In his journey towards enlightenment and wisdom, Siddhartha meets a ferryman that at first doesn’t seem to be of any help to his search and doesn’t catch his attention. However, the second time around, when Siddhartha leaves the city feeling sick and nauseated because of the yearnings and desires that had eaten his personality, he notices this man called Vasudeva and understands how this humble guy has found peace and achieved wisdom. He decides to stay there to learn from him. During one of their moments of meditation by the river, Siddhartha begins to understand how something as common as a river can teach important lessons of life. During their period of meditation, Siddhartha finally comes to the realization: “That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it […]” (107). He concludes that, as Heraclitus had stated, you never step twice in the same river, meaning that even though the river is in a continuous state of change and renewal since the water flows down, it’s always there. He understands that everything is transitory and consequently has to be respected not only for what it is now, but also for what it has been and what it will be. The river also makes him understand how time works; in fact, he challenges the fiction of time and comes to the conclusion that everything happens simultaneously, just like the river that is everywhere at the same time.
When Govinda meets Siddhartha for the last time, he finds out that his old friend has become enlightened, as he had predicted dozens of years before. Despite all the good teaching provided by the Illustrious One, Govinda hasn’t attained Nirvana yet and admits that he never will. Still trying to attain it, he asks Siddhartha to suggest him how to do so but Siddhartha is coherent with his thesis and just tells him that knowledge can be transmitted but wisdom cannot be taught. All he can do to help him is telling him to live and to experience new things, acquiring knowledge through self-learning. He also tells him his own idea about existence, giving a real life example, saying: “This […] is a stone, and within a certain length of time it will perhaps be soil and from the soil it will become a plant, animal or man. This stone is stone; it is also animal, God and Buddha. I do not respect and love it because it was one thing and will become something else, but because it has already long being everything and always is everything” (145). With this concise description of life, Siddhartha makes clear his point that everything is transitory, just like a river, therefore it’s been everything in the past and will be even more in the future. This is the reason why everything, both objects and humans, animals and plants, need to be respected and loved. Everythingness is nothingness for the very reason that within a single thing there is much more than what can be seen; everything is already in there, you just have to wait to find it.
Thanks to his experiences of life, the help of the river and of a wise man, Siddhartha finally found what he was looking for. He found the peace within himself, he learned how to listen, he uncovered the fiction of time, and he recognized the absolutism of everything existing on this planet. The understanding of everythingness made him a new man that would also grow old and die, but that will never stop to contribute to make this world as attractive and beautiful as it is now.
Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha.trans. Hilda Rosner. New York, NY: Bantam books, 1981 ed.
