Long ago there ruled a king named Vena, the son of a good and gentle father. Vena was clever and quick, and in his early years the people had high hopes for him. He could argue any case, weigh any quarrel, and his judgements came fast.

But a hunger grew in Vena — a hunger for praise, for gold, for being first in everything. And slowly that hunger began to bend his thinking the way heat bends a blade.

A farmer came to court one morning. "Your Majesty, my neighbour moved the boundary stone in the night and stole a strip of my field."

The neighbour was rich and gave fine gifts to the king. So Vena rubbed his chin and said, "The stone has been moved, yes, but perhaps it was always in the wrong place. Perhaps your neighbour has merely set it right." And he gave the strip of land to the rich man.

The sages of the realm came and stood before him, their faces grave. "King Vena," said the eldest, "you are calling theft a correction. You are dressing adharma in the clothes of dharma."

Vena laughed. "Who decides what is right? I am the king. What helps me must be right, and what crosses me must be wrong." He truly believed it. That was the strange and sorrowful thing — he was not stupid. His mind worked swiftly. But every time it neared the truth, his craving turned it aside, like a river bending around a great rock.

"This is the danger," the eldest sage told the younger ones afterward, as they walked away from the throne. "A dull mind cannot see. But a restless, hungry mind sees, and then twists what it sees to feed its wanting. It knows just enough to make a good excuse. Watch your own minds, my sons. When you feel yourself eager to call a thing right only because you want it, stop. That is rajas, dressing wrong as right."

Vena's reign ended in ruin, as all such reigns do. But the sages remembered his lesson long after: the most dangerous mistakes are not made in the dark. They are made by a clever mind that has talked itself into the wrong answer.