The world, contrary to popular belief, is not balanced on the back of a giant tortoise. That's another universe entirely, and frankly, it's been dining out on the publicity for ages.

In this particular universe, the world is balanced on something much more precarious: intention. It wobbles slightly whenever someone makes a bad decision, which is to say, it wobbles a lot.

At the center of it all spins the wheel of Samsara, endlessly turning. It doesn't creak, because cosmic wheels are self-lubricating, but it does occasionally emit a sigh, the sort of sigh you hear from librarians, long-suffering parents, and enlightened beings who have realized they're going to have to explain the same thing all over again.

The Wheel's job is simple: move beings through the endless cycle of birth and death until they learn enough to get off. The problem is that beings, given the choice between enlightenment and, say, another helping of pudding, usually choose the pudding.

So, to keep the whole arrangement from collapsing into farce (or rather, to manage the fact that it already had), the cosmos appointed bodhisattvas, Buddhas, and the occasional enlightened layperson to look after things. They were very good at it, considering the raw material they had to work with.

Which brings us to the curious corner of reality where the divine embodiments of compassion, wisdom, and thunder once met for tea to join forces against an old foe: delusion.

Welcome to Samsara. A place where enlightenment is real, but so are sore feet, long queues, and the occasional tax audit.

The Buddha himself once said that life is suffering. He might have added: "And paperwork. Mostly paperwork."