By now Hiranyakashipu had clung so long to one idea — that nothing was sacred and only his own will was real — that the idea had hardened into everything he did.

His armies marched out and emptied villages. His tax-collectors took the last grain from poor farmers. He had decided he was the only thing that mattered, and so the wellbeing of the whole world seemed to him a small, silly thing, easy to spend.

But the strangest harm fell inside his own home.

His little son Prahlada had grown into a gentle, glowing boy who loved everyone and saw goodness woven through all things. To most fathers this would be a joy. To Hiranyakashipu it was an insult. The boy's kindness was a living argument against the king's whole way of seeing, proof that the world was not empty after all.

"Where is this kindness of yours?" the king roared one evening, his voice shaking the hall. "Show me. Is it in this pillar?" And he struck a great stone pillar with his fist, as if to prove the world held nothing worth believing in.

Prahlada did not flinch. "It is everywhere, Father," he said softly. "Even here. Even in you, if you would let it be."

The hall went very quiet. For one heartbeat, something flickered across the king's face — almost as if a door had cracked open. But he had clung to the empty view too long, and he slammed the door shut. His harsh deeds had become a habit, and habits, Krishna teaches, are hard to break once they have been fed for years.

"Watch carefully, Arjuna," Krishna said. "The king was not born cruel. He arrived there one clung-to idea at a time, until the cruelty came out of him on its own. This is why I am showing you the chain link by link, so you can see exactly where it could have been broken. And it can always be broken. Even a lost self can be found, the moment it lets go of the view that lost it."