Seventeen times the wisdom had risen and fallen like the tide. For seventeen chapters Krishna had spoken, and Arjuna had listened, and the great web of teaching had spread across the still battlefield of Kurukshetra. Now the day was old. The light had turned the colour of honey, and the long shadows of the chariot stretched out over the dust.

Arjuna had grown quiet. He was a warrior who had heard enough to fill ten lifetimes, and yet one small knot remained in his mind, refusing to come loose.

"Krishna," he said at last, "may I ask you something, even now?"

"Ask," said Krishna, and there was warmth in the single word.

"You have used two words again and again. Sannyāsa. Tyāga. When you say them, you say them as if they were two different birds. But to my ear they sing the same song. Both mean letting go. Both mean opening the hand. How are they not the same?"

Krishna turned, and his eyes held the patient delight of a teacher whose student has finally noticed the most important thing in the room.

"You have caught the very edge of the truth, Arjuna," he said. "Two words that sound alike, yet point to different doors."

Arjuna pressed on, the way he had pressed forward in a hundred battles. "Then take them apart for me. Hold up sannyāsa in one hand and tyāga in the other, and show me, separately, what each truly is. Do not blend them. Do not hurry. I have come too far to leave with a blur where there should be two clear shapes."

A heron lifted off from the riverbank far behind them, white against the deepening sky, and flew slowly toward home.

Krishna smiled. "A wise question," he said, "is like a careful hand untying a knot — gentle, patient, refusing to pull until the loop comes free on its own. You do not want a quick answer. You want the right one. Very well. Listen, and I will set these two before you, each in its own place, each in its own light."

And Arjuna, who had asked his last great question, folded his hands and grew still, ready to receive the final teaching of all.