In a village near the river there was a contest every spring. Whoever brought the purest water to the temple would have it offered to the gods. People travelled far for it. One man climbed to a mountain spring. Another filtered river water through seven cloths. A third paid a great price for water carried from a holy lake.

A girl named Ila brought nothing in her hands at all.

The priest, an old friend of Krishna's who had heard him teach, smiled when he saw her empty palms. "And your water, child?"

"I could not decide which was purest," Ila said. "The mountain water was cold and clean. The lake water was holy. The seven-times-filtered water was clear as glass. They all seemed so pure. So I came to ask you — what is the purest thing of all?"

The old priest set down his ladle. "Once," he said, "a teacher told me there is nothing in this whole world that makes a person as pure as truly knowing. Not the coldest spring. Not the most sacred lake. Not any water carried from any distance. Understanding — really seeing what is true — washes a person cleaner than any of these."

Ila frowned. "But where would I carry such water from? What mountain?"

"That is the secret," the priest said, and his eyes were kind. "You do not carry it from anywhere. You do not climb for it or pay for it or filter it through cloths. You practise — patiently, faithfully, day after day — and one day, in its own good time, you find it has been inside you all along. The purest water in the world rises in your own heart, like a spring no one had dug."

Ila looked down at her empty hands, and for the first time they did not feel empty.

"Then I have not lost the contest," she said softly.

"No," said the priest. "You have only just understood it."

That spring, the temple bell rang the same as always. But Ila walked home slowly by the river, knowing that the clearest water she would ever find was not in the river at all.