Two pilgrims, Kavi and Anala, set out to find a holy place they had heard of all their lives — a sacred lake said to make the heart perfectly calm. They walked for many days, footsore and dusty, asking everyone they met how much farther it was.

Kavi grumbled the whole way. "When we reach the lake," he said, "then I will finally be at peace. Then it will all be worth it. Not before."

Anala walked differently. At every river crossing she stopped, cupped the water in her hands, and drank slowly. She watched the same evening light settle on a beggar and on a wealthy merchant with the same gold. She smiled at a barking dog the way she smiled at a singing child. By the time they were halfway, something in her face had already gone quiet and bright.

At last they crested a hill and saw the famous lake below — and Kavi ran toward it, certain his peace was finally about to begin.

But when he reached the shore, the water was only water. He stared at it, confused. "Where is the calm?" he cried. "I came all this way!"

Anala sat down beside him on a warm rock. "Brother," she said gently, "the lake did not have your peace hidden in it. The peace was in the seeing. I started seeing the one same light in everything back at the first river, and it has been with me at every step since. I did not have to arrive anywhere. I was already there."

Kavi looked at the lake, and then at his friend's untroubled face, and slowly understood that he had walked a hundred miles to reach a place he had been carrying inside himself the entire time.

In his distant chariot, Krishna told Arjuna the same secret. The ones who see the same flawless Self everywhere have already won the journey. They are not waiting to arrive. Brahman is the same everywhere, so to see sameness is to be home.

The lake rippled. Two pilgrims sat by it — one finally still, one just beginning to be.