Autumn. Red­dish leaves, yel­low patches, a dappled green back­drop, still weath­er. The hill­side oppos­ite, on the far bank of the river, is pic­tur­esque; it radi­ates not wild dis­ar­ray but undis­turbed order. The little river widens, its bay brush­ing a sand­bank; fur­ther off, bey­ond the great stones, lie the rap­ids, where the water splashes and roars, its voice car­ry­ing far. I choose one of the great stones to settle on, and all at once I catch sight of a leaf. The mir­ror of the water is almost undis­turbed, only a pond skater leaps across it here and there, and yet everything is in motion. The water is mak­ing for the rap­ids with an invis­ible, unnoticed move­ment. The leaf sets off. Not so: it has long been under way, ever since it fell; only now do I notice its move­ment. It is plain to see, float­ing on the sur­face of the water, borne along by the invis­ible cur­rent. Like fate. It has its way unnoticed, but irres­ist­ibly. The leaf's slow jour­ney car­ries it towards its des­tiny. There is no rain whose drops, strik­ing the mir­ror of the water, might turn it aside, nor wind to turn it back; there is no stone to steer the cur­rent towards the bank, no branch for it to catch on, no one to inter­vene. Per­haps not even the angels are look­ing this way now.

And the invis­ible pull, sure of itself, car­ries the leaf on. The moment might even be poet­ic, were it not fatally tra­gic, did it not call up a two­fold passing. A fallen leaf drifts through the rap­ids into the depths… and van­ishes.

Long ago Buddha set a little bowl upon the run­ning water, say­ing that if the bowl floated upstream, against the cur­rent, he would surely attain enlight­en­ment. The bowl set off upstream, and Buddha attained enlight­en­ment.

People who live along rivers know that right beside the bank the water flows dif­fer­ently, more slowly, and at times it even moves the other way, against the stream. Phys­ics, hydro­dynam­ics, says the unbe­liev­er. Phys­ics, yes, and a drop of magic, you say. Buddha was no schol­ar of fluid dynam­ics. Wheth­er the legend is true does not mat­ter. I say: pure magic…

Then I notice the second leaf. This one does not travel with the cur­rent: it sets out from the bay, mov­ing even more slowly than the first. A dif­fer­ent fate? Not the rap­ids, not the fall into the depths, not the two­fold passing? It creeps along almost beneath the sur­face of the water; the leaf moves without mov­ing, without the sur­face so much as quiv­er­ing. The pale sil­hou­ettes of the stones mirrored on the water wash out the fleck of the leaf; only later, over the dark stretches, does it appear again. Now it seems lost, now it sur­faces once more. I close my eyes; I do not want to see the leaf's course. It can­not be that it ends the same way… but the invis­ible cur­rent car­ries it along even between the great stones that bar its path, draw­ing the leaf on. By a dif­fer­ent course, but it ends the same way…

I keep a deep silence. The water babbles, the stones keep silent, the sky's massed clouds stand motion­less.

He who knows the Truth may leave his body any­where and at any time; time and place do not mat­ter. It is like a withered leaf fall­ing from the tree. Wheth­er this leaf falls into a holy river at a holy place of pil­grim­age and at a blessed moment, or in an unholy and impure place at an ill-omened moment, it brings the tree neither bless­ing nor mis­for­tune. The know­er of the Truth is not bound by the cus­tom­ary con­straints on leav­ing the body: at what moment and in what place he gives up this mor­tal frame of flesh and filth. For lib­er­a­tion is not leav­ing the body, but con­quer­ing ignor­ance. (Shank­ara: Vivekachudam­ani 556-560).

I would be a stone, and I would be a river, I would be the sky and I would be a body of water. I would be a holy place or a tree shed­ding its leaves, I would be a whirl­wind, and I would be a watch­er at the water's edge, I would be any­thing, gladly… But I would not be a leaf, neither the one nor the other, float­ing on the water, bound for decay…