The children had come down to the river to ask the old sage a question that had been bothering them.

"If God made everything," said the tallest boy, kicking at a pebble, "then God made the good days and the bad days too. The kind person and the cruel person. The bright morning and the gloomy one. So is God good or bad? Is God calm or angry? Which is it?"

The sage did not answer right away. He was sitting on a flat warm rock where the river split into three little pools before joining again. He patted the stone beside him, and the children gathered round.

"Look into the first pool," he said.

It was perfectly still and clear. The sun overhead lay on its surface as a single calm circle of gold. "How does the sunlight look there?"

"Peaceful," said a girl. "Quiet. Beautiful."

"And the second pool?"

The second pool was where the current rushed through, churning and bubbling. The sunlight on it was broken into a thousand dancing, flashing, restless sparks that would not hold still for a heartbeat. "It's busy," laughed a younger boy. "It's all jumpy and excited."

"And the third?"

The third pool sat in the shadow of an overhanging rock, its water muddy and dark. The children peered. "We can hardly see the sun there at all," said the tall boy. "It looks dim. Almost gone."

The sage smiled. "Calm in the first. Restless in the second. Dark in the third. Three completely different kinds of light." He paused. "Now tell me — how many suns are there in the sky?"

The children looked up, squinting. "One," they said.

"One sun," said the sage. "The very same sun shines on all three pools. The calm light, the dancing light, the dim light — they all come from it. But is the sun calm? Is the sun restless? Is the sun dark and muddy?"

The children thought. "No," said the girl slowly. "The sun is just the sun. The pools make it look different. But up there, it never changes. The mud can't reach it."

"There it is," said the sage. "The calm states, the restless states, the dull states of this whole world — they all come from the One. But the One is not stuck inside any of them. They are inside him. He shines on all of it and stays exactly himself, never stained, never shaken, like the sun that touches every pool and belongs to none."

The children sat quietly by the three pools for a long while, watching one light wear three faces.