In the city of Kashi long ago lived a healer named Jivaka, the finest in all the land. People came to him with wounds and fevers and broken bones, and he mended them. But the day they spoke of most was the day he cut.

A boy had been carried in with a poisoned arrow buried deep in his shoulder. To save him, Jivaka would have to cut into the flesh — to wound in order to heal. The boy's mother wept. "You will hurt him!" she cried.

"I will," said Jivaka quietly, washing his hands. "And in hurting him, I will save him. Watch."

He took up the small bright blade. His face held no anger and no fear, no pride at his own great skill and no greedy thought of the gold he would be paid. There was only the boy, the arrow, and the steady work. He cut where he had to cut, drew out the poison, and bound the wound, his hands as calm as a still pond.

The boy lived. And when it was over, the mother fell at Jivaka's feet. "You spilled his blood," she said, wondering, "yet you are not a man of violence. How can that be?"

Jivaka helped her up. "It is the heart behind the hand that matters," he said. "I held the knife, but not with hate. I cut, but not for myself. When there is no angry 'I want' and no proud 'look at me' inside the deed, the deed does not stain you. The same blade in a robber's hand would be a crime. In mine, it was care."

Years later this story reached Arjuna, sick at heart on the battlefield, dreading the duty before him. And Krishna's teaching shone the same light: the warrior who fights without hatred, who does the hard thing because it is right and not because his ego hungers for it, is like the surgeon: he acts, yet he is not bound, for his heart stays clean.