King Rahugana of Sindhu was in a hurry.

His palanquin — a gilded litter carried by four bearers — was rushing through the forests of the western coast. He had questions about dharma, about the Self, and he wanted answers the way a thirsty man wants water: urgently, now.

But the palanquin was lurching. The fourth bearer — pressed into service that morning — kept breaking stride, stopping to avoid stepping on ants, veering sideways to let a beetle pass. He walked with a strange, dreamy care, as though the forest floor were sacred ground.

"Why can't you keep pace?" Rahugana shouted from behind the silk curtain. "Are you weak? Are you lazy? Walk properly!"

The bearer said nothing. He walked on, still stopping for ants.

Rahugana pulled the curtain aside and looked at the man. He was young — or seemed young — with matted hair, a body smeared with dust, and eyes that did not belong to a palanquin bearer. They were steady, luminous, and completely untroubled. They were the eyes of someone who was looking at something the king could not see.

"Who are you?" Rahugana demanded.

The bearer smiled. "My name is Jadabharata. I was a king once. Before that, a deer. Before that, a sage. The Self that carried those bodies now carries your palanquin. It is not tired."

Rahugana stared. Something in the man's voice — a depth, a stillness, like a well with no bottom — made him climb down from the palanquin and stand in the dirt road.

"The world you see," Jadabharata said, gesturing at the forest, the road, the palanquin, the king's jeweled hands, "this is what everyone is awake to. Wealth, power, the road and the hurry. But it is a dream, O King — vivid, compelling, but a dream. And while you dream it, you sleep through the one reality that matters."

"What reality?"

"The Self. Brahman. The awareness that is looking through your eyes right now — the same awareness that looks through the ant's eyes, and the deer's, and mine. Everyone is awake to the world of names and forms. The sage is awake to what lies behind them. What all beings call day — the chase, the hurry, the wanting — that is the sage's night. And what all beings sleep through — the silent, infinite Self — that is where the sage is awake."

Rahugana lowered himself to the ground, folding his royal robes beneath his knees, and touched Jadabharata's dusty feet.

"Teach me," he said.

Jadabharata picked up an ant that was crossing the road and placed it gently on a leaf. "I just did," he said. "Were you awake?"

The forest was still. And the king, who had been in such a hurry, found that the thing he had been racing toward had been standing right beside him the whole time, carrying his palanquin, stopping for ants.