What is self-knowledge?

If you can spot the enemy hiding inside a friend, half the coming battle is already won. Even a creeping plant looks fresh and green at the top. The palm also learns endurance — it lives bearing scars, wading through sand with its feet. When the river flows gently, the palm is like a sapling; when the flood rages, the traveler who loses his way is exposed.

Most people don’t know there is a third eye. If opened, kings would flee. Just swallowing books does not fill a torn belly with letters. Even a righteous king who has studied all scriptures may miss the small rule that warns of cheating in a game of chance. When Draupadi was insulted, the Kuru clan marched toward the funeral pyre. A single teardrop waited only for time to become a tsunami. There is no explosion greater than silence. Be silent — there is no weapon greater than that.

Bhima was the one who treated a cave and an anthill the same. Every life must have a period of exile. There is another world beneath the earth — where the dead reside. There they all live with love. When nothing belongs to anyone, every heart becomes a garden.

At birth we hold a travel ticket in our hand. The date and time will reveal themselves again. Leaving everything, everyone must walk on. There will be no vehicle comforts. The Upanishads say fools live in darkness — but how can those who’ve never known light understand darkness?

To live, a person dies many times. Recognizing death is self-knowledge. If you walk upon a hundred lies, at last you may encounter truth. To know freedom, one must live inside a cage.

Even a lion must run after a deer to get its meal. Only in human society do the lazy get feasts. In the kingdom of falsehood, truth-loving Harishchandra alone is the household god. If you give out a needle and a bit of cloth for free, it is called a government scheme.

Dividing the day and closing your eyes at night — that’s good governance. If fortune-telling for people is the parrot’s knack, why does it live among watchmen? The day it learned to speak, its forehead changed. One who walked through fire daily does not fear the sun.

He who taught renouncing pride wore pride itself as his crown. A fish living by the sea cannot imagine another world above it. Among coal merchants the gold trader is recognized by his aroma. From the dog, humans learned the lesson of wagging the tail.

A fast donkey knows neither land nor sea the way the slow one does. A newborn’s cry questions all the knowledge mankind has gathered; it weeps out of hunger and asks why. All creatures come to earth while still cruel to their mothers.

One who has seen a storm understands the value of calm. Lightning may destroy, but a rainbow is beauty. They come together. That’s the essence of all sciences. Those who go into darkness cannot see either.