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The Great Epics
A warrior asks to see the truth directly instead of hearing it argued. What he's shown breaks something open in him.
He had heard the argument. He wanted to see the thing itself. What he was shown, he begged to have taken away.
Two armies stood across the plain at Kurukshetra. The conches were lowered and the drums were silent.
They were waiting on a signal one man could not bring himself to give.
Arjuna had asked to be driven into the gap between them, to look at who he was about to fight.
He saw just what he had expected to see. And he could not bear it.
There was Bhishma, who had held him as a baby. There was Drona, who had taught him everything his hands knew. There were cousins and uncles, and the boys he had grown up with.
He put the bow down on the floor of the chariot and said he would not do it.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.