The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

But her eyes were dry. She said to us, I've used up all the tears of my life so that they will not distract me again.”

Mourn

Who is truly wealthy? That man to whom the agreeable and disagreeable, wealth and woe, past and future, are the same.

Wisdom

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.

“The life that you're living today is only a bubble in the cosmic stream, shaped by the karma of other lifetimes. The one who is your husband in this birth was perhaps your enemy in the last, and he whom you hate may have been your beloved. Why weep for any of them, then?”

A

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. I

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

Mad