OM

by Hermann Hesse

　　For a long time, the wound continued to burn. Many a travellerSiddhartha had to ferry across the river who was accompanied by a son ora daughter, and he saw none of them without envying him, withoutthinking: "So many, so many thousands possess this sweetest of goodfortunes--why don't I? Even bad people, even thieves and robbers havechildren and love them, and are being loved by them, all except for me."Thus simply, thus without reason he now thought, thus similar to thechildlike people he had become.Differently than before, he now looked upon people, less smart, lessproud, but instead warmer, more curious, more involved. When he ferriedtravellers of the ordinary kind, childlike people, businessmen,warriors, women, these people did not seem alien to him as they used to:he understood them, he understood and shared their life, which was notguided by thoughts and insight, but solely by urges and wishes, he feltlike them. Though he was near perfection and was bearing his finalwound, it still seemed to him as if those childlike people were hisbrothers, their vanities, desires for possession, and ridiculous aspectswere no longer ridiculous to him, became understandable, became lovable,even became worthy of veneration to him. The blind love of a motherfor her child, the stupid, blind pride of a conceited father for hisonly son, the blind, wild desire of a young, vain woman for jewelry andadmiring glances from men, all of these urges, all of this childishstuff, all of these simple, foolish, but immensely strong, stronglyliving, strongly prevailing urges and desires were now no childishnotions for Siddhartha any more, he saw people living for their sake,saw them achieving infinitely much for their sake, travelling,conducting wars, suffering infinitely much, bearing infinitely much, andhe could love them for it, he saw life, that what is alive, theindestructible, the Brahman in each of their passions, each of theiracts. Worthy of love and admiration were these people in their blindloyalty, their blind strength and tenacity. They lacked nothing, therewas nothing the knowledgeable one, the thinker, had to put him above themexcept for one little thing, a single, tiny, small thing: theconsciousness, the conscious thought of the oneness of all life. AndSiddhartha even doubted in many an hour, whether this knowledge, thisthought was to be valued thus highly, whether it might not also perhapsbe a childish idea of the thinking people, of the thinking and childlikepeople. In all other respects, the worldly people were of equal rankto the wise men, were often far superior to them, just as animals toocan, after all, in some moments, seem to be superior to humans in theirtough, unrelenting performance of what is necessary.Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in Siddhartha the realisation, theknowledge, what wisdom actually was, what the goal of his long searchwas. It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secretart, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought ofoneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness. Slowly thisblossomed in him, was shining back at him from Vasudeva's old, childlikeface: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world,smiling, oneness.But the wound still burned, longingly and bitterly Siddhartha thought ofhis son, nurtured his love and tenderness in his heart, allowed thepain to gnaw at him, committed all foolish acts of love. Not by itself,this flame would go out.And one day, when the wound burned violently, Siddhartha ferried acrossthe river, driven by a yearning, got off the boat and was willing to goto the city and to look for his son. The river flowed softly andquietly, it was the dry season, but its voice sounded strange: itlaughed! It laughed clearly. The river laughed, it laughed brightlyand clearly at the old ferryman. Siddhartha stopped, he bent over thewater, in order to hear even better, and he saw his face reflected inthe quietly moving waters, and in this reflected face there wassomething, which reminded him, something he had forgotten, and as hethought about it, he found it: this face resembled another face, whichhe used to know and love and also fear. It resembled his father's face,the Brahman. And he remembered how he, a long time ago, as a young man,had forced his father to let him go to the penitents, how he had bed hisfarewell to him, how he had gone and had never come back. Had hisfather not also suffered the same pain for him, which he now sufferedfor his son? Had his father not long since died, alone, without havingseen his son again? Did he not have to expect the same fate forhimself? Was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid matter, thisrepetition, this running around in a fateful circle?The river laughed. Yes, so it was, everything came back, which had notbeen suffered and solved up to its end, the same pain was suffered overand over again. But Siddhartha want back into the boat and ferried backto the hut, thinking of his father, thinking of his son, laughed at bythe river, at odds with himself, tending towards despair, and not lesstending towards laughing along at {???} himself and the entire world.{I think, it should read "ber" instead of "aber".}Alas, the wound was not blossoming yet, his heart was still fighting hisfate, cheerfulness and victory were not yet shining from his suffering.Nevertheless, he felt hope, and once he had returned to the hut, he feltan undefeatable desire to open up to Vasudeva, to show him everything,the master of listening, to say everything.Vasudeva was sitting in the hut and weaving a basket. He no longer usedthe ferry-boat, his eyes were starting to get weak, and not just hiseyes; his arms and hands as well. Unchanged and flourishing was onlythe joy and the cheerful benevolence of his face.Siddhartha sat down next to the old man, slowly he started talking.What they had never talked about, he now told him of, of his walk tothe city, at that time, of the burning wound, of his envy at the sightof happy fathers, of his knowledge of the foolishness of such wishes, ofhis futile fight against them. He reported everything, he was able tosay everything, even the most embarrassing parts, everything could besaid, everything shown, everything he could tell. He presented hiswound, also told how he fled today, how he ferried across the water,a childish run-away, willing to walk to the city, how the river hadlaughed.While he spoke, spoke for a long time, while Vasudeva was listeningwith a quiet face, Vasudeva's listening gave Siddhartha a strongersensation than ever before, he sensed how his pain, his fears flowedover to him, how his secret hope flowed over, came back at him fromhis counterpart. To show his wound to this listener was the same asbathing it in the river, until it had cooled and become one with theriver. While he was still speaking, still admitting and confessing,Siddhartha felt more and more that this was no longer Vasudeva, nolonger a human being, who was listening to him, that this motionlesslistener was absorbing his confession into himself like a tree the rain,that this motionless man was the river itself, that he was God himself,that he was the eternal itself. And while Siddhartha stopped thinkingof himself and his wound, this realisation of Vasudeva's changedcharacter took possession of him, and the more he felt it and enteredinto it, the less wondrous it became, the more he realised thateverything was in order and natural, that Vasudeva had already been likethis for a long time, almost forever, that only he had not quiterecognised it, yes, that he himself had almost reached the same state.He felt, that he was now seeing old Vasudeva as the people see thegods, and that this could not last; in his heart, he started bidding hisfarewell to Vasudeva. Thorough all this, he talked incessantly.When he had finished talking, Vasudeva turned his friendly eyes, whichhad grown slightly weak, at him, said nothing, let his silent love andcheerfulness, understanding and knowledge, shine at him. He tookSiddhartha's hand, led him to the seat by the bank, sat down with him,smiled at the river."You've heard it laugh," he said. "But you haven't heard everything.Let's listen, you'll hear more."They listened. Softly sounded the river, singing in many voices.Siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in themoving water: his father appeared, lonely, mourning for his son; hehimself appeared, lonely, he also being tied with the bondage ofyearning to his distant son; his son appeared, lonely as well, the boy,greedily rushing along the burning course of his young wishes, eachone heading for his goal, each one obsessed by the goal, each onesuffering. The river sang with a voice of suffering, longingly it sang,longingly, it flowed towards its goal, lamentingly its voice sang."Do you hear?" Vasudeva's mute gaze asked. Siddhartha nodded."Listen better!" Vasudeva whispered.Siddhartha made an effort to listen better. The image of his father,his own image, the image of his son merged, Kamala's image also appearedand was dispersed, and the image of Govinda, and other images, and theymerged with each other, turned all into the river, headed all, being theriver, for the goal, longing, desiring, suffering, and the river's voicesounded full of yearning, full of burning woe, full of unsatisfiabledesire. For the goal, the river was heading, Siddhartha saw ithurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and ofall people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters werehurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake,the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal wasfollowed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to thesky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into asource, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on onceagain. But the longing voice had changed. It still resounded, full ofsuffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and ofsuffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices,a thousand voices.Siddhartha listened. He was now nothing but a listener, completelyconcentrated on listening, completely empty, he felt, that he had nowfinished learning to listen. Often before, he had heard all this, thesemany voices in the river, today it sounded new. Already, he could nolonger tell the many voices apart, not the happy ones from the weepingones, not the ones of children from those of men, they all belongedtogether, the lamentation of yearning and the laughter of theknowledgeable one, the scream of rage and the moaning of the dying ones,everything was one, everything was intertwined and connected, entangleda thousand times. And everything together, all voices, all goals, allyearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, allof this together was the world. All of it together was the flow ofevents, was the music of life. And when Siddhartha was listeningattentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when heneither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tiehis soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, butwhen he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the greatsong of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om:the perfection."Do you hear," Vasudeva's gaze asked again.Brightly, Vasudeva's smile was shining, floating radiantly over all thewrinkles of his old face, as the Om was floating in the air over all thevoices of the river. Brightly his smile was shining, when he looked athis friend, and brightly the same smile was now starting to shine onSiddhartha's face as well. His wound blossomed, his suffering wasshining, his self had flown into the oneness.In this hour, Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate, stopped suffering.On his face flourished the cheerfulness of a knowledge, which is nolonger opposed by any will, which knows perfection, which is inagreement with the flow of events, with the current of life, full ofsympathy for the pain of others, full of sympathy for the pleasure ofothers, devoted to the flow, belonging to the oneness.When Vasudeva rose from the seat by the bank, when he looked intoSiddhartha's eyes and saw the cheerfulness of the knowledge shiningin them, he softly touched his shoulder with his hand, in this carefuland tender manner, and said: "I've been waiting for this hour, my dear.Now that it has come, let me leave. For a long time, I've been waitingfor this hour; for a long time, I've been Vasudeva the ferryman. Nowit's enough. Farewell, hut, farewell, river, farewell, Siddhartha!"Siddhartha made a deep bow before him who bid his farewell."I've known it," he said quietly. "You'll go into the forests?""I'm going into the forests, I'm going into the oneness," spoke Vasudevawith a bright smile.With a bright smile, he left; Siddhartha watched him leaving. With deepjoy, with deep solemnity he watched him leave, saw his steps full ofpeace, saw his head full of lustre, saw his body full of light.