A small fire crackled near the chariot, and an old priest named Vaishampayana had come to make the evening offering. Arjuna watched him lift a wooden spoon, pour clarified butter into the flames, and murmur a blessing. The fire leaned and brightened.

"Watch closely," Krishna said softly. "Tell me what you see."

"I see a man, a spoon, some butter, and a fire," Arjuna answered.

"Look again. Where did the butter come from?"

Arjuna thought. "From milk. From a cow. From grass the cow ate. From the rain that grew the grass, and the earth that held the rain."

"And the wood of the fire?"

"From a tree. From a seed. From the sun that pulled the tree up out of the soil."

"And the priest's hands? And the spoon he carries? And the very breath he uses to say the blessing?"

Arjuna fell quiet. The fire painted gold across his face.

"All of it," said Krishna, "is one thing wearing many shapes. The same vast Spirit became the grass and the rain, the cow and the milk, the tree and the flame, the hands and the breath. We call that one vast Spirit Brahman — the thing that grows into everything and is left out of nothing."

The priest poured again. The flames jumped.

"So when the wise one offers," Krishna went on, "there is the Spirit, offering the Spirit, into the Spirit, through the Spirit. The giver, the gift, the fire, and the giving — four names, one being. It is like a wave lifting water, with water, into water. Nothing is truly separate."

"Then what does such a person gain?" Arjuna asked.

"Everything — and nothing they did not already have. When you act while seeing that all is one vast whole, your mind grows so steady and gathered that the act carries you straight into that whole. You were never outside it. You only forgot."

The offering finished. The priest pressed his palms together and bowed to the fire, and the fire, fed and bright, seemed to bow back.

"See the one in the many," Krishna said, "and even a spoonful of butter becomes a doorway home."