Life of Pi

Just finished reading " Life of Pi" , its novel about a 16 year old boy 227 days cast away in pacific ocean with a bengal tiger. Below are some of the quotes I liked from the book.

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival


It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then you can let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse


Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer

Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love- but sometimes it was so hard to love

Give and you shall receive

Whatever you choose for yourself, give to another.If you choose to be happy, cause another to be happy.If you choose to be prosperous, cause another to prosper.If you choose more love in your life, cause another to have more love in theirs.
Do this sincerely—not because you seek personal gain, but because you really want the other person to have that—and all the things you give away will come to you.

Why is that so? How does that work?

The very act of your giving something away causes you to experience that you have it to give away. Since you cannot give to another something you do not now have, your mind comes to a new conclusion, a New Thought, about you—namely, that you must have this, or you could not be giving it away.

This New Thought then becomes your experience. You start “being” that. And once you start “being” a thing, you’ve engaged the gears of the most powerful creation machine in the universe—your Divine Self.Whatever you are being, you are creating.The circle is complete, and you will create more and more of that in your life. It will be made manifest in your physical experience.This is the greatest secret of life.

- Summarised from the book " Friendship with God" - Neal Donald Walsh

Warrior of light

I am reading Paulo's warrior of light and can totally relate to it. It contains chapters one per page about the qualities/ wisdom of the warrior of the light. This warrior is a person who is just like us. A person who is trying hard to bring the light to the people around. Each chapter has a metaphorical meaning about the war, love, faith to that of everyday life.

" From now on - and for the next few hundred years - the Universe is going to help warriors of light and hinder the prejudiced.

The Earth's energy needs to be renewed.
New ideas need space.
Body and soul need new challenges.

The future has become the present, and every dream except those dreams that involve preconceived ideas - will have a chance to be heard.

Anything of importance will remain;anything useless will disappear. However, it is not the warrior's responsibility to judge the dreams of others, and he does not waste time criticising other people's decisions.

In order to have faith in his own path, he does not need to prove that someone else's path is wrong. "

Zahir speaks

Half way through the book and I am thinking I should re read this book up teen times. Makes me wonder where Paulo gets his inspiration from. I mean I believe without a shadow of doubt that he is great writer and spiritual person. However I can’t believe such wonderful thoughts come from a mortal. Some of the paragraphs from Zahir make me think, ponder and analyse for a long time, like the one below

"What we need to learn is always there before us, we just have to look around us with respect and attention in order to discover where God is leading us and which step we should take next. As Einstein said, God doesn’t play dice with Universe; everything is interconnected and has a meaning. That meaning may remain hidden nearly all the time, but we always know we are close to our true mission on earth when what we are doing is touched with the energy of enthusiasm.

If it is, then all is well. If not, then we had better change direction.

When we are on the right path, we follow the signs, and if we occasionally stumble, the Divine comes to our aid, preventing us from making a mistake. "
I closed the book and stood there in the Metro station starring at space for several minutes. Am I really doing something that interests me? Is it even remotely closer to bringing me enthusiasm or satisfaction?

After several minutes my poor logical mind fails miserably to make any conclusion. For now I am holding on to the following quote

"Only when all logics fail, Magic can happen"

From Brida

Brida - Paulo Coelho is such a lovely book! From the front cover picture to the last page, it stirred me, excited me, made me cry... wow...I am so obsessed with it now.

Not so often we feel we have been served more than what we paid for , yet alone in books. But Paulo never dissapointed me. He writes to my heart !

Here are the some of the quotes from the book that I loved.

"Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong … even a stopped clock is right twice a day."

"Sometimes certain blessings from God come crashing in through the windows"

"Do not try to explain feelings. Live everything intensely and treasure what you feel as a gift from God.”

"The noblest thing a human being can experienceis acceptance of the mystery"

"When you find your way you cannot be scared. You need to be brave enough to take wrong steps. The deceptions, failures, lack of enthusiasm, are tools that God places in our way to reveal the path."

“In his or her life, each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant. Builders may take years over their tasks, but one day they will finish what they are doing. Then they will stop, hemmed in by their own walls. Life becomes meaningless once the building is finished. Those who plant suffer the storms and the seasons and rarely rest. Unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And by its constant demands on the gardener’s attention, it makes the gardener’s life a great adventure."