A Drop on a Lotus Leaf

If you are free in every way, what harm have I done you by entering you with my being? It is the rule of renunciants to live in empty places. If you are free, you are such an empty place, and I lived in you; whom did I wrong? I do not touch you with my hands or arms, my feet or thighs, or any limb of my body. A man born in a great family, with modesty and foresight, does not speak of such a thing in the assembly, whether true or false, between a man and a woman. These brahmins and elders and ministers honour you, and you honour them. As water stays on a lotus leaf without wetting it, so I will stay in you, king of Mithilā, without touching you. If you feel any touch from me, who do not touch you, how did that mendicant make your knowledge seedless? You have fallen from the householder's life and not reached the freedom that is hard to know; you stand between the two, a man who only talks of freedom.

There is no confusion of class in the meeting of one free person with another. The hand holds the bowl, the bowl holds the milk, a fly falls in the milk; each rests on another, and yet each stays itself. How then is there any confusion of class between us?

I am not of the highest class by birth, nor of the merchants, nor of the lowest. I am of your own class, king, of pure birth and unbroken line. You must have heard of the royal seer Pradhāna. Know that I am Sulabhā, born in his family. At the sacrifices of my forefathers, in the company of Indra, king of the gods, the mountains Droṇa and Śataśṛṅga and Vakradvāra were heaped up into altars. Born in that family, finding no husband fit for one like me, I was trained in the dharma of freedom, and I wander alone in the vow of a sage.

I am not hiding under the cloak of a mendicant, and I do not covet what is another's, and I bring no confusion of dharma; I keep my own vow firmly. I am not unsteady in my word, and I do not speak or come without thinking. I heard that your mind was turned to freedom, and wishing you well, I came to learn about your freedom. I do not speak for one side or the other. The one who is free does not need freeing, and the one at peace does not need calming. As a mendicant spends one night in an empty house in a city, so I will spend this night in your body. Honoured with a seat and with the hospitality of words, I will sleep well and gladly in good shelter, and tomorrow I will go, king of Mithilā.

When the king had heard these words, so full of reason and meaning, he had nothing more to say.