Below is a list of stories taken from
Paulo Coelho's Blog. He is my favorite writer, author, poet, artist, or whatever you may call it. Just read them, and you will find them not just inspirational, but can also bring peace to your mind and soul... And please, spread this link/page if you care enough to let other people read these.
How To Level Out The World
Once when Confucius was traveling with his disciples, he heard about a very intelligent boy who was living in a particular village.
Confucius went to speak with him and asked him jokingly:
‘How would you like to help me correct all the irregularities and inequalities in the world?’
‘But why?’ asked the boy.
‘If we flattened the mountains, the birds would have no shelter. If we filled up the deep rivers and the sea, the fish would die. The world is vast enough to cope with differences.’
The disciples left feeling greatly impressed by the boy’s wisdom. But Confucius said:
‘I’ve known many children who, instead of playing and doing the things appropriate to their age, were busy trying to understand the world.
‘ Not one of those precocious children did anything of any great significance later in life because they had never experienced the innocence and healthy irresponsibility of childhood.’
The One Who Cared Most
The writer Leo Buscaglia was once invited to be on the jury of a school competition to find ‘the child who cared most for others’.
The winner was a boy whose neighbour, a gentleman of over eighty, had just been widowed.
When he saw the old man sitting in his garden crying, the boy jumped over the fence, sat on the man’s lap and stayed there for a long time.
When he went back home, his mother asked him what he had said to the poor man.
‘Nothing,’ said the boy. ‘He’s lost his wife and that must have really hurt.
“I just went over to help him to cry.”
The Game of Chess
Illustration by Ken Crane
A young man said to the abbot of a monastery:
‘I would really like to become a monk, but I have learned nothing of importance in my life. My father only taught me how to play chess, and I was told that all games are sinful.’
The abbot called for a chessboard and summoned a monk to play with the young man. However, before the game began, he added:
‘We also need diversion, but we will have only the best players here. If our monk loses, he will leave the monastery, thus creating an opening for you.’
The abbot was deadly serious.
The young man played an aggressive game, but then he noticed the saintly look in the monk’s eyes, and from then on, he began to play deliberately badly.
He decided that he would rather lose because he felt that the monk could prove far more useful to the world than him.
Suddenly, the abbot overturned the chessboard onto the floor.
‘You learned far more than you were taught,’ he said. ‘You have the powers of concentration necessary to win and you are capable of fighting for what you want, but you also have compassion and the ability to sacrifice yourself for a noble cause.
‘ You have shown yourself capable of balancing discipline and mercy; welcome to our monastery!’