“If I could talk and teach, I might be a sage, but I am only a ferryman, and my task is to ferry people across this river. I have ferried many across, thousands, and for all of them my river has been nothing but a hindrance in their travels. They traveled for money and business, to weddings and on pilgrimages, and the river was in their way, and the ferryman was there to get them swiftly across that hindrance. But for a few among the thousands, a very few, four or five, the river was no hindrance, They heard its voice, they listened to it, and the river became sacred for them, as it is for me. Let us now retire for the night, Siddhartha.”