Paulo Coelho's Warrior of the Light - Two stories about Mountains

Issue n°147: Two Stories About Mountains
Here where I stand

After having won many archery competitions, the town champion sought out the Zen master.
“I am the best of all,” he said. “I did not learn religion, I did not look for help from the monks, and I have been considered the best archer in the whole region. I heard that some time ago you were the best archer in the area, so I ask you: did you have to become a monk to learn to shoot arrows?
“No,” answered the Zen master.
But the champion was not satisfied: he took out an arrow, placed it in his bow, fired, and hit a cherry at a considerable distance. He smiled, as if to say: “You could have saved your time and just dedicated yourself to technique.” And he said:
“I doubt if you can do the same.”
Without demonstrating the least concern, the master took his bow and began to walk towards a nearby mountain. On the way there was an abyss that could only be crossed by an old rotting rope bridge that was almost falling down: with the utmost calm, the Zen master went to the middle of the bridge, took his bow, placed an arrow, aimed at a tree on the other side of the gulch, and hit the target.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said gently to the young man as he walked back to safe ground.
In trepidation, looking at the abyss below him, the young man went to the indicated spot and fired an arrow, but it landed very far from the target.
“That’s what one gets from discipline and practicing meditation,” concluded the master when the young man re-appeared at his side. “You can be very skilled with the instrument you have chosen to earn a living, but it’s all useless if you can’t manage to master the mind that uses the instrument.”

Contemplating the desert

Three people who were passing in a small caravan saw a man contemplating the sunset in the Sahara desert from the top of a mountain.
“It must be a shepherd who has lost a sheep and is trying to find it,” said the first.
“No, I don’t think he is looking for something, especially not at sunset - that confuses your vision. I think he is waiting for a friend.”
“I bet he’s a holy man looking for enlightenment,” commented the third.
They began to discuss what the man was doing, and got so involved in the discussion that they nearly ended up fighting with one another. Finally, to find out who was right, they decided to climb the mountain and ask the man.
“Are you looking for your sheep?” asked the first.
“No, I don’t have a flock.”
“Then you must be waiting for someone,” claimed the second.
“I am a lonely man who lives in the desert,” was the answer.
“Since you live in the desert, and in solitude, then we have to believe that you are a holy man in search of God, and you are meditating!” asserted the third man, content with this conclusion.
“Does everything on Earth need to have an explanation? So let me explain: I am here just looking at the sunset: isn’t that enough to lend a meaning to our lives?”

Copyright @ 2007 by Paulo Coelho
Warrior of the Light, a www.paulocoelho.com.br publication

Selected Warrior of the Light issues are available as free e-books (PDF format) from the Smink Works Books site

THOUGHTS ON: The Little Prince, life and integrity

Everywhere I go this week I see Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. At the gym I see a girl wearing a hand-made t-shirt emblazoned with the quote "what is essential is invisible to the eye", on a tv show someone reads the book to their mother who is in a coma, a pile of Little Princes lie on the front counter at my local book store, someone reads a copy on a train. Just a coincidence? Perhaps. But it is worthwhile contemplating the messages within this much-loved book.
Take that quote "what is essential is invisible to the eye". These days superficiality is king (or queen). We seem to value what we look like above everything else. Plastic surgery is on the increase - people go under the surgeon's knife in a quest for beauty or youth, or pay hundreds of dollars for products promising the same; social value is gauged by how many 'friends' you have on a MySpace page; we live in an era where what you look like can make you famous; and indeed we value and strive for fame itself.
Have we lost focus on what is important? How beautiful it is to be wise, have integrity, be a caring and kind person, even make people laugh. It's an old but true adage that we need to be reminded of, and if that is what the universe is trying to tell me this week then that's truly wonderful.

SM

Paulo Coelho's Warrior of the Light - The Letter I can't Answer

Issue n°146: The letter I can’t answer

The letter that I can’t answer is lying right here on my desk. It reached me through the efforts of a Dutch couple who sent me an e-mail in June 2006. I lent it no importance, and did not answer. At the end of that same month they wrote again, and again I paid no attention. And then came the warning phrased in more serious words:

“This is the last time we are asking you this favor. It is up to you to write to Justin or not. Or to put it better, it is up to your conscience. I got to know your books because he recommended them. Yours truly, Jacobus” (I shall omit his surname).

I read the text of the e-mail carefully: it says that Justin Fuller, prisoner #999266 at the Polunsky Unit, Livingston, Texas, will be executed exactly on my birthday, the 24th August. His lawyer, Don Bailey, has already been to all the appeal courts, and it looks like the cause is lost. They are not asking me to denounce the fact publicly, or to take some position on the case: they just want me to send this reader some comforting words.

I type Justin’s name in a search tool. I see his photo, then I discover that there is a page with the names of all those who are (or have been) in death row in Texas. I see his criminal record at www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/fullerjustin.htm

I write the letter. The week following my birthday, Jacobus writes to me once more: Justin received it, and answered me before he was executed. The letter is waiting for me in a hotel I usually stay at in a certain town, and that I used as the sender’s address.

Finally, at the end of October 2006, I stop at the hotel. I know that a letter from a man condemned to death awaits me. I know that he has already been executed. I collect the letter, enter a bar, and read the words from someone whom I will never be able to answer. Whom I will never be able to ask permission to publish extracts, but since we are talking about a true aberration of justice – death as an instrument of the State – I shall copy some parts:

“Dear Mr. Coelho:

“Death row is the arena where the policies of Power, Retribution and Violence are applied to a man using materials such as concrete and steel, until this man turns into steel and his heart becomes as hard as concrete. However, though steel can be hard, it can still be flexible, and though the heart can be transformed into concrete, it still beats. Beyond the concrete and the steel stands the man, his love of life, and the great principles that rule human beings.

“Your letter surprised me. And it is very strange that my transcendence (Justin always uses this term instead of “execution”) is to take place just on your birthday. Of course, I hope it does not take place, but we both know that life is always accompanied by death. In the USA they execute prisoners in the name of what they call “justice” without taking into account whether they can be well represented in court, the circumstances of their birth and their family environment.

“While I wait out the last appeal to the Supreme Court, I feel full of life and strong, and my spirit is completely free.

“If I transcend, I will finally be able to float in the wind and enjoy freedom. I have realized that although my body is imprisoned, my life has changed and my soul can still love, because all freedom is mental. Many people in this world, although they are on the outside of prison, are far more in bondage than I am.

“Only when these people come to understand that freedom is a state of the mind will they be able to really enjoy it.”
The letter that I couldn’t answer is much longer. It describes the relationship that we built through my books, and it wishes me and my family all the best. And now it sits on my desk.

The letter that I couldn’t answer, from a man condemned to death, arrested when he was 19 years old and executed when he was 27, contains not a word of lamentation: it speaks of freedom and life.

Copyright @ 2007 by Paulo Coelho
Warrior of the Light, a www.paulocoelho.com.br publication

Selected Warrior of the Light issues are available as free e-books (PDF format) from the Smink Works Books site

QUOTE: Tom Robbins

"The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."

From the book Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins