Siddhartha continued: "A thought, it might be so. I must confess to
you, my dear: I don't differentiate much between thoughts and words.
To be honest, I also have no high opinion of thoughts. I have a better
opinion of things. Here on this ferry-boat, for instance, a man has
been my predecessor and teacher, a holy man, who has for many years
simply believed in the river, nothing else. He had noticed that the
river's spoke to him, he learned from it, it educated and taught him,
the river seemed to be a god to him, for many years he did not know that
every wind, every cloud, every bird, every beetle was just as divine and
knows just as much and can teach just as much as the worshipped river.
But when this holy man went into the forests, he knew everything, knew
more than you and me, without teachers, without books, only because he
had believed in the river."

Govinda said: "But is that what you call `things', actually something
real, something which has existence? Isn't it just a deception of the
Maja, just an image and illusion? Your stone, your tree, your river--
are they actually a reality?"

"This too," spoke Siddhartha, "I do not care very much about. Let the
things be illusions or not, after all I would then also be an illusion,
and thus they are always like me. This is what makes them so dear and
worthy of veneration for me: they are like me. Therefore, I can love
them. And this is now a teaching you will laugh about: love, oh
Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing of all. To
thoroughly understand the world, to explain it, to despise it, may be
the thing great thinkers do. But I'm only interested in being able to
love the world, not to despise it, not to hate it and me, to be able to
look upon it and me and all beings with love and admiration and great
respect."

"This I understand," spoke Govinda. "But this very thing was discovered
by the exalted one to be a deception. He commands benevolence,
clemency, sympathy, tolerance, but not love; he forbade us to tie our
heart in love to earthly things."

"I know it," said Siddhartha; his smile shone golden. "I know it,
Govinda. And behold, with this we are right in the middle of the
thicket of opinions, in the dispute about words. For I cannot deny, my
words of love are in a contradiction, a seeming contradiction with
Gotama's words. For this very reason, I distrust in words so much, for
I know, this contradiction is a deception. I