“You are wise, oh Samana,” said the venerable one. “You know how to talk wisely, my friend. Be wary of too much wisdom!”

He looked upon people differently than he had before. He was less shrewd, less proud, and instead was warmer, more curious, and more engaging. When he ferried ordinary travelers (childlike people, businessmen, warriors, or women), they did not seem as alien to him as they once had. He understood them and shared their lives, which were not guided by

Amidst his accumulating wealth, Siddhartha had gradually assumed something of the childlike people’s ways for his own—something of their childlikeness and fearfulness. Even so, he envied them all the more as he became more similar to them. He envied them the one thing that he lacked and they possessed: the importance they were able to place on thei

I no longer want to begin my thoughts and my life with Atman and with the suffering of the world. I no longer want to kill and dissect myself just to find a secret behind the ruins. Neither Yoga-Veda shall teach me any more, no Atharva-Veda, nor the ascetics, nor any kind of teachings. I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get

“Stop scolding, dear friend! Nothing was ever achieved by scolding. If a loss has occurred, let me bear that loss. I am very satisfied with this trip. I have gotten to know myriad people. A Brahmin has become my friend, children have sat on my knees, farmers have shown me their fields, nobody knew that I was a merchant.”

But where were the Brahmins, where were the priests, the wise ones and the penitents—those who were successful not only in knowing this deepest wisdom but also in living it? Where were the elders who could merge this Atman of their dreams with the waking being, to bring it fully into their lives and into their words and deeds?

“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 mountain

This among all the ferryman’s virtues was one of the greatest: he knew how to listen like few others could.

On the way, Siddhartha also recollected everything he had experienced in the Garden of Jetavana: the teaching he had heard there, the divine Buddha, the farewell from Govinda, his conversation with the exalted one. He remembered again the words that he had spoken to the exalted one, every word, and with astonishment he became aware of the fact that