The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

“A problem becomes a problem only if you believe it to be so. And often others see you as you see yourself.”

Now I discovered that a woman’s life is tougher than a banyan root, which exists without soil or water.

Expectations are like hidden rocks in your path—all they do is trip you up.

What is more numerous than the grass? The thoughts that rise in the mind of man. Who is truly wealthy? That man to whom the agreeable and disagreeable, wealth and woe, past and future, are the same. What is the most wondrous thing on earth? Each day countless humans enter the Temple of Death, yet the ones left behind continue to live as though they were immortal.

Just as we cast off worn clothes and wear new ones, when the time arrives, the soul casts off the body and finds a new one to work out its karma. Therefore the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead.

To see a loved one in pain is more wrenching than to bear that pain yourself.