Ravana already ruled the richest city in the world. His palace roofs were plated with gold; his storehouses overflowed; ten crowns sat upon his ten heads. By any measure, he had enough.

And yet every morning he woke wanting more.

"Bring me the treasures of the river-king," he ordered. They were brought. By evening they bored him. "Bring me the gardens of the gods." They were seized. By morning he wanted something else. His want was a cup with a crack in the bottom: pour in a kingdom, and it drained away by dusk, leaving him as thirsty as before.

To hide the emptiness, he filled his days with show. He held grand parades so the world would admire him. He boasted in every hall — of his strength, his cleverness, his ten clever heads — and the boasting was a kind of drunkenness; it made him dizzy and pleased with himself, and then it wore off and he needed more.

One night his old, wise brother Vibhishana sat beside him. "Brother," he said gently, "you have everything. Why are you never at peace?"

Ravana could not answer, because he had grabbed onto a false idea long ago and never let it go: the idea that the next thing — the next treasure, the next victory, the next bit of praise — would finally be the one that filled him up. So he kept reaching, and every reach was built on that crooked plan, and every plan led him to take what was not his.

"Do you see the trap, Arjuna?" Krishna said. "His misery did not come from having too little. It came from a want that nothing could fill, and from the proud show he used to cover it. A person like this works hard, very hard. But his resolves are tangled, and they carry him further from peace with every step. The way out is not to grab more. It is to mend the cup: to want less, and to be honest about the emptiness instead of decorating it."