Gems from Shantaram
I've been waxing lyrical about Gregory Roberts' autobiographical Shantaram since I started reading it (after a lot of others had been waxing lyrical about it to me). It's also Johnny Depp's new movie project :)
What's amazing is that it contains more heartfelt wisdom than I've come across in almost any book on spirituality, let alone the raft of self-help books out there. Underlining again that one person's story, honestly told, can touch in a way that no "expert" can.
So I thought I'd jot down a few of the lines that have really touched me or shown me a new way of looking at things - or just made me put the book down to marvel at his
(hard won) insight, and that of the people he lived with in Mumbai.
A reminder for those of you who've read it, and hopefully motivation for those who haven't... yet ;)
*** It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.
*** There's a truth that's deeper than experience. It's beyond what we can see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn't help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabaker told it to me, just as I'm telling it to you now.
*** It's a characteristic of human nature that the best qualities, called up quickly in a crisis, are very often the hardest to find in a prosperous calm.
*** One of the ironies of courage, and the reason why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone.
*** There's no meanness too spiteful or too cruel when we hate someone for all the wrong reasons.
*** Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and I pinned it to the sky.
*** It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts.
*** Survival means more than simply being alive. It's not just the body that must survive a jail term: the spirit and the will and the heart have to make it through as well. If any one of them is broken or destroyed, the man whose living body walks through the gate, at the end of his sentence, can't be said to have survived it.
*** Guilt is the hilt of the knife that we use on ourselves, and love is often the blade; but it's worry that keeps the knife sharp, and worry that gets most of us, in
the end.
*** Every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.
What's amazing is that it contains more heartfelt wisdom than I've come across in almost any book on spirituality, let alone the raft of self-help books out there. Underlining again that one person's story, honestly told, can touch in a way that no "expert" can.
So I thought I'd jot down a few of the lines that have really touched me or shown me a new way of looking at things - or just made me put the book down to marvel at his
(hard won) insight, and that of the people he lived with in Mumbai.
A reminder for those of you who've read it, and hopefully motivation for those who haven't... yet ;)
*** It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.
*** There's a truth that's deeper than experience. It's beyond what we can see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn't help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabaker told it to me, just as I'm telling it to you now.
*** It's a characteristic of human nature that the best qualities, called up quickly in a crisis, are very often the hardest to find in a prosperous calm.
*** One of the ironies of courage, and the reason why we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone.
*** There's no meanness too spiteful or too cruel when we hate someone for all the wrong reasons.
*** Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and I pinned it to the sky.
*** It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts.
*** Survival means more than simply being alive. It's not just the body that must survive a jail term: the spirit and the will and the heart have to make it through as well. If any one of them is broken or destroyed, the man whose living body walks through the gate, at the end of his sentence, can't be said to have survived it.
*** Guilt is the hilt of the knife that we use on ourselves, and love is often the blade; but it's worry that keeps the knife sharp, and worry that gets most of us, in
the end.
*** Every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.
Labels: gregory david roberts, love, mumbai, shantaram, spirituality, wisdom
posted by Zapruder | 06:58
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