On the great field of Kurukshetra the two armies had gone still for a
moment, like a held breath. Conch shells rested in laps. Horses stamped and
snorted. And in the middle of it all, between the two waiting lines, stood a
single chariot, with Arjuna sitting low and tired upon it and Krishna at the
reins.
Krishna had already told Arjuna many wonderful things. But now he leaned
closer, and his voice grew soft and bright, the way a person's voice gets
when they are about to give you their most treasured gift.
"Listen," Krishna said. "I am going to tell you again the best knowledge
there is. Of all the things a person can learn — how to ride, how to fight,
how to count the stars, how to grow rice — this knowledge is the highest of
them all."
Arjuna lifted his head.
"Long, long ago," Krishna went on, "in quiet forests and on cold mountain
tops, there lived sages — wise men and women who sat very still and thought
very deeply. They did not want gold. They did not want crowns. They wanted
to understand the deepest truth of everything that is. And they searched, and
they listened, and at last this very knowledge came to them."
Arjuna pictured them: white-haired and calm, sitting under banyan trees with
their eyes half-closed, while deer grazed near their feet without any fear.
"And do you know what happened to those sages once they truly understood?"
Krishna asked.
"What happened?" Arjuna whispered.
"Every one of them — all of them — became free," said Krishna. "They were no
longer afraid of dying. They were no longer pulled this way and that by
sadness or worry. They reached the very highest place a heart can reach. They
found a happiness that nothing in the whole world could take away."
A small wind moved across the battlefield, and Arjuna felt it on his face
like a cool hand.
"That same knowledge," Krishna said, smiling, "I am giving to you now, here,
in this loud and frightening place. Hold still inside, and listen well."
And Arjuna, who had felt so lost only moments before, sat up a little
straighter, ready to receive the gift the sages had carried for so long.
