Where two rivers met, there was a small wooden boat, and in that boat,
morning to night, worked a ferryman named Kesava. He had never read a holy
book. He had never sat in a cave. He had never made a long pilgrimage to a
famous temple, because he could never leave his boat — there was always
someone waiting on the bank to cross.
Yet the wandering monks who passed that way began to whisper that the
ferryman was the holiest man on the river.
A proud young scholar heard this and came to see for himself. He found Kesava
poling his boat across the brown water, a fat merchant on one bench and a
ragged beggar on the other.
"They say you are a great soul," said the scholar, climbing aboard. "But you
sit here all day pulling an oar. How can you possibly be near to God? You
never leave this boat. You never pray in the temple. You only ferry people
back and forth, back and forth."
Kesava smiled and kept poling. He helped the fat merchant step ashore with
exactly the same care that he then used to help the ragged beggar — bowing
his head a little to each, as though helping someone precious.
"Did you see that?" the scholar pressed. "You bowed to a beggar the same as
to a rich man."
"I see the same thing in both of them," said Kesava simply. "When the
merchant steps into my boat, I am carrying the divine across the water. When
the beggar steps in, I am carrying the divine across the water. When the
crying child climbs in, when the sick old woman climbs in, when you climbed
in just now — every time, I am holding the same one God in my two hands and
setting him safely on the other shore. I do not have to go to a temple,
sir. The temple comes to my boat all day long, wearing a hundred faces."
The scholar opened his mouth to argue and found he had nothing to say.
"I cannot leave my boat," Kesava went on, his oar dipping steadily, "and I
have never once needed to. I learned to see the one Self in everyone who
crosses. So whatever I am doing — poling, bailing, mending the rope, helping
a frightened goat aboard — I am never away from God for a single moment.
My boat is my temple, and every passenger is the offering."
The scholar sat down quietly on the bench. And when he reached the far bank,
he did not climb out as the same man who had climbed in.
