THE FERRYMAN
I would like to remain by this river, thought Siddhartha, it is the same river that I once crossed on my way to the childlike people, that time I was taken across by a friendly ferryman, I would like to go to him. It was from his hut that my way once led out into a new life, a life which now has become old and dead - I hope the way I am now on, the new life that I have begun, take its starting point from there!
He looked tenderly into the flowing water, into that transparent green, into the crystal lines of its drawing that was so full of secrets. He saw pearls of light rising from its depths, peaceful bubbles of air floating on its surface, the blue of the sky reflected there. With its thousand eyes the river looked back at him, eyes of green, eyes of white, eyes of crystal, eyes of Heavenly blue. How he loved this water, how it delighted him, how he was grateful to it! In his heart he heard the newly-woken voice speak, and it said to him, “Love this water! Stay beside it! Learn from it!” Oh yes, he did want to learn from it, he did want to listen to it. Whoever understood this water and its secrets, it seemed to him, would also have understanding of many other things, many secrets, all secrets.
Of the river’s secrets, however, he saw today just one, and it was understood by his soul. He saw: this water flowed and flowed, it never ceased to flow but was nonetheless always there, it was always and for all time the same, yet each glance at it showed something new! Whoever could grasp this would understand it! He understood but could not grasp it, he felt no more than the rising of some vague notion, a distant memory, voices of gods.
Siddhartha stood up, for the power of hunger in his body was becoming unbearable. He walked on not caring whither he went, he followed the path along the river bank as it led him upstream, he listened to its flow, listened to growling hunger in his body.
When he reached the place where the ferry made its crossings he found the boat lying ready and standing in it was the same ferryman who had once taken the young samana across. Siddhartha recognised him, though he too was greatly altered.
“Would you like to take me across?” he asked.
The ferryman, astonished to see such an elegant man travelling alone and on foot, accepted him into the boat and pushed off from the bank.
“You have chosen a nice life for yourself,” said the passenger. “It must be nice to have a life beside this water every day and to travel on it.”
“It is very nice, sir,” said the oarsman, smiling as he rowed, “just as you say. But is not every life nice, is not every job a good job?”
“You could well be right. But I still envy you your job.”
“Oh, you would soon become tired of it. It is not a job for a gentleman in fine clothes.”
Siddhartha laughed. “This is not the first time today that I have been judged by the clothes I wear, judged and mistrusted. Ferryman, would you not like to take these clothes from me? They have become burdensome to me. And I think you already know I have no money to pay your fare.”
“The gentleman is joking with me,” the ferryman laughed.
“I am not joking, my friend. Listen, you have once before carried me across the water in your boat and you did it for the love of God. Do the same today, and accept my clothes in return.”
“Does the gentleman mean to continue his journey without clothes?”
“Oh, most of all I would like not to continue my journey at all. Most of all, ferryman, I would like you to give me an old loincloth and take me on as your assistant, or rather as your apprentice, for I would need first to learn how to handle the boat.”
The ferryman stared long and quizzically at the stranger.
“Now I recognise you,” he said at last. “You slept in my hut once, that was long ago, it must be more than twenty years, you were taken over the river by me and we took leave of each other as good friends. Were you not a samana? I can’t think what your name is any more.”
“My name is Siddhartha, and I was a samana the last time you saw me.”
“Welcome, Siddhartha. My name is Vasudeva. I hope you will again be my guest today and sleep in my hut and tell me all about where you have come from and why your fine clothes are such a burden to you.”
They had reached the middle of the river and Vasudeva pulled harder on the oars in order to overcome the current. He worked quietly with his powerful arms and with his eye on the bow. Siddhartha sat and watched him and remembered how, once before, in the last days of his time as a samana, love for this man had arisen in his heart. He accepted Vasudeva’s invitation with gratitude. When they reached the bank Siddhartha helped him to tether the boat and the ferryman invited him into the hut where he offered him bread and water, and Siddhartha ate hungrily, and he ate hungrily of the mangoes that Vasudeva offered him.
The sun had begun to set, and they went to sit on a tree trunk at the side of the river where Siddhartha told the ferryman about where he was from and what his life had been, about how he had seen it before his eyes that day in his moment of doubt. His story continued late into the night.
Vasudeva listened with great attention. He took in all that he heard, his origin and childhood, all that learning, all that seeking, all that joy, all that suffering. This was one of the ferryman’s greatest virtues: few knew how to listen as well as he. Vasudeva would not say a word, but the speaker would sense how he allowed the words to enter into him, quiet, open, patient, never losing a word, never waiting impatiently for a word, never offering praise nor censure, simply listening. Siddhartha was aware of what good fortune it was to have the company of a listener such as this, one into whose heart he could sink his own life, his own searchings, his own sorrows.
As Siddhartha neared the end of his story, though, as he spoke of the tree at the riverside and of the depth of his fall, of the holy Om and of how he felt such love for the river when he woke from his sleep, then the ferryman listened with twice as much attention, totally devoted to it with his eyes shut.
But when Siddhartha became silent and there was a long period of stillness, Vasudeva said, “It is just as I thought. The river spoke to you. He is the friend of you also, he speaks to you also. That is good, that is very good. Stay with me, Siddhartha my friend. I had a wife once, her place was next to mine, but it is long since she died, I have lived long alone. Now you live with me, there is room here and there is food here for both of us.”
“I thank you,” said Siddhartha, “I thank you and I accept. And I also thank you, Vasudeva, for being such a good listener! There are few people who know how to listen. And I have never come across anyone who could do it as well as you. This is something else that I shall be learning from you.”
“You will learn,” said Vasudeva, “but not from me. It is the river that taught me how to listen, and he will teach you too. He knows everything, the river, there is nothing you cannot learn from him. Look, this is something else that you have already learned from the river, that it is good to strive to go down, to sink, to seek out the depths. The rich and courtly Siddhartha will become an apprentice oarsman, the learned brahmin Siddhartha will become a ferryman: this is something else that the river has told you. And there is more that you will learn from him.”
There was a long pause, and Siddhartha said, “What more, Vasudeva?”
Vasudeva stood up. “It is getting late,” he said, “let us go to bed. I cannot tell you what more, my friend. You will learn, perhaps you even know it already. I am not a learned man, you see, I do not know how to give speeches, I do not know how to think. All I know how to do is listening and saying my prayers, there is nothing else I have learned how to do. If I could explain it to you and give lessons then that might mean I am a wise man, but as it is I am just a ferryman and it is my job to take people across this river. It could have been thousands that I have taken across and all that my river has ever been to them is something that has gotten in the way on their journey. They have been travelling for the sake of money or business, going to weddings, going on a pilgrimage, and the river was in their way and the ferryman was there so that they could get past that thing in their way as soon as possible. Some of those thousands though, some of them, though not many, four or five of them, for some of them the river stopped being just something in their way, they heard his voice, they listened to him, and the river became something holy for them, just like he has for me. Now let us go and take our rest, Siddhartha.”
Siddhartha remained with the ferryman and learned how to operate the boat, and when there was no ferry work to do he would work with Vasudeva in the rice field, gathering wood, picking the fruits of the plantain trees. He learned how to make an oar and how to repair the boat, he learned how to weave a basket and he was happy at all that he had learned and the days and the months passed quickly. The river, though, taught him more than Vasudeva was able to. He learned from it without cease. Most of all he learned from the river how to listen, to pay attention with a quiet heart, with a patient and open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinion.
He lived in friendly proximity with Vasudeva, and they would now and then exchange a few words, a few words which had long been considered. Vasudeva was not a friend of words, it was rare for Siddhartha to move him to speak.
“Have you,” he once asked him, “have you also learned from the river the secret that there is no time?”|
A bright smile spread over Vasudeva’s face.
“Yes, Siddhartha,” he said. “Is this what you are saying: that the river is the same along his whole length, at his source and at his estuary, at the waterfall, at the ferry crossing, at the rapids, at the sea, in the mountains, everywhere the same, and that for him there is only the present, no shadow of the future?”
“Yes, that is right,” said Siddhartha. “And when I had learned this I looked at my life and saw that it too was a river, and separating the boy Siddhartha from the man Siddhartha, and the man Siddhartha from the old man Siddhartha, there was merely a shadow, nothing real. And Siddhartha’s previous births too were not in the past, and his death and his return to Brahma were not in the future. Nothing has been and nothing will be; everything is, everything has its essence and its presence.”
Siddhartha spoke with delight, this elucidation had made him deeply happy. For was not, then, all suffering time, was not all self-torture and self-fear time, was not all difficulty, all hostility in the world expunged and overcome as soon a time has been overcome, as soon as time could be removed from our thoughts? He spoke with gleeful passion, but Vasudeva simple gave him a bright smile and nodded agreement, he nodded in silence, touched Siddhartha’s shoulder and went back to his work.
Another time in the rainy season, and the swollen river made a mighty roar, Siddhartha said, “Would you say, my friend, that the river has many voices, very many voices? Does he not have the voice of a king, and of a warrior, and of a bull, and of a bird at night, and of a mother giving birth, and of a man who sighs and a thousand other voices?”
“You are right,” Vasudeva nodded, “all the voices in creation are in his voice.”
“And do you know,” Siddhartha, “what word he says when you succeed in hearing all ten thousand voices at once?”
Happy laughter appeared on Vasudeva’s face, he leant towards Siddhartha and into his ear he spoke the holy word Om. And this indeed was what Siddhartha also had heard.
And little by little his smile became like the ferryman’s, became nearly as beaming, nearly as permeated with happiness, just as radiant from a thousand tiny wrinkles, just as child-like, just as mature. Many travellers who saw the two ferrymen thought they must be brothers. In the evenings they would often sit together on the tree trunk at the riverside, they would say nothing but both would listen to the water which, for them, was not water but the voice of life, the voice of existence, of eternal becoming. Sometimes, as the two of them listened to the river together, they would both think of the same things, of a discussion that had taken place two days earlier, of one of the travellers whose face and whose destiny occupied them, of death, of their childhood. Sometimes, when the river had said something good to them, they would each look at the other at the same moment, both thinking the same thing, both feeling the same joy at hearing the same answer to the same question.
Many of the travellers felt there was something given out from the ferry and the two ferrymen. Sometimes a traveller would look into the face of one of the ferrymen and begin to tell his life story, would tell of his sorrows, acknowledge where he had done wrong, ask for solace and advice. Sometimes one of them would ask permission to spend the evening with them to listen to the river. Sometimes someone would come to them because he was curious, someone who had heard about these two wise men or magicians or holy men who lived beside this ferry. They would ask many questions but received no answers, and they found neither magicians nor wise men, all they found were two elderly and friendly little men who seemed unable to speak and, in some special way, demented. They would laugh, and tell their friends about how foolish and credulous those people were who spread such empty rumours.
The years went by and nobody counted them. One time there came monks on a pilgrimage, disciples of Gotama, the buddha, and they asked the ferrymen to take them across the river, and the ferrymen learned that they were hurrying back to their great teacher because word was spreading that the noble one was mortally ill and must soon suffer his last death as a human before going to his release. Not long after came a new flux of monks on pilgrimage, and then another, and not only the monks but most of the other travellers and wanderers spoke of nothing but Gotama and his impending death. There was a flow of people here from all parts as if they had been an army on campaign or were going to attend the coronation of a king, they collected like ants, they flowed as if drawn by some kind of magic on their way to where the great buddha lay awaiting death, to the place where that awful event would take place and the great perfect one of an era would rise to majesty.
At this time Siddhartha thought a great deal about the wise man as he was dying, about the great teacher whose voice had admonished and who had brought hundreds of thousands to an awakening, whose voice he too had learned from and whose holy face he too had once looked on with veneration. He thought of him with kindness, saw his way to perfection before his eyes and, with a smile, thought of the words which he once, as a young man, had put to him, the noble one. Those words now seemed proud and arrogant to him, and he remembered them with a smile. He had long known that there was nothing that made him different from Gotama, though he was not able to accept his teachings. No, a true seeker would never be able to accept any teachings, not if he truly wanted to find what he sought. But he who has found what he sought would find goodness in any teachings at all, any path, any objective, he would be in no way different from the thousands of others who lived in eternity, who breathed in the breath of the divine.
One of those days, when there were so many making pilgrimage to the dying buddha, Kamala, who had once been the most beautiful of the courtesans, also made pilgrimage to him. She had long since withdrawn from her earlier way of life, had given her garden to Gotama’s monks, had sought refuge in his teachings, was one of the friends and benefactors of pilgrims. Together with her son, Siddhartha, she had heard news of Gotama’s impending death and set out, on foot and in simple clothes, on her way to him. She was on her way with her little son along the river: but the lad soon became tired, he wanted to go back home, he wanted to rest, he wanted something to eat, he became difficult and whining.
Kamala was frequently obliged to rest with him, he was used to imposing his will on her, she had to feed him, had to comfort him, had to discipline him. The boy was unable to understand why he had to go on this sad and arduous pilgrimage with his mother, to go to a place he did not know about, to go to a strange man who was something holy and who lay dying. So let him die! Why should it matter to him?
The pilgrims were not far from Vasudeva’s ferry when young Siddhartha once more insisted he and his mother should stop and rest. Kamala, too, was tired and while the lad munched on a banana she sank to the ground and, with eyes half closed, rested. Suddenly though, she gave out a piercing scream, the boy looked at her in shock and saw her face pale with horror as out from her dress emerged a small black snake which had just bitten her.
The two of them now ran along the path to reach people as soon as they could and were near the ferry crossing when Kamala collapsed, unable to go any further. But the lad raised a pitiful cry as he kissed and embraced his mother, who added her own voice to the boy’s loud calls for help. The sound reached the ears of Vasudeva as he stood by the ferry and he hurried to Kamala and her son. He took the woman by the arm and carried her into the boat, the boy also ran in, and they were all soon in the hut where Siddhartha stood at the stove, lighting the fire. He looked up and saw, first of all, the face of the boy which reminded him, in a way that was both wonderful and reproachful, of something he had forgotten. Then he saw Kamala. He recognised her immediately even though she lay unconscious in the arms of the ferryman, and now he realised that it was the face of his own son that had so reproached him, and his heart moved within his breast.
Kamala’s wound was washed, but was already black and her body was swollen, a healing drink was poured into her. Consciousness returned to her as she lay on Siddhartha’s bed in the hut, Siddhartha leant over her, he who had once had such earnest love for her. She thought she was dreaming, and, with a smile, looked into the face of her friend, slowly began to realise where she was, remembered the snake bite, and called out anxiously for the boy.
“He is with you. You need not worry,” said Siddhartha.
Kamala looked into his eyes. She spoke with a heavy tongue, made clumsy by the venom. “You have grown old, my love,” she said, “you have gone grey. But you are just like the young samana who once came to me in the garden with no clothes and with dusty feet. You are much more like him than you were then for you have gone away from me and Kamaswami. In your eyes you are just like him, Siddhartha. Oh, I too have grown old, old - did you still recognise me?”
Siddhartha smiled. “I recognised you immediately, Kamala, my love.”
Kamala pointed to her boy and said, “Did you recognise him, too? He is your son.”
Her eyes became erratic and fell shut. The boy wept, Siddhartha took him on his knee, let him cry, stroked his hair and, as he looked at the child’s face, a brahmanic prayer that he had once learned came to his mind, one that he had learned when he himself was a lad. Slowly, with melodic voice, he began to say it, the words flowed into him from the past, from his childhood. Affected by his sing-song the boy became quiet, sobbed now and then, and then fell asleep. Siddhartha put him down on Vasudeva’s bed. Vasudeva stood at the stove cooking rice. Siddhartha threw him a glance which he returned with a smile.
“She’s dying,” said Siddhartha quietly.
Vasudeva nodded, the light of the fire in the stove ran over his friendly face.
Kamala became conscious once again. Her face was twisted with pain, Siddhartha’s eye could read the pain on her mouth, on her pale cheeks. He read it in silence, watching, waiting, immersed in her suffering. Kamala felt it, her eyes sought his.
Looking at him, she said, “I can see, now, that your eyes have changed. They have become quite different. How is it that I can still see that you are Siddhartha? You are Siddhartha, yet you are not.”
Siddhartha said nothing, his eyes looked into hers in silence.
“Have you achieved it?” she asked. “Have you found peace?”
He smiled, and laid his hand on hers.
“I can see it,” she said, “I can see it. I will find peace too.”
“You have found peace,” said Siddhartha in a whisper.
Kamala looked steadily into his eyes. She thought of how she had intended to make pilgrimage to Gotama in order to see the face of a perfect one, in order to breathe in his peace, and now instead of finding Gotama she had found Siddhartha, and it was good so, just as good as if she had seen Gotama. She wanted to tell him so, but her tongue would no longer do as she wished. She looked at him in silence, and he saw in her eyes how her life was fading. When her final pain filled her eyes, when the final shudder ran through her limbs, he put his finger to her eyelids and closed them.
He sat there long, looking at her now lifeless face. He looked long at her mouth, her aged tired mouth with its lips, that now had become thin, and he remembered how once, in the springtime of his years, how he had once compared this mouth with a freshly opened fig. He sat there long, studied that pale face, those tired creases, filled himself with what he saw there, saw his own face lying in the same way, just as white, just as extinguished, simultaneously saw his own face and hers with its red lips, its burning eyes, and the sense of the present and of simultaneity permeated his being, the sense of eternity. He felt it deeply, more deeply than he had ever felt it before, now in that moment of the immortality of every life, the eternity of every glance.
When he raised himself Vasudeva had prepared rice for him. But Siddhartha did not eat. In the stall where they kept their goat the two old men prepared a beds of straw for themselves, and Vasudeva lay down to sleep. Siddhartha, though, went outside and spent the night sitting in front of the hut, listening to the river, the past flowing over him, all the ages of his life at the same time touching him and embracing him. From time to time, though, he would raise himself, go to the door of the hut and listen to find out whether the boy was sleeping.
Early in the morning, even before the sun had become visible, Vasudeva came out of the stall and went to his friend.
“You have not slept,” he said.
“No, Vasudeva. I sat here listening to the river. He told me much, he filled me deeply with the healing thought, the thought of unity.”
“You have gone through pain, Siddhartha, but I can see that there is no sadness that has entered your heart.”
“No, my friend, what do I have to be sad about? I used to be rich and happy, and now I have become even richer and happier. I have received the gift of a son.”
“Your son is also welcome. But now, Siddhartha, let us go to work, there is much to be done. Kamala died on the same bed as my wife did, long ago. Let us make her pyre on the same hill where I made hers.”
They built her pyre while the boy still slept.