One morning in the city of Patna, Bhai Mardana Ji was hungry.
Guru Nanak Dev Ji handed him a small red stone, no bigger than a grape pip, and told him to go and sell it and buy some food.
So off he went with the stone in a little purse.
At the first shop the man turned it over and said: I will give you a radish for it.
A radish, said Bhai Mardana Ji. Give me two.
No, said the man.
So he tried the sweet shop, and could not get a bag of sweets for it. Then the cloth merchant, who offered one yard of his roughest cloth and told him to take it to a jeweller.
So he walked on, and at every shop the price crept up a little, and by now Bhai Mardana Ji was less interested in his breakfast than in finding out what he was carrying.
At last he came to the biggest jeweller's shop in Patna, which belonged to a man called Salis Rai Ji, and Salis Rai Ji came out himself.
I have come from Punjab, where the five rivers run, said Bhai Mardana Ji, and I have a red stone. Give me something for it so I can eat.
Bhai Mardana Ji opened the purse and set the little stone on the cloth.
And Salis Rai Ji looked at it. Then he looked again. Then he stopped being a shopkeeper altogether and sat there saying, under his breath, thank you, Lord.
Bring a hundred rupees, he said to his assistant.
He set the money down and pushed the stone back across the cloth.
Take the money, he said. Keep the jewel.
Bhai Mardana Ji stared at him. Then what is the money for.
For being allowed to look at it, said Salis Rai Ji. My old teacher told me that if I ever saw a jewel that made my heart lift, I should pay something for the sight of it. The thing itself has no price. Take it back to your master.
So Bhai Mardana Ji walked out of the city with a hundred rupees and a stone that a man had offered him a radish for.
Guru Ji laughed when he saw him coming.
Here is your magic pebble, said Bhai Mardana Ji, setting it down. In one shop it is not worth two radishes. In another it is beyond price.
That is how it is with precious things, said Guru Ji. Where there is an eye that can see, they are beyond price. Where there is not, they are worth a radish. The seeing is the whole thing.
Then he said: but we have taken money without selling anything. Go and give it back.
So poor Bhai Mardana Ji, who still had not had his breakfast, walked all the way back into Patna and put the hundred rupees on the counter.
Salis Rai Ji looked at the money and thought: a man who hands money back is no jeweller. He shut up his shop and walked out of the city to see for himself.
He found Guru Ji sitting under the trees, singing, and stood there and forgot entirely what he had come for.
May I ask your name, he said at last. And your country.
The country is the Lord's, said Guru Ji. And the name is His.
Then he asked what he had really come to ask. You see the Lord everywhere, he said. Why can I not see Him.
And Guru Ji told him about a pond.
In the pond there is a lotus flower, he said, and green scum on the water, and the two of them are touching. The scum never makes the lotus dirty. And a frog lives right beside the lotus, close enough to touch it, and eats the scum and never once tastes the sweetness inside the flower. But a bee will come from miles away and go straight to it.
The frog is nearer, said Guru Ji. The bee can see.
Your eyes learned to know a true jewel from a false one. Bhai Mardana Ji's ears learned one note from another. There is a third kind of knowing, deeper than either, and it is how a person comes to feel the Lord.
Then Guru Ji stood up, unwound the long turban from his own head, and tied it on the jeweller's head with his own hands.
Goodnight. Everything depends on who is doing the looking.