Vasudeva was no friend of words; rarely, Siddhartha succeeded
in persuading him to speak.
"Did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret
from the river: that there is no time?"
Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile.
"Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke. "It is this what you mean, isn't it: that
the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the
waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains,
everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not
the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?"
"This it is," said Siddhartha. "And when I had learned it, I looked at
my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only
separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a
shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were
no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing
was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is
present."
Siddhartha spoke with ecstasy; deeply, this enlightenment had delighted
him. Oh, was not all suffering time, were not all forms of tormenting
oneself and being afraid time, was not everything hard, everything
hostile in the world gone and overcome as soon as one had overcome time,
as soon as time would have been put out of existence by one's thoughts?
In ecstatic delight, he had spoken, but Vasudeva smiled at him brightly
and nodded in confirmation; silently he nodded, brushed his hand over
Siddhartha's shoulder, turned back to his work.
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