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The weaver of Mylapore wrote 1,330 couplets — each exactly seven words — covering every dimension of human life. When he was done he threw the manuscript into the sacred tank at Madurai and asked the scholars to judge whether it was worthy. Everything else sank. The Kural floated.
Lalleshwari — the fourteenth century mystic of Kashmir — was starved and humiliated by her mother-in-law for years. She left her household and walked into the cold of the Valley with nothing. At the end of one particular day, she held two pieces of cloth — one for the good she had received, one for the bad. Both weighed exactly the same.
During battle, Bhai Kanhaiya was seen giving water to wounded Mughal soldiers — the enemy. Brought before Guru Gobind Singh to be punished, he said: I see no enemy on the battlefield. I see only your face in every face. The Guru embraced him. And added ointment to his supplies.
A fifteenth century shogun broke his favourite tea bowl and sent it to China for repair. It came back held together with ugly metal staples. His craftsmen tried again — this time filling the cracks with lacquer mixed with gold. The bowl became more beautiful than before it broke. This is Kintsugi. The philosophy of the golden wound.
Matsuo Basho spent years in a small hut outside Edo. One afternoon a frog jumped into the pond beside his hut. In the silence that followed the splash he wrote seventeen syllables that have been pondered for three hundred and fifty years. He did not write about the frog. He wrote about the silence.
Boethius had been the most powerful man in Rome after the emperor. He was falsely accused of treason and awaiting execution. In his cell, he wrote the book that would sustain a continent through the Dark Ages. Lady Philosophy appeared and asked: did you ever truly possess the things you have lost? He realised he never had. And in that realisation, discovered what could never be taken.
Confucius spent thirteen years wandering from state to state, seeking a ruler who would implement his vision of just governance. No ruler would. Once, surrounded by soldiers for five days with no food, his students despaired. He played the lute. The noble man in hardship holds his ground. The small man in hardship loses himself.
A Cherokee grandfather told his grandson: there is a battle inside every person between two wolves. One is anger, envy, arrogance, resentment. The other is joy, peace, love, humility, truth. The grandson asked which one wins. The grandfather said: the one you feed. Three words. The whole of moral psychology.
A wolf was terrorising the town of Gubbio. Francis walked out alone to meet it. He spoke to it. The wolf lowered its head and placed its paw in Francis's hand. The creature that everyone feared had been hungry. Nobody had thought to ask.