by Paulo Coelho
The ascetic protests: “You let that woman pour expensive oil on your hair! Why didn’t she sell it instead to buy food?”
Smiling, Jesus holds the door open. And the Warriors of the Light go in, despite the hysterical shouting.
The opponent is wise.
Whenever he can, he makes use of the easiest and most effective of his weapons: gossip. It doesn’t take much effort to use it because others do the work for him. A few misdirected words can destroy months of dedication, years spent in search of harmony.
The Warrior of the Light is often the victim of this trick. He does not know where the blow came from and cannot prove that the gossip is false. Gossip does not allow him the right to defend himself: it condemns without a trial.
When this happens, he puts up with the consequences and the undeserved punishment, for, as he well knows, words are powerful. But he suffers in silence and never uses the same weapon to hit back at his opponent.
The Warrior of the Light is not a coward.
You can give a fool a thousand intellects, but the only one he will want is yours,” says an Arabic proverb. When the Warrior of the Light starts planting his garden, he notices that his neighbor is there, spying. He likes to give advice on when to sow actions, when to fertilize thoughts, and water conquests.
If the Warrior listens to what his neighbor is saying, he will end up creating something that is not his; the garden he is tending will be his neighbor’s idea.
But a true Warrior of the Light knows that every garden has its own mysteries, which only the patient hand of the gardener can unravel. That is why he prefers to concentrate on the sun, the rain, and the seasons.
He knows that the fool who gives advice about someone else’s garden is not tending his own plants.
In order to fight, you must keep your eyes open and have faithful companions by your side.
It might happen that someone who was fighting alongside the Warrior of the Light suddenly becomes his opponent instead.
The Warrior’s first reaction is hatred, but he knows that a blind combatant is lost in the midst of battle.
And so he tries to see the good things that his former ally did during the time in which they lived side by side; he tries to understand what led to that sudden change of attitude, what wounds he had accumulated in his soul. He tries to discover what made one of them abandon their dialogue.
No one is entirely good or evil; that is what the Warrior thinks when he sees that he has a new opponent.
A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means.
Because there are no ends, there are only means. Life carries him from unknown to unknown. Each moment is filled with this thrilling mystery: the Warrior does not know where he came from nor where he is going.
But he is not here by chance. And he is overjoyed by surprises and excited by landscapes that he has never seen before. He often feels afraid, but that is normal in a Warrior.
If he thinks only of the goal, he will not be able to pay attention to the signs along the way. If he concentrates only on one question, he will miss the answers that are there beside him.
That is why the Warrior submits.
The Warrior knows about the “waterfall effect.”
He has often seen someone mistreating another person who lacks the courage to respond. Then, out of cowardice and resentment, that person vents his anger on someone weaker than himself, who takes it out on someone else, in a veritable torrent of misery. No one knows the consequences of his own cruelty.
That is why the Warrior is careful in his use of the sword and only accepts an opponent who is worthy of him. In moments of rage, he punches a rock and bruises his hand.
The hand will heal eventually, but the child who got beaten because his father lost a battle will bear the marks for the rest of his life.
When the order to move on comes, the Warrior looks at all the friends he has made during the time that he followed the path. He taught some to hear the bells of a drowned temple, he told others stories around the fire.
His heart is sad, but he knows that his sword is sacred and that he must obey the orders of the One to whom he offered up his struggle.
Then the Warrior thanks his traveling companions, takes a deep breath and continues on, laden with memories of an unforgettable journey.
EPILOGUE
It was dark by the time she finished speaking. The two of them sat watching the moon rising.
“Many of the things you told me contradict each other,” he said.
She got up.
“Goodbye,” she said. “You knew that the bells at the bottom of the sea were not just a legend, but you could only hear them when you realized that the wind, the seagulls, and the sound of the palm fronds were all part of the pealing of the bells.
“In just the same way, the Warrior of the Light knows that everything around him—his victories, his defeats, his enthusiasm, and his despondency—form part of his Good Fight. And he will know which strategy to use when he needs it. A Warrior does not try to be coherent; he has learned to live with his contradictions.”
“Who are you?” he asked.
But the woman was already moving off, walking over the waves toward the rising moon.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
With the exception of the prologue and the epilogue, the material contained in this book was first published in a column entitled “Maktub,” which appeared in Folha de São Paulo between 1993 and 1996 as well as in various other newspapers in Brazil and elsewhere.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PAULO COELHO was born in Brazil and has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. Renowned for his best-loved work, The Alchemist, he has sold more than forty-seven million books worldwide and has been translated into fifty-six languages. The recipient of numerous prestigious international awards, among them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum and France’s Légion d’Honneur, Paulo Coelho has inspired millions worldwide. Paulo Coelho was inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2002, and he writes a weekly column syndicated throughout the world. Visit his website at www.paulocoelho.com.
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ALSO BY PAULO COELHO
The Alchemist
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
The Fifth Mountain
The Pilgrimage
The Valkyries
Veronika Decides to Die
Confessions of a Pilgrim
Eleven Minutes
CREDITS
Cover design © Doreen Louie
Cover photograph © Dick Scott-Stewart/the Special Photographers Library
Author photograph © Xavier González
COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WARRIOR OF THE LIGHT. Copyright © 2006 by Paulo Coelho. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition JUNE 2006 ISBN: 9780061828669
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Prologue
Begin Reading
Epilogue
Author’S Note
About the Author
Other Books by Paulo Coelho
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
