On the long road from Mathura, two travellers walked at dawn — a tired merchant and the boy who carried his water gourd. The boy, whose name was Nila, stared up at the rising sun and could not stop thinking.

"Master," he said at last, "the temple sages say the Lord makes the whole world. But if He makes everything — the good and the bad, the joy and the sorrow — then doesn't all of it stick to Him? Doesn't He get tangled up in it, the way I get tangled in a fishing net?"

The merchant was too sleepy to answer, but an old wandering sage resting beneath a banyan tree had heard. He waved the boy over.

"Look up," the sage said. "Tell me — what is the sun doing right now?"

Nila squinted. "It's shining."

"And what does its shining do?"

The boy thought. "It opens the lotus flowers in the pond. It dries the wet clothes on the rocks. It wakes the birds. It warms my back. It makes the shadows of the trees move all day long."

"So the sun does a thousand things at once," the sage said. "It causes the flowers to bloom and the puddles to dry and the farmers to rise and the whole village to begin its day. Now tell me — does the sun ever climb down to push a flower open? Does it run after a shadow to move it? Does it grow tired and sticky from all that work?"

Nila laughed. "No. It just sits up there in the sky and shines."

"Just so," said the sage softly. "The sun causes everything to happen below, yet it stays high and far and free. It does not cling to a single flower it opens. It is never tied down by all the work its light sets in motion. It sits, you might say, like one who is not even concerned."

The boy watched the light pour across the fields.

"And the Lord," the sage went on, "makes the whole turning world the very same way. He sends out the ages and gathers them in, He sets all things moving — and none of it binds Him. He acts, and yet He is forever calm, unhurried, untouched, like the sun that gives itself to everything and is held by nothing."

Nila picked up the water gourd, lighter somehow than before, and walked on into the warm new morning.