Siddhartha sat alone by the river for a long time after the boy was gone. He was older than he had ever been. His hair was half-grey. His face was the face of a man who had lost something and did not yet know how to carry the loss.

He looked into the water.

And he saw, in the moving mirror of it, his own face. And beneath his face, his father's face. And beneath that, his son's face — angry, stubborn, running. Three faces, the same face, carried by the same river.

He understood that he had done to his father what the boy was doing to him. That every father loses a son. That every son loses a father. That this is not an accident, but the whole shape of things. That he had run away from his father to find the Self, and his son had run away from him to find the Self, and someday the son, too, would sit beside some other river and understand.

He wept — but the tears were not sad. And the river, beneath, kept singing its long syllable: Om, Om, Om. Which is the bow, and the arrow, and the mark, all in one sound.

Three faces, the same face, carried by the same river.