Entry Eight: Siddhartha

     He once asked him, "Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?"
     A bright smile spread over Vasudeva's face.
     "Yes, Siddhartha," he said.  "Is this what you mean? 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, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?"
     "That is it," said Siddhartha, "and when I learned that, I reviewed my life and it was also a river, and Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man and Siddhartha the old man, were only separated by shadows, not through reality."

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 uhhhhhhg when this happened I had to put the book down for a second.  When I was just a little younger I concluded that I did not believe in time but when asked about it I could never explain why.  Even longer ago my father would take me to the many lakes and rivers surrounding our city.  When I looked at dams I would often wonder how long it would take for a single drop of water to make it from one side of the lake to the other.  I tried to think of ways to measure it, with tiny trackers or food coloring, but I knew that when they touched the water they would disperse and leave no meaningful data.  The connection of these two ideas came together so well in this paragraph it was kind of overwhelming.