'Yes Siddhartha,' he said. 'Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the waterfalls, at the ferry, and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor 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. Siddhartha's previous lives were also not in the past, and his death and return to Brahma are not in the future. Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence.'

Hermann Hesse, from 'Siddhartha'