said: “Isn't it the case, O friend, that the river has a great multitude of voices? Doesn't it have the voice of a king, a warrior, a bull, a nocturnal bird, a woman giving birth, a sighing person, and a thousand other voices besides?”

“It is so,” Vasudeva nodded. “The voices of all creatures are in its voice.”

“And do you know,” continued Siddhartha, “what word it speaks when you succeed in hearing all ten thousand of its voices at once?”

Vasudeva's face was smiling happily; he bent over to Siddhartha and spoke the holy “Om” into his ear. And this had been the very thing which Siddhartha also had been hearing.

And from time to time, Siddhartha's smile became more similar to the ferryman's. It also became bright, also was suffused with bliss, also shone out of a thousand small wrinkles, was also like a child's and was also like an old man's. Many travelers, upon seeing the two ferrymen, thought they were brothers. They both often sat together in the evening by the riverbank on the log, saying nothing and listening to the water, which for them was no water but the voice of life which exists and is forever taking shape. From time to time, it happened that while they were listening to the river, they thought of the same things: a conversation from the day before yesterday, one of the travelers whose face and fate had occupied their thought, death, or their childhood. They both looked at each other in the same moment when the river had been saying something good to them. They looked at each other, both thinking precisely the same thing, both delighted about the same answer to the same question.

Something about this ferry and the two ferrymen was transmitted to others, and many travelers felt it. It occasionally happened that a traveler, having looked at the face of one of the ferrymen, began to tell the story of his life, recounting pains, confessing evil, and asking for comfort and advice. Occasionally, someone asked permission to stay with them for the night and listen to the river. Curious people also came, having been told that there were two wise men, or sorcerers, or holy men living by the ferry. The curious ones asked many questions, but they received no answers, and found neither sorcerers nor wise men, but only two friendly little old men who seemed mute and to have become a little strange and batty. The curious people then laughed, discussing how foolish and gullible were the common people who spread such vacuous rumors.

The years passed, and nobody counted them. Then, one time, monks came by on a pilgrimage. They were followers of Gotama, the Buddha, and were asking to be ferried across the river. They told the ferrymen that they were hurrying back to their great teacher, for news had spread that the exalted one was deathly ill and would soon die his last human death so that he might enter salvation. It was not long before a new flock of monks came by on their pilgrimage, and yet another, and not only the monks but most of the other travelers and people walking through the land spoke of nothing else but Gotama and his impending death. And, like people who stream from all directions and sides when they are going to war or a coronation, gathering like ants in swarms, they flocked as if drawn by a magic spell to the place where the great Buddha awaited his death, where that monumental event was going to take place and the great perfected one of an era was to become one with glory.

In those days, Siddhartha often thought about the dying wise man, the great teacher whose voice had exhorted nations and awakened hundreds of thousands, and whose voice Siddhartha had also once heard and whose holy face he had looked upon with reverence. He thought kindly of the Buddha, and saw his path to perfection before his eyes, remembering with a smile those words which he had said at one time when he was a young man to the exalted one. It seemed to him that they had been proud and precocious words, and he remembered them with a smile. He had long known that there was nothing separating him from Gotama any more, although Siddhartha was still unable to accept his teachings. No, there were no teachings that a person who truly sought and wanted to find could accept. But the one who had already found could approve of any teachings, every path and goal; there was nothing that stood between him and the other thousands who lived in the eternal and breathed that which is divine.

On one of those days when so many were going on a pilgrimage to the dying Buddha, Kamala, who was once the most beautiful of the courtesans, also went to him. She had retired from her previous life long ago, and had given her garden to the monks of Gotama as a gift, taking refuge in the teachings. She was among the friends and benefactors of pilgrims. Together with the boy Siddhartha, her son, she had embarked on foot in simple clothes because of the news of the coming death of Gotama. She traveled by the river with her little son, but the boy soon became tired, desiring to return home, rest, and eat. He became disobedient and started to whine.

Kamala often had to take a rest with him; he was accustomed to getting what he wanted from her. She had to feed him, comfort him, and scold him. He didn't understand why he had to go on this exhausting and tragic pilgrimage with his mother to an unknown place, to a stranger who was holy and about to die. What did it matter to the boy if he died?

The pilgrims approached Vasudeva's ferry when Siddhartha once again forced his mother to rest. Kamala herself had also become tired, and while the boy chewed on a banana, she crouched down on the ground, closed her eyes for a bit, and rested. But she suddenly uttered a wailing scream; the boy looked at her in fear and saw her face grow pale with horror; from beneath her dress fled a small black snake which had bitten Kamala.

They both now hurried along the path and came near the ferry, where Kamala collapsed, unable to go any further. The boy started to cry miserably, interrupting this only to kiss and hug his mother. She also joined his loud screams for help until the sound reached the ears of Vasudeva, who stood at the ferry. He came walking quickly, took the woman in his arms, and carried her into the boat. The boy ran along, and they all soon reached the hut where Siddhartha was standing by the stove and lighting the fire. He looked up and saw the boy's face, which oddly reminded him of something he had forgotten. Then he saw Kamala, whom he instantly recognized even though she was laying unconscious in the ferryman's arms. He now knew that it was his own son whose face had been a reminder to him, and his heart stirred within his breast.

They washed Kamala's wound, but it had already turned black and her body was swollen; she was administered a healing potion. Her consciousness returned, and she lay on Siddhartha's bed in the hut; Siddhartha, who once loved her so much, now stood bent over her. It seemed like a dream to her. With a smile, she looked at her friend's face. Slowly realizing her situation and remembering the bite, she called timidly for the boy.

“He's with you; don't worry,” said Siddhartha.

Kamala looked into his eyes. She spoke with a thick tongue that was paralyzed by the poison. “You've become old, my love,” she said. “You've become gray. But you are like the young Samana who once came to me in the garden without clothes and with dusty feet. You are much more like him than you were in the days when you left Kamaswami and me. You are like him in the eyes, Siddhartha. Alas, I have also become old…old—could you still recognize me?”

Siddhartha smiled. “I recognized you instantly, Kamala, love.”

Kamala pointed to her boy and said: “Did you recognize him as well? He is your son.”

Her eyes became confused and closed shut. The boy wept, and Siddhartha took him up on his knees, letting him weep and petting his hair. At the sight of the child's face, a Brahminic prayer came to his mind which he had learned a long time ago as a little boy himself. He started to speak slowly, with a singing voice; the words came flowing to him from his past and childhood. With that song, the boy became calm, uttering a sob only now and then and then falling asleep. Siddhartha placed him on Vasudeva's bed. Vasudeva stood by the stove and cooked rice. Siddhartha gave him a look which he returned with a smile.

“She'll die,” Siddhartha said quietly.

Vasudeva nodded; the light of the stove's fire washed over his face.

Kamala returned to consciousness once more. Pain contorted her face, and Siddhartha's eyes read the suffering on her mouth and pale cheeks. He read it quietly and attentively, waiting, his mind becoming one with her suffering. Kamala felt it, and her gaze sought his eyes.

Looking at him, she said: “I now see that your eyes have changed as well. They've become completely different. By what means do I still recognize that you're Siddhartha? It's you, and yet it's not you.”

Siddhartha said nothing; his eyes looked quietly at hers.

“You've achieved it?” she asked. “You have found peace?”

He smiled and placed his hand on hers.

“I see it,” she said. “I see it. I, too, will find peace.”

“You have found it,” said Siddhartha in a whisper.

Kamala never stopped looking into his eyes. She thought about the pilgrimage that she wanted to take to Gotama, a pilgrimage to see the face of the perfected one, to breathe his peace; she then considered that, instead of him, she found Siddhartha, and that it was just as good as if she had seen Gotama. She wanted to tell Siddhartha this, but her tongue no longer obeyed her will. She looked at him without speaking, and he saw the life fade from her eyes. When the final pain filled her eyes and made them grow dim, when the final shiver ran through her limbs, his finger closed her eyelids.

He sat and looked for a long time at her sleeping face. He observed for a long time her old, tired mouth, with those lips that had become thin, and he remembered that, in the springtime of his years, he had compared this mouth to a freshly cracked fig. He sat for a long time, filling himself with this sight, and read his own face in the pale visage and tired wrinkles; it was just as white, just as extinguished. He saw his face and hers at the same time as they were young, with red lips, fiery eyes. The feeling of all this being both present and real, the feeling of eternity, completely filled every aspect of his being. He felt in this hour, more deeply than ever before, that every life was indestructible, that every moment was eternity.

When he rose up, Vasudeva had prepared rice for him. Siddhartha, however, did not eat. The two old men prepared beds of straw for themselves in the stable where their goat stood, and Vasudeva lay himself down to sleep. Siddhartha, however, went outside on this night and sat before the hut, listening to the river. He was surrounded by the past and was touched and enveloped by all the times of his life at once. He occasionally stood up, stepped into the door of the hut, and listened to see whether the boy was sleeping.

Vasudeva came out of the stable early in the morning, before the sun could be seen. He walked over to his friend.

“You haven't slept,” he said.

“No, Vasudeva. I sat here listening to the river. It has told me quite a bit, and has deeply filled me with that healing thought of unity.”

“You have experienced suffering, Siddhartha, but I see that no sadness has entered your heart.”

“No, dear friend; how should I be sad? I, who have been rich and happy, have become even richer and happier now. My son has been given to me.”

“Your son shall also be welcome to me. But let's get to work now, Siddhartha; there is much to be done. Kamala has died on the same bed upon which my wife died long ago. Let us also build Kamala's funeral pyre on the same hill where I then built my wife's funeral pyre.”

They built the funeral pyre while the boy was still asleep.