Hey Prime members, you can listen to Tides of History, add free on Amazon Music.

Download the app today. The wind whistled through the profusion of heart-shaped leaves shading the ground beneath the tree and carried the scent of the forest and savannas surrounding the Ganges River,

overlaid with the far more pungent aromas of the surrounding city, cooking food,

burning firewood, manure, and bodies sweating in the humid heat.

The smaller branches rustled and shook, swaying gently in the breeze, but the larger

limbs jutting outward from the trunk were too big to be moved by any but the strongest gusts.

The tree had stood here for centuries, the base of the trunk wider than three people were tall.

The group currently gathered under the sacred fig's broad canopy was far from the first to

take shelter here nor would it be the last. The conversation was lively, animated,

and a bit contentious. One of the ascetics, the wandering men searching for a holier life through feats of self-denial,

gathered there was completely naked. His hair was wild and tangled.

So too was his long beard, and he was so emaciated through intentional lack of food that each of his ribs was visible.

He was jabbing his finger at a prosperous looking merchant,

lecturing him on the knee to cease his mindless

a mindless activity renounced the world to improve his chances of a better next life than this one.

His deeds and his greed would draw Karmick retribution, the ascetic shouted,

in this life or the one that would inevitably follow the merchant's death and rebirth.

Others wandering mendicants who moved from town to town seeking religious instruction

debated the merits of various approaches to ending the cycle of life, death, and

rebirth.

You must truly know yourself, one man said.

Another, echoing the naked ascetic, said that only a cessation of all activity, immobility and self-starvation to the point of death

...