Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections

by Paulo Coelho

  The rabbi understood. He embraced his wife, and together they wept many tears; but he had understood the message and, from that day on, they struggled to bear their loss together.

  Self-Deception

  It is part of human nature always to judge others very severely and, when the wind turns against us, always to find an excuse for our own misdeeds, or to blame someone else for our mistakes. The story that follows illustrates what I mean.

  A messenger was sent on an urgent mission to a distant city. He saddled up his horse and set off at a gallop. After passing several inns where animals like him were normally fed, the horse thought: ‘We’re not stopping to eat at any stables, which means that I’m being treated, not like a horse, but like a human being. Like all other men, I will eat in the next big city we reach.’

  But the big cities all passed by, one after the other, and his rider continued on his way. The horse began to think: ‘Perhaps I haven’t been changed into a human being after all, but into an angel, because angels have no need to eat.’

  Finally, they reached their destination and the animal was led to the stable, where he greedily devoured the hay he found there.

  ‘Why believe that things have changed simply because they do not happen quite as expected?’ he said to himself. ‘I’m not a man or an angel. I’m simply a hungry horse.’

  The Art of Trying

  Pablo Picasso said: ‘God is, above all, an artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the ant. He never tried to follow one particular style. He simply kept on doing whatever he felt like doing.’

  It is the desire to walk that creates the path ahead; however, when we set off on the journey towards our dream, we feel very afraid, as if we had to get everything right first time. But, given that we all live different lives, who decided what ‘getting everything right’ means? If God made the giraffe, the elephant, and the ant, and we are trying to live in His image, why do we have to follow any other model? A model might sometimes help us to avoid repeating the stupid mistakes that others have made, but, more often than not, it becomes a prison that makes us repeat what everyone else has always done.

  It means making sure your tie always matches your socks. It means being forced to have the same opinions tomorrow as you had today. Where does that leave the constantly shifting world?

  As long as it doesn’t harm anyone, change your opinions now and then and be unashamedly contradictory. You have that right; it doesn’t matter what other people think, because they’re going to think something anyway.

  When we decide to act, some excesses may occur. An old culinary adage says: ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’ It’s also natural that unexpected conflicts should arise, and it’s natural that wounds may be inflicted during those conflicts. The wounds pass, and only the scars remain.

  This is a blessing. These scars stay with us throughout our life and are very helpful. If, at some point – simply because it would make life easier, or for whatever other reason – the desire to return to the past becomes very great, we need only look at those scars. They are the marks left by the handcuffs, and will remind us of the horrors of prison, and we will keep walking straight ahead.

  So, relax. Let the universe move around you and discover the joy of surprising yourself. ‘God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise,’ says St Paul.

  A warrior of light often finds that certain moments repeat themselves. He is often faced by the same problems and situations and, seeing these difficult situations return, he grows depressed, thinking that he is incapable of making any progress in life.

  ‘I’ve been through all this before,’ he says to his heart.

  ‘Yes, you have been through all this before,’ replies his heart. ‘But you have never been beyond it.’

  Then the warrior realizes that these repeated experiences have but one aim: to teach him what he has not yet learned. He always finds a different solution for each repeated battle, and he does not consider his failures to be mistakes but, rather, as steps along the path to a meeting with himself.

  The Dangers Besetting the Spiritual Search

  As people start to pay more attention to the things of the spirit, another phenomenon occurs: a feeling of intolerance towards the spiritual search of others. Every day, I receive magazines, e-mails, letters, and pamphlets, trying to prove that one path is better than another, and containing a whole series of rules to follow in order to achieve ‘enlightenment’. Given the growing volume of such correspondence, I have decided to write a little about what I consider to be the dangers of this search.

  Myth 1: The mind can cure everything

  This is not true, and I prefer to illustrate this particular myth with a story. Some years ago, a friend of mine – deeply involved in the spiritual search – began to feel feverish and ill. She spent the whole night trying to ‘mentalize’ her body, using all the techniques she knew, in order to cure herself purely with the power of the mind. The following day, her children, who were getting worried, urged her to go to the doctor, but she refused, saying that she was ‘purifying’ her spirit. Only when the situation became untenable did she agree to go to the hospital, where she had to have an emergency operation for appendicitis. So, be very careful: it’s better sometimes to ask God to guide your doctor’s hands than to try to cure yourself alone.

  Myth 2: Red meat drives away the divine light

  Obviously, if you belong to a certain religion, you will have to respect established rules – Jews and Muslims, for example, do not eat pork, and, in their case, this practice forms part of their faith. However, the world is being flooded with a wave of ‘purification through food’. Radical vegetarians look at people who eat meat as if they had murdered the animal themselves; but, then, aren’t plants living things too? Nature is a constant cycle of life and death and, one day, we will be the ones going back into the earth to feed it. So if you don’t belong to a religion that forbids certain foods, eat whatever your organism needs. I would like to tell a story about the Russian magus Gurdjieff. When he was young, he went to visit a great teacher and, in order to impress him, he ate only vegetables. One night, the teacher asked him why he kept to such a strict diet. Gurdjieff replied: ‘In order to keep my body clean.’ The teacher laughed and advised him to stop this practice at once. If he continued, he would end up like a hothouse flower – very pure, but incapable of withstanding the challenges of travelling and of life. As Jesus said: ‘It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth.’

  Myth 3: God is sacrifice

  Many people seek the path of sacrifice and self-immolation, stating that we must suffer in this world in order to find happiness in the next. Now, if this world is a blessing from God, why not try to enjoy to the full the delights that life offers us? We are very accustomed to the image of Christ nailed to the Cross; but we forget that his Passion lasted only three days. The rest of the time he spent travelling, meeting people, eating, drinking, and preaching his message of tolerance, so much so that his first miracle was, in a sense, ‘politically incorrect’, for when the wine ran out at the Cana wedding, he turned the water into wine. He did this, I believe, to demonstrate to us all that there is nothing wrong with being happy, enjoying yourself, joining in with the party, because God is much closer to us when we are with others. Mohammed said: ‘If we are unhappy, we bring unhappiness upon our friends also.’ Buddha, after a long period of trial and renunciation, was so weak that he almost drowned; when he was rescued by a shepherd, he understood that isolation and sacrifice distance us from the miracle of life.

  Myth 4: There is only one path to God

  This is the most dangerous of all the myths, for from it spring all the many explanations of the Great Mystery, as well as religious strife and our tendency to judge our fellow men and women. We can choose a religion (I, for example, am Catholic), but we must understand that if our brother chooses a different religion, he will eventually reach the
same point of light that we are seeking in our spiritual practices. Finally, it is worth remembering that we cannot shift responsibility for our decisions onto priest, rabbi, or imam. We are the ones who build the road to paradise with each and every one of our actions.

  My Father-in-law, Christiano Oiticica

  Shortly before he died, my father-in-law summoned his family.

  ‘I know that death is only a journey, and I want to make that voyage without sadness. So that you won’t worry, I will send you a sign that it really is worthwhile helping others in this life.’

  He asked to be cremated and for his ashes to be scattered over Arpoador Beach while a tape recorder played his favourite music.

  He died two days later. A friend arranged the cremation in São Paulo and, once back in Rio, we went straight to the beach armed with a tape recorder, tapes, and the package containing the cremation urn. When we reached the sea, we discovered that the lid of the urn was firmly screwed down. We tried in vain to open it.

  The only other person around was a beggar, and he came over to us and asked: ‘What’s the problem?’

  My brother-in-law said: ‘We need a screwdriver so that we can get at my father’s ashes inside this urn.’

  ‘Well, he must have been a very good man, because I’ve just found this,’ said the beggar.

  And he held out a screwdriver.

  Thank You, President Bush*

  Thank you, great leader George W. Bush.

  Thank you for showing everyone what a danger Saddam Hussein represents. Many of us might otherwise have forgotten that he had used chemical weapons against his own people, against the Kurds, and against the Iranians. Hussein is a bloodthirsty dictator, and one of the clearest expressions of evil in today’s world.

  But this is not my only reason for thanking you. During the first two months of 2003, you have shown the world a great many other important things and, therefore, deserve my gratitude.

  So, remembering a poem I learned as a child, I want to say thank you.

  Thank you for showing everyone that the Turkish people and their parliament are not for sale, not even for 26 billion dollars.

  Thank you for revealing to the world the gulf that exists between the decisions made by those in power and the wishes of the people. Thank you for making it clear that neither José María Aznar nor Tony Blair give the slightest weight to, or show the slightest respect for, the votes they received. Aznar is perfectly capable of ignoring the fact that 90 per cent of Spaniards are against the war, and Blair is unmoved by the largest public demonstration to take place in Britain in the last thirty years.

  Thank you for making it necessary for Tony Blair to go to the British Parliament with a fabricated dossier written by a student ten years ago and present this as ‘damning evidence collected by the British Secret Service’.

  Thank you for sending Colin Powell to the UN Security Council with proof and photographs, thus allowing for these to be publicly refuted one week later by Hans Blix, the Inspector responsible for disarming Iraq.

  Thank you for adopting your current position, thus ensuring that, at the plenary session, the anti-war speech of the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, was greeted with applause – something, as far as I know, that has only happened once before in the history of the UN, on the occasion of a speech by Nelson Mandela.

  Thank you, too, because, after all your efforts to promote war, the normally divided Arab nations, at their meeting in Cairo during the last week in February, were, for the first time, unanimous in their condemnation of any invasion.

  Thank you for your rhetoric stating that ‘the UN now has a chance to demonstrate its relevance’, a statement that made even the most reluctant countries take up a position opposing any attack on Iraq.

  Thank you for your foreign policy, which provoked the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, into declaring that, in the twenty-first century, ‘a war can have a moral justification’, thus causing him to lose all credibility.

  Thank you for trying to divide a Europe that is currently struggling for unification. This was a warning that will not go unheeded.

  Thank you for having achieved something that very few have so far managed to do in this century: the bringing together of millions of people on all continents to fight for the same idea, even though that idea is opposed to yours.

  Thank you for making us feel once more that, though our words may not be heard, they are at least spoken. This will make us stronger in the future.

  Thank you for ignoring us, for marginalizing all those who oppose your decision, because the future of the earth belongs to the excluded.

  Thank you, because, without you, we would not have realized our own ability to mobilize. It may serve no purpose this time, but it will doubtless be useful later on.

  Now that there seems no way of silencing the drums of war, I would like to say, as an ancient European king said to an invader: ‘May your morning be a beautiful one, and may the sun shine on your soldiers’ armour, for in the afternoon, I will defeat you.’

  Thank you for allowing us – an army of anonymous people filling the streets in an attempt to stop a process that is already underway – to know what it feels like to be powerless, and to learn to grapple with that feeling and transform it.

  So, enjoy your morning and whatever glory it may yet bring you.

  Thank you for not listening to us, and for not taking us seriously; but know that we are listening to you, and that we will not forget your words.

  Thank you, great leader, George W. Bush.

  Thank you very much.

  The Intelligent Clerk

  At an airbase in Africa, the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry made a collection amongst his friends to help a Moroccan clerk who wanted to go back to the city of his birth. He managed to collect one thousand francs.

  One of the pilots flew the clerk to Casablanca, and when he returned, he described what had happened.

  ‘As soon as he arrived, he went out to supper in the best restaurant, gave lavish tips, ordered drinks all round, and bought dolls for the children in his village. The man had absolutely no idea when it came to looking after his money.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Saint-Exupéry, ‘he knew that people are the best investment in the world. By spending freely like that, he managed to regain the respect of his fellow villagers, who will probably end up giving him a job. After all, only a conqueror can be that generous.’

  The Third Passion

  During the last fifteen years, I have had three consuming passions, of the kind where you read everything you can find on the subject, talk obsessively about it, seek out people who share your enthusiasm, and fall asleep and wake up thinking about it. The first was when I bought a computer. I abandoned the typewriter for ever, and discovered the freedom this gave me (I am writing this in a small French town, using a machine that weighs just over three pounds, contains ten years of my professional life, and on which I can find whatever I need in less than five seconds). The second was when I first used the internet, which, even then, was already a larger repository of knowledge than the very largest of conventional libraries.

  The third passion, however, has nothing to do with technological advances. It is…the bow and arrow. In my youth, I read a fascinating book entitled Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel, in which he described his spiritual journey through the practice of that sport. The idea stayed in my subconscious until, one day, in the Pyrenees, I met an archer. We chatted away, he lent me a bow and some arrows, and, ever since, I have hardly let a day go by without practising shooting at a target.

  At home, in my apartment in Brazil, I set up my own target (the sort you can take down in a matter of minutes when visitors come). In the French mountains, I practise outside every day, and this has so far landed me in bed twice – with hypothermia, after spending more than two hours in temperatures of −6°C. I could only take part in the World Economic Forum this year in Davos thanks to powerful painkillers:
two days before, I had caused a painful muscle inflammation just by holding my arm in the wrong position.

  And where does the fascination lie? Being able to shoot at targets with a bow and arrow (a weapon that dates back to 30,000 bc) has no practical application. But Eugen Herrigel, who first awoke this passion in me, knew what he was talking about. Below are some extracts from Zen in the Art of Archery (which can be applied to various activities in daily life).

  When you apply tension, focus it solely on the thing that you require the tension for; otherwise, conserve your energies, learn (with the bow) that in order to achieve something, you do not need to take a giant step, but simply to focus on your objective.

  My teacher gave me a very stiff bow. I asked why he was starting to teach me as if I were a professional. He replied: ‘If you begin with easy things, it leaves you unprepared for the great challenges. It’s best to know at once what difficulties you are likely to meet on the road.’

  For a long time, I could not draw the bow correctly, until, one day, my teacher showed me a breathing exercise, and it suddenly became easy. I asked why he had taken such a long time to correct me. He replied: ‘If I had shown you the breathing exercises right from the start, you would have thought them unnecessary. Now you will believe what I say and will practise as if it were really important. That is what good teachers do.’

  Releasing the arrow happens instinctively, but first you must have an intimate knowledge of the bow, the arrow and the target. When it comes to life’s challenges, making the perfect move also involves intuition; however, we can only forget technique once we have mastered it completely.