In a village beside a slow brown river there lived a potter so old that no one could remember a time before him. His name was forgotten; people simply called him Kumbhakara, the maker of pots.

Every morning, before the cows were let out, he sat down at his great stone wheel. He set one bare foot against it and gave it a spin. Round and round it went, humming, and from the wet grey clay his hands drew up a pot — then another, then another. By evening the drying yard was full of them: water jars, lamps, little bowls, tall vessels for grain.

A boy named Aru came every day to watch. One evening he asked, "Grandfather, don't you ever get tired? You make pots and pots and pots, and tomorrow you will make more."

The old potter laughed without stopping his hands. "Tired? Why would I be tired? Look." He tapped the heavy stone wheel beneath his palm. "I do not push and strain. I lean on the wheel. The wheel does the turning. The clay does the rising. I only rest my hands upon what is already moving, and the pots come out, one after another, as many as the world needs."

Aru watched the spinning wheel and the calm hands.

"And the pots," the potter went on, "do they choose to become pots? No. The spinning carries them up. They are shaped by the turning, helpless and happy, into exactly what they are meant to be."

That night Aru lay awake thinking. He had heard the temple sages say that the Lord makes the whole world this same way — resting upon His own great power, sending out being after being, age after age, never tiring, never forcing. The wheel of nature turns, and out come the stars, the rivers, the animals, the people, helpless in the best way, like soft clay rising into shape under a master's quiet hands.

In the morning Aru ran back to the potter's yard. The old man was already seated, one foot on the wheel, a fresh lump of clay between his palms.

"Again?" Aru asked, grinning.

"Again," said the potter, "and again, and again," and the wheel began to hum.