Chapter 13அதிகாரம் 13 அகந்தை Ego

To each one standing on the open plain, the land seems to lie with them at its centre.

Whoever enters the net woven from the thread of ‘I’ finds even the sky no wider than a hand-span.

Whoever says “I” stands, day after day, the size of a shadow; whoever says “we” stands as the ground.

A shadow lengthens and shrinks; the ground remains.

The man who looks in other people’s eyes for his own reflection has found his failing: he does not see them.

When someone sets out to tread on their own shadow, the shadow goes on before the foot.

He carried and carried, never knowing his burden, until he gave out. The burden was not the load; he himself was the burden.

One man said ‘I’, and people left him; one said ‘you’, and people came near; one said ‘myself’, and was left alone with himself.

The pupil of the eye does not regard itself, and so it sees the world.

In the soil where banyan roots twine together, each root forgets the name it went by: ‘I’.

A home without ‘I’ is pleasant; for the man who said ‘I’, no such home exists.

The ‘I’ he insisted on goes with him into every home. The Tamil word for home also means household and family.