A king known for his good heart had received visitors from a far away land. The visitors were not royalty, or philosophers, or priests. One was a poet, another a composer and performer of music, another was a man of science, and so forth. They were traveling together to explore the beauty that can be found in being human. Rumors had it that wherever they went people became uplifted by their wisdom.

So it was that they came before the king. The king was pleased with their performances, their stories, and their wisdom. A few days later, during the royal banquet, on the night before their departure to new destinations, the poet of the group asked the king if he was happy being isolated from his people by his wealth. The king answered that he wasn't at all happy about it, but that he was also unable to do anything to change that. He explained that if he gave away all of his possessions in order to be closer to his people, it wouldn't help many and he would end up as poor as the rest of them, so that in the end nobody would be bettered.

The poet agreed that this wasn't a workable solution. The musician however had an idea of how the problem might be solved. Both the poet and the man of science agreed that the composer's idea could work.

The composer had been told during his travels that there lives a man in the king's realm that has an exceptional ear for music. He was also told that the man was poor and his musical instrument was of a poor quality. The composer suggested to the king that he should purchase a violin for that man. He described the violin as an instrument that sings the melodies of the heart. He told the king that such an instrument could be obtained in a foreign country at a price far above the means of a poor man. He also assured the kind that the poor man could perform wonders with it, while the king could afford it easily and should bestow it as a gift of love to him.

The king protested. He protested, because if he did this, so he said, the lineup of beggars at his door would be endless. He was sure of it.

The composer waved him off. He told the king that he should never present such a gift as a royal handout. If he did that, indeed, those problems would occur, but more than this, his gift would thereby become tarnished. A gift becomes tarnished if it is perceived as a means to bring the bearer of the gift calculated advantages, such as fame and honor. The composer suggested that the king should present the gift while being disguised as a traveler, as an ordinary man, and that he should bestow the gift in such a manner as would be necessary to assure the recipient that it is a gift of love and nothing else. The composer said to the king that the gift would then not be tarnished. A gift is not tarnished if it can be accepted as a gift of love. "Then it will shine."

Ushi said that the king didn't like the idea at first, but as the days passed it seemed more and more right to him that he should do what his wise visitors had recommended. So he set out one day in disguise to visit the poor man. Indeed, everything that he had been told about the man was true. Consequently, a month later the king stood before the man again, in wayfarer's clothing, and bestowed on him his gift of love. It was by then a gift of love indeed, bestowed with all his heart and soul, as he had personally traveled to the far country that his visitors had spoken of, to obtain the precious instrument.

The king was pleased with himself. In fact, he was so pleased that he repeated the process in many other ways. He also found out that other people were emulating him once the violinist began to enrich the lives of the people of the kingdom with his own gift of love, his music. It wasn't long after that, that a group of people in the kingdom banded together to construct a much needed irrigation dam at the river that had been long desired. They constructed the dam as a gift of love to themselves. In this manner, as the king's pioneering venture caught on, the entire kingdom became enriched and uplifted.

Naturally, the king was more than pleased with this development. However, soon a new problem developed.

The problem was, that the king's daughter had been inspired by her father's success and had wanted to extend it still further. Only, she had no riches to share. Still she had seen that the people had become closer to one-another by extending gifts of love to each other, although not close enough to love each other fully as human beings. She felt that unless people began to really love one-another for their humanity, they would remain forever divided, and that she herself would thereby remain forever isolated in the king's castle as an outcast from society, an icon of a royalty for which society had little true affection. Thus she sneaked out of the castle one night, secretly in disguise, to the local inn where she began to dance. She danced night after night in the nude, sharing not the king's riches, but herself, her own riches as a human being.

When the king found out about his daughter's adventures, since the people were beginning to realize who she was, he was wroth with her.

The princess told her father that he was wrong to be angry. She told him that she had followed his own lead of removing what isolates people. She told him that if one takes away everything that is artificial, the whole of humanity would recognize itself as being one. She told her father that this outcome is inevitable, because it is based on the truth, and that the inevitable can be realized at any time if one is willing to do what is necessary to acknowledge the truth. She told her father that she had seen an image in her mind of many people embracing one-another in a dance powered by a great joy that was rooted in themselves. She told him that they had found their unity in their beauty as human beings and in their love for themselves that was blossoming into an out-flowing love for one-another.

The king was not impressed by his daughter's logic. Nevertheless, his daughter convinced him over the space of the following months that she was right. The king became confronted with certain facts that he couldn't ignore, because the people themselves continued the practice that the princess had started. It gradually brought a greater sense of family to his kingdom. People began to respect each other more, and began to see each other more and more as human beings. They supported each other more. Soon, crime lessened and the whole atmosphere in the kingdom became enriched. But most of all, the princess became regarded by the people as one of them. This breakthrough, the king could understand and appreciate.

With the king's consent, therefore, the princess continued her dancing on occasions of her own choosing, arriving unannounced as she had done before. At the end of the year however, at the occasion of her own birthday celebration, the princess dared once more to take the process one big step further into the open. During the entertainment portion of her birthday celebration, she danced before the king herself, unembellished as she was born, and before the king's ministers, before her guests, before the maids and the butlers, and even before the boys that looked after the king's horses. Her dance became known, affectionately throughout the land, as the Royal Dance. It was said that her dancing didn't degrade the image of royalty, that it bestowed instead onto the people who saw her dancing, a certain 'royalty' of their own.

(from the novel, Winning Without Victory, Chapter 15)

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