In an old teaching tale, there once lived a fisherman's son who set a wide net across a sparkling pond, hoping to catch every fish at once.

Now in that pond swam a clever little fish named Chitra, whose name meant "many-coloured," because her thoughts darted everywhere like flashes of colour. She could never decide what she wanted. When she saw a crumb of bread, she swam for it. Halfway there she saw a shiny pebble and turned for that. Then a floating petal caught her eye, then a wriggling worm, then a bubble — and she zigzagged across the whole pond, wanting all of it, keeping none of it.

The older fish warned her gently. "Chitra, swim with a calm and single mind, and you'll always find the gap in the net. It is restless darting that drives a fish straight into the cords."

But Chitra could not slow her whirling thoughts. *This! No, that! No, the other!* She rushed after a glittering lure — and then a brighter one beside it — and in chasing both at once she shot sideways into the very middle of the net.

The more she thrashed, the more the cords wrapped around her. The net had not chased her; her own scattered wanting had carried her into it. And the pond, once wide and bright, suddenly felt small, dim and tangled.

A wise old turtle who lived among the reeds nosed her free before the fisherman's son returned, and he told her something she never forgot. "Little one, a mind that wants everything at once weaves a net no one else needs to throw. Calm the wanting, and the water opens up again."

This, Krishna tells Arjuna, is what happens to a heart lost in endless craving. Pulled a thousand ways, wrapped in delusion's net, clinging to one pleasure after another, it tumbles at last into a murky, joyless place — a net it wove for itself, and one that kindness and calm can always unravel.