Arjuna was quiet for a while, turning Krishna's words over like stones in his palm. Then he said, "But surely the thinker and the worker end up somewhere different. One sits still; one is always moving."

"Do they?" Krishna asked. "Let me show you a house."

He spoke softly, and Arjuna could almost see it rise out of the mist — a great hall with a warm lamp burning in its center.

"This house has two doors," said Krishna. "One faces the cool garden, where a person may sit beneath the trees and grow still until, very slowly, he walks inside. The other faces the busy road, where a person works in the sun all day and then, at evening, steps in through that door."

The lamp in Arjuna's mind glowed steadily.

"Now," Krishna went on, "once they are both inside, sitting by the same lamp, can you tell which one came through the garden door and which through the road door? Their faces are lit by the same flame. They warm their hands at the same fire. The room does not ask which door you used."

Arjuna almost smiled. "So the doors are different, but the room is the same."

"That is the whole secret," said Krishna. "The place the thinker reaches by knowing and the place the worker reaches by doing — it is one place, one lamp, one warmth. A person who sees only the doors, and argues over them forever, has not yet stepped inside. But the one who sees that both doors open into the same room — that person sees truly."

A breeze stirred the chariot banner. The mist was thinning now, and the real sun was breaking through.

"So when you act today, Arjuna, do not feel you have chosen a lesser door. You are walking toward the same lamp as any sage in any forest. Only keep walking. The room is waiting, and it is warm."