For a long time, the wound continued
to burn. Many a traveller Siddhartha had to
ferry across the river who was accompanied by a son
or a daughter, and he saw none of them without envying
him, without thinking: “So many, so many
thousands possess this sweetest of good fortunes why
don’t I? Even bad people, even thieves
and robbers have children and love them, and are being
loved by them, all except for me.” Thus
simply, thus without reason he now thought, thus similar
to the childlike people he had become.
Differently than before, he now looked
upon people, less smart, less proud, but instead warmer,
more curious, more involved. When he ferried
travellers of the ordinary kind, childlike people,
businessmen, warriors, women, these people did not
seem alien to him as they used to: he understood
them, he understood and shared their life, which was
not guided by thoughts and insight, but solely by
urges and wishes, he felt like them. Though
he was near perfection and was bearing his final wound,
it still seemed to him as if those childlike people
were his brothers, their vanities, desires for possession,
and ridiculous aspects were no longer ridiculous to
him, became understandable, became lovable, even became
worthy of veneration to him. The blind love of
a mother for her child, the stupid, blind pride of
a conceited father for his only son, the blind, wild
desire of a young, vain woman for jewelry and admiring
glances from men, all of these urges, all of this childish
stuff, all of these simple, foolish, but immensely
strong, strongly living, strongly prevailing urges
and desires were now no childish notions for Siddhartha
any more, he saw people living for their sake, saw
them achieving infinitely much for their sake, travelling,
conducting wars, suffering infinitely much, bearing
infinitely much, and he could love them for it, he
saw life, that what is alive, the indestructible,
the Brahman in each of their passions, each of their
acts. Worthy of love and admiration were these
people in their blind loyalty, their blind strength
and tenacity. They lacked nothing, there was
nothing the knowledgeable one, the thinker, had to
put him above them except for one little thing, a
single, tiny, small thing: the consciousness,
the conscious thought of the oneness of all life.
And Siddhartha even doubted in many an hour, whether
this knowledge, this thought was to be valued thus
highly, whether it might not also perhaps be a childish
idea of the thinking people, of the thinking and childlike
people. In all other respects, the worldly people
were of equal rank to the wise men, were often far
superior to them, just as animals too can, after all,
in some moments, seem to be superior to humans in their
tough, unrelenting performance of what is necessary.
Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in
Siddhartha the realisation, the knowledge, what wisdom
actually was, what the goal of his long search was.
It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability,
a secret art, to think every moment, while living
his life, the thought of oneness, to be able to feel
and inhale the oneness. Slowly this blossomed
in him, was shining back at him from Vasudeva’s
old, childlike face: harmony, knowledge of the
eternal perfection of the world, smiling, oneness.
But the wound still burned, longingly
and bitterly Siddhartha thought of his son, nurtured
his love and tenderness in his heart, allowed the
pain to gnaw at him, committed all foolish acts of
love. Not by itself, this flame would go out.
And one day, when the wound burned
violently, Siddhartha ferried across the river, driven
by a yearning, got off the boat and was willing to
go to the city and to look for his son. The
river flowed softly and quietly, it was the dry season,
but its voice sounded strange: it laughed!
It laughed clearly. The river laughed, it laughed
brightly and clearly at the old ferryman. Siddhartha
stopped, he bent over the water, in order to hear
even better, and he saw his face reflected in the
quietly moving waters, and in this reflected face there
was something, which reminded him, something he had
forgotten, and as he thought about it, he found it:
this face resembled another face, which he used to
know and love and also fear. It resembled his
father’s face, the Brahman. And he remembered
how he, a long time ago, as a young man, had forced
his father to let him go to the penitents, how he had
bed his farewell to him, how he had gone and had never
come back. Had his father not also suffered
the same pain for him, which he now suffered for his
son? Had his father not long since died, alone,
without having seen his son again? Did he not
have to expect the same fate for himself? Was
it not a comedy, a strange and stupid matter, this
repetition, this running around in a fateful circle?
The river laughed. Yes, so it
was, everything came back, which had not been suffered
and solved up to its end, the same pain was suffered
over and over again. But Siddhartha want back
into the boat and ferried back to the hut, thinking
of his father, thinking of his son, laughed at by
the river, at odds with himself, tending towards despair,
and not less tending towards laughing along at (??
über) himself and the entire world.
Alas, the wound was not blossoming
yet, his heart was still fighting his fate, cheerfulness
and victory were not yet shining from his suffering.
Nevertheless, he felt hope, and once he had returned
to the hut, he felt an undefeatable desire to open
up to Vasudeva, to show him everything, the master
of listening, to say everything.
Vasudeva was sitting in the hut and
weaving a basket. He no longer used the ferry-boat,
his eyes were starting to get weak, and not just his
eyes; his arms and hands as well. Unchanged and
flourishing was only the joy and the cheerful benevolence
of his face.
Siddhartha sat down next to the old
man, slowly he started talking. What they had
never talked about, he now told him of, of his walk
to the city, at that time, of the burning wound, of
his envy at the sight of happy fathers, of his knowledge
of the foolishness of such wishes, of his futile fight
against them. He reported everything, he was
able to say everything, even the most embarrassing
parts, everything could be said, everything shown,
everything he could tell. He presented his wound,
also told how he fled today, how he ferried across
the water, a childish run-away, willing to walk to
the city, how the river had laughed.
While he spoke, spoke for a long time,
while Vasudeva was listening with a quiet face, Vasudeva’s
listening gave Siddhartha a stronger sensation than
ever before, he sensed how his pain, his fears flowed
over to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came
back at him from his counterpart. To show his
wound to this listener was the same as bathing it
in the river, until it had cooled and become one with
the river. While he was still speaking, still
admitting and confessing, Siddhartha felt more and
more that this was no longer Vasudeva, no longer a
human being, who was listening to him, that this motionless
listener was absorbing his confession into himself
like a tree the rain, that this motionless man was
the river itself, that he was God himself, that he
was the eternal itself. And while Siddhartha
stopped thinking of himself and his wound, this realisation
of Vasudeva’s changed character took possession
of him, and the more he felt it and entered into it,
the less wondrous it became, the more he realised that
everything was in order and natural, that Vasudeva
had already been like this for a long time, almost
forever, that only he had not quite recognised it,
yes, that he himself had almost reached the same state.
He felt, that he was now seeing old Vasudeva as the
people see the gods, and that this could not last;
in his heart, he started bidding his farewell to Vasudeva.
Thorough all this, he talked incessantly.
When he had finished talking, Vasudeva
turned his friendly eyes, which had grown slightly
weak, at him, said nothing, let his silent love and
cheerfulness, understanding and knowledge, shine at
him. He took Siddhartha’s hand, led him
to the seat by the bank, sat down with him, smiled
at the river.
“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.
“Do you hear,” Vasudeva’s gaze asked
again.
Brightly, Vasudeva’s smile was
shining, floating radiantly over all the wrinkles
of his old face, as the Om was floating in the air
over all the voices of the river. Brightly his
smile was shining, when he looked at his friend, and
brightly the same smile was now starting to shine on
Siddhartha’s face as well. His wound blossomed,
his suffering was shining, his self had flown into
the oneness.
In this hour, Siddhartha stopped fighting
his fate, stopped suffering. On his face flourished
the cheerfulness of a knowledge, which is no longer
opposed by any will, which knows perfection, which
is in agreement with the flow of events, with the
current of life, full of sympathy for the pain of
others, full of sympathy for the pleasure of others,
devoted to the flow, belonging to the oneness.
When Vasudeva rose from the seat by
the bank, when he looked into Siddhartha’s eyes
and saw the cheerfulness of the knowledge shining
in them, he softly touched his shoulder with his hand,
in this careful and tender manner, and said:
“I’ve been waiting for this hour, my dear.
Now that it has come, let me leave. For a long
time, I’ve been waiting for this hour; for a
long time, I’ve been Vasudeva the ferryman.
Now it’s enough. Farewell, hut, farewell,
river, farewell, Siddhartha!”
Siddhartha made a deep bow before
him who bid his farewell.
“I’ve known it,”
he said quietly. “You’ll go into
the forests?”
“I’m going into the forests,
I’m going into the oneness,” spoke Vasudeva
with a bright smile.
With a bright smile, he left; Siddhartha
watched him leaving. With deep joy, with deep
solemnity he watched him leave, saw his steps full
of peace, saw his head full of lustre, saw his body
full of light.