The river beyond the army glittered now in the full morning light, and on its surface floated broad green lotus leaves, each cupping a few drops of dew.

"Watch the lotus leaf," Krishna said, nodding toward the water. "The rain falls on it all night long. The river splashes up against it. And yet in the morning — look — the leaf is dry. The water gathers into round, bright beads and rolls straight off. Nothing sticks. The leaf sits in the very middle of the water and is never made wet by it."

Arjuna looked, and it was true. A drop trembled at the edge of a leaf, then slid off and vanished into the river without leaving a mark.

"I am like that leaf," Krishna said. "I do a great many things. I set the seasons turning, I shape the four kinds of work, I come into the world age after age. All this action falls upon me like rain. And yet none of it stains me, none of it sticks. Do you know why?"

"Why?" asked Arjuna.

"Because I do not crave the fruit," Krishna said simply. "When you reach and grasp for what an action will bring you — *let it make me richer, let it make me praised, let it go the way I want* — that grasping is the glue. That is what makes the deed stick to you, the way honey on your fingers catches every speck of dust. But I want nothing from what I do. I act because it is right to act, and then I let the result roll off like dew."

He turned to Arjuna, and his look was steady and warm.

"And here is the gift in it for you. Whoever truly understands this about me — whoever sees how I move through all my doing untouched — learns to live the same way. They act with their whole heart, and yet stay free. Their deeds never tie them in knots. They become, themselves, a leaf the water cannot wet."

Arjuna sat with this for a long moment. On the river, a hundred lotus leaves held the morning light without holding the morning rain, and something in his chest loosened, just a little, like a knot beginning to come undone.