The old pilgrim's words had stayed with Ugratapa, the fierce hermit, but it was a wandering teacher who came the next season that finally helped him understand the deepest part.

The teacher found Ugratapa thinner than ever, swaying on his bed of stones, his eyes dull, his body trembling like a dry leaf.

"Friend," the teacher said, sitting down beside him, "may I tell you what I see?"

Ugratapa, too weak to argue, nodded.

"Your body is not your enemy," the teacher said. "It is a house. And inside every house there lives a small, steady lamp, a flame that does not flicker, that was lit before you were born. The wise call it the Self. The Lord himself dwells there, in the heart of every creature, in you no less than in a king."

He gestured at Ugratapa's wasted arms, his cracked feet, his ribs like a cage. "When you starve the house and pierce its walls and set fires against it, you think you are only punishing the house. But the lamp lives inside the house. Harm the house carelessly enough, and you crowd and trouble the very flame you were meant to tend."

Ugratapa's lip trembled. "I thought hurting my body would make me holy."

"No," the teacher said, not unkindly. "A person who torments the body for show, with a proud heart and a hungry mind, has lost the way. He troubles the divine that lives within him and calls it devotion. But devotion does not wage war on the house where God is sleeping. Devotion keeps the house clean and warm, so the lamp can shine."

For a long moment Ugratapa was silent. Then, slowly, he stood — not to pose for any crowd, for there was none — and he stepped down off the sharp stones onto the soft grass. He drank clean water. He ate a little fruit. He felt, very faintly, something inside his chest grow a shade brighter, the way a lamp brightens when the wind that troubled it dies down.

"Tend the house," the teacher said, watching him, "and the lamp will do the rest."