Hope had crept back into Arjuna's eyes when Krishna spoke of the puppy and the patient farmer. But hope, in an honest heart, often brings a new worry close behind it. He frowned and leaned on the chariot rail.

"Krishna, I believe you now," he said. "Practice and letting go — I can see how, over a long time, that would tame even my wild mind." He paused. "But that is what troubles me. *A long time.*"

Krishna waited.

"Picture a man," Arjuna said slowly, as if seeing the person standing before him. "He has faith — real faith, a whole heart full of it. He believes every word you have spoken. He *wants* this calm more than anything, and he begins. He sits each day. He tries."

"Good," said Krishna. "That is the seeker we hope for."

"But he is weak," Arjuna went on, "the way I am weak. His mind keeps wandering off. Some days he cannot sit at all. He does not give up — but he does not get there either. He is still a beginner, still slipping, still half-tamed..." Arjuna's voice dropped. "And then his life simply ends. The way lives do. Before he ever reached the stillness he longed for. Before the practice ripened."

A breeze stirred the banner. Somewhere down the line a horse whinnied.

"What happens to *that* man, Krishna?" Arjuna asked. "He had the faith. He made the effort. He just ran out of time. Does all of it count for nothing? Is the whole journey wasted because he didn't reach the end?"

There was something very gentle in the question — not a worry for himself alone, but for every person who has ever tried to be better and feared it might not be enough. Arjuna was speaking up for the strugglers, the half-finished, the ones who try and slip and try again.

Krishna looked at him with great warmth, and Arjuna could tell the question had pleased him. But Arjuna was not finished. There was a darker shape to his fear, and he wanted to say it all before he heard the answer.