Siddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty, taking in everything. . . . He had often heard all this before, all these numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different. . . . . They were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.

-- Hermann Hesse

(Siddhartha,

translated by Hilda Rosner)