Siddhartha only smiled. He bent down and picked up a common river-stone, grey and wet.
Now, he was the material world. He had learned it slowly, as a child learns letters. From the golden cage of the samana, he had fallen into the gilded cage of the merchant Kamaswami. He had learned the taste of money, the weight of property, the weary sigh of satiated desire. He had learned to wear fine clothes, to feel the smoothness of another’s skin, to watch the sickness of gambling and the sour dregs of wine. siddhartha hermann hesse
His greatest wound was his son. The boy, raised in the soft wealth of the city, hated the hut, the ferry, the old men. He ran away. Siddhartha’s heart bled raw. He chased the boy in his mind for months, suffering the love that he had once despised as a chain. But the river, which knew everything, had also known this. It showed him that his own father had once stood by a different river, watching young Siddhartha run away to become a samana. The pain was the same. The love was the same. The circle was the same. Siddhartha only smiled
He had once called the world flawed, a veiled illusion to be escaped. Now, he sat on the damp clay bank of a wide, slow river. The same river he had crossed years ago, a young, sharp-eyed ascetic who had spat upon the material world. He had learned it slowly, as a child learns letters