At the edge of a still green pond lived a lotus, and on the lotus grew a broad round leaf. A dragonfly named Anu liked to rest on it in the early morning when the air was cool.

One day a great rain came. It hammered the pond, dimpling the water, bending the reeds, soaking the frogs until they shone. Anu darted under the lotus leaf to shelter, and from there she watched the storm.

When at last the clouds broke apart and the sun returned, Anu climbed back onto the top of the leaf — and stopped, amazed. Everything around was drenched. The reeds dripped. The frogs glistened. But the broad lotus leaf was perfectly dry. The rain had fallen on it all morning, yet the water had simply rolled into round silver beads and slipped off the edge. Not a single drop had soaked in.

"How are you not wet?" Anu asked the leaf. "The whole sky fell on you."

"It fell on me," the leaf agreed, "but I did not hold it. I let each drop arrive, and I let each drop go. I never tried to keep the water. So the water never stayed."

Anu thought about the frogs, who had clung to the rocks and grown heavy and soaked, and the reeds, who had leaned and gathered puddles in their folds. They had wanted to catch the rain. The leaf had only let it pass.

Later, a wise traveler resting by the pond saw the dry leaf gleaming in the wet world and smiled to himself. "That," he said quietly, "is how to live. Do your work. Let the world rain its rewards and its troubles down on you. But offer it all to something larger than yourself, and cling to none of it. Then the doing will roll off you like water off a lotus leaf, and you will stay clean and light, no matter how hard it pours."

Anu spread her wings. Below her the leaf held its perfect dryness, asking for nothing, keeping nothing — and that, she understood, was why it was free.