Chapter 86அதிகாரம் 86 எல்லை Limits

It is the small hole that makes a flute; when it is all hole, only the sound of wind remains.

With a channel, a flood fills the field; without a channel, even a palmful of water spills away.

They said yes, and said yes again, and afterwards there was no self left in them.

The one who speaks the boundary lights a lamp and sets it in place; the one who hides the boundary, a pit.

Load after load climbs onto the shoulders of one who cannot refuse; the loads come down on the day his back breaks.

The yes of those who cannot say no has no merit; merit lies in the yes of one who can say no.

It is the wall around it that makes the sanctum; if that wall runs unbroken all the way round, it is a tomb.

Karuvarai, a temple’s inner sanctum, literally means ‘womb-chamber’ and also means ‘womb’. Kallarai, ‘stone-chamber’, is the word for a tomb.

The one who sowed found a boundary; the one who did not sow found nothing but ground.

Varambu: the raised earth ridge marking a paddy field’s edge, the ridge that makes a stretch of earth a field. The word also means a limit or measure.

The one who turns his boat and ties it at the shore is not the same as the one who reaches the shore when his boat breaks.

A body that dives on a held breath knows depth as the place where its breath runs out. Learn that place.