Free The Blue Notebook by James A. Levine Page A

houses, cities, palaces, crops, fields, and sky, balance on a grain of rice?”
    The Master smiled serenely, looked over the field of students before him, and told this tale.
    In a distant kingdom was a small village, and in that small village lived a family, a farmer, his wife, and their five children, two girls and three boys. The youngest of the boys was strong, quick-witted, and agile but beyond these traits he was connected to the flow of the earth. In his previous lives he had been the horse that was ridden by the greatest of all kings, a tiger that had given his coat to a queen, and a prince who was destined to rule the greatest kingdom on earth, except that he was cut down by jealousy Now, in this life, he was born as the youngest son of a poor farmer. But how his inner beauty shone. Even as a little boy his radiance drew attention from seers and the blind alike. Rumors spread of a holy child gifted with inner sight and the power to heal.
    To look at this fourteen-year-old boy, you might be distracted by his physical beauty. He was blossoming into manhood and his lean and muscular body could twist with a change in the wind. His eyes were entrancing and his face lovely to behold. But if you were able to look beyond this shell of physical beauty, you would see something even more glorious. He shone with the wisdom of eternity, for he could see not only this life and the last but also the next. He could see the false pride of the rich and the faked lament of the poor. He could separate love from lust and could taste spring in the air even when it was winter. His name was Puneet.
    In the village, the crops had failed for the third year in a row and the earth was barren. The stream that had fed the village no longer ran and the drinking wells were almost completely dry. The village had long used up all its reserves of food and the villagers were starving in the streets. The farmer said to his youngest son early one morning, “Darling Puneet, we are all starving. You are a very special boy with tremendous powers. You must leave the village and seek fortune for us. Bring us back riches so that we may buy food and eat.” Within the hour, before the ferocity of the morning sun took hold, Puneet bade farewell to his father, mother, and brothers and sisters. He gathered up some pebbles, wrapped them in a rag, and slung them over his shoulder, heading out from the village on foot.
    He walked for many days through unimaginable heat and evaded many dangers. He found water by following animal tracks and ate roots and plants that had grown on the side of the path to sustain him. He came to a large town. By then he was dusty and very thin but he still carried the pebbles from his village. This was a rich town full of greed and falseness. At the town inn, he drank from the trough used by the horses until his thirst was satisfied. He scavenged in the garbage of the inn for food, of which there was plenty. He ate until his strength returned. Wandering through the village, he saw how the poor and rich coexisted, neither sharing grace with the other, and he saw falsehood and greed all around him. He vomited the food he had eaten, for he did not want the filth of this town inside him.
    At the village square, he beheld a great commotion. Since he was slender, he easily slid his way to the front of the crowd, which had gathered around a wrestling ring built upon a wooden platform. The ring was square and bounded by ropes. In the middle of the ring stood a giant. He was taller than an elephant and almost as broad. The shadow he cast from the sun almost filled the ring. In front of the giant kneeled a bloodied man, his armor half cut from him; he was begging for mercy from the giant. The giant looked across at a beautiful woman who sat on a throne at the far end of the ring, and the crowd hushed. She was the queen of the mighty kingdom; she wore a golden crown studded with a multitude of pearls and diamonds and a glistening golden cloak draped