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Everything was a lie, everything stank, everything stank of lies, everything feigned meaning and happiness and beauty, and yet everything was decaying while nobody acknowledged the fact. The world tested bitter; life was agony.
Govinda then murmured a verse out of the Upanishad: “Whosoever immerses themselves in Atman through contemplation and a purified spirit will receive ineffable blessing in their heart.”
As they went on their way, Govinda said: “O Siddhartha, you have learned more among the Samanas than I knew. It is very difficult indeed to bewitch an older Samana. Had you remained there, you truly would have learned to walk on water before too long.” “I don’t have any desire to walk on water,” said Siddhartha. “Let the old Samanas satisfy themselves with such tricks.”
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.
He learned to pay attention closely with a quiet heart, with patience, and with an open soul devoid of passion, wishes, judgment, and opinions.
There was nothing they lacked, and there was nothing that the wise one or thinker possessed that put him above the rest of them except for one single, small, tiny thing: the awareness and conscious thought of the unity of all life. At many times, Siddhartha even doubted whether this knowledge should be so highly valued, or whether it was also perhaps some childishness of the intellectual people, the childlike people who practiced thinking. In every other regard, worldly people were of equal rank to the wise men, and were often far superior to them in the same way that animals can, in some
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There have been many thoughts, but it would be difficult for me to transfer them to you. See here, Govinda, this is one of the thoughts that I’ve found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.”
“I’m not joking; I’m telling you what I’ve found. Knowledge can be transferred, but not wisdom. It can be found and lived, and it is possible to be carried by it. Miracles can be performed with it, but it can’t be expressed and taught with words. This was what I sometimes suspected even as a young man, and what has driven me away from teachers.
