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Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly — free, weightless, with no sense of being Zhuangzi at all. Then he woke up. And he sat with a question that has not been resolved in two thousand years: was he a man who had dreamed he was a butterfly, or was he now a butterfly dreaming he was a man?
Epictetus was a slave in Rome. His master, one day, decided to demonstrate the principle that a slave has no rights by twisting Epictetus's leg. Epictetus said calmly: you are going to break it. The master twisted harder. It broke. Epictetus said: I told you so. This is the story of the freest man in Rome.
Ramana Maharshi was seventeen years old when he died. He lay down on the floor of his uncle's house, stretched out his limbs, and felt death arriving. He did not call for help. He decided, instead, to find out what exactly was dying. What he discovered in the next few minutes changed the rest of his life — and the lives of everyone who came to him for the next fifty years.
A monk was meditating by the river when he noticed a scorpion drowning. He reached in and lifted it out. It stung him. He put it down. It fell back in the water. He reached in again. It stung him again. A passing farmer watched and said: fool — why do you keep rescuing a creature that only stings you? The monk said: it is the scorpion's nature to sting. It is my nature to save. Why should I change my nature because of its nature?
Socrates spent his last morning on earth in conversation. Not praying, not weeping, not trying to escape the death that had been unjustly ordered. Talking. With his friends, about the nature of the soul, about what happens after death, about the unexamined life. His friends were weeping. He was calm. He had been preparing for this morning his entire life.
Lao Tzu was the keeper of the royal archives of Zhou. When the kingdom began to decline, he loaded his belongings onto a water buffalo and rode west toward the desert. At the border gate, the guard recognised him and refused to let him pass until he had written down his wisdom. He wrote for three days. Handed over 5,000 characters. Rode into the desert and was never seen again.
In the Mahabharata, there is a night when King Dhritarashtra cannot sleep. The war is coming. His sons will fight against his nephews. Everything he has built is about to be destroyed. He calls his minister Sanjaya and asks: tell me about the men on both sides. This is how the Bhishma Parva begins — with a king, sleepless, asking to be told about the people who will die.
Kisagotami's infant son died. She carried his body from house to house asking for medicine to bring him back. Everyone turned her away — except the Buddha, who told her to bring a mustard seed from a house where no one had died. She searched every house in the city. She came back empty-handed. She had understood.
Milarepa was Tibet's greatest saint. He was also, before he became a saint, a murderer. He had used black magic to kill thirty-five people in an act of revenge on behalf of his mother. He spent the rest of his life in a cave, alone, eating nettles, turning the worst thing he had ever done into the fuel for the deepest spiritual transformation in Tibetan history.