Life of Pi

by Yann Martel

that a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature;

That’s what fiction is about, isn’t it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?

Your story is emotionally dead, that’s the crux of it.

have a story that will make you believe in God.”

If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.

Academic study and the steady, mindful practice of religion slowly brought me back to life.

But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

And so, in that Greek letter that looks like a shack with a corrugated tin roof, in that elusive, irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe, I found refuge.

It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them—and then they leap.

But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man. In a general way we mean how our species’ excessive predatoriness has made the entire planet our prey.

DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.

Father believed there was another animal even more dangerous than us, and one that was extremely common, too, found on every continent, in every habitat: the redoubtable species Animalus anthropomorphicus, the animal as seen through human eyes.

The obsession with putting ourselves at the centre of everything is the bane not only of theologians but also of zoologists.

All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.

There is Brahman nirguna, without qualities, which lies beyond understanding, beyond description, beyond approach; with our poor words we sew a suit for it—One, Truth, Unity, Absolute, Ultimate Reality, Ground of Being—and try to make it fit, but Brahman nirguna always bursts the seams. We are left speechless.

The truth of life is that Brahman is no different from atman, the spiritual force within us, what you might call the soul. The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which sustains the universe beyond thought and language, and that which is at the core of us and struggles for expression, is the same thing. The finite within the infinite, the infinite within the finite. If you ask me how Brahman and atman relate precisely, I would say in the same way the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit relate: mysteriously.

This, in a holy nutshell, is Hinduism,

But we should not cling! A plague upon fundamentalists and literalists!

What? Humanity sins but it’s God’s Son who pays the price?

What a downright weird story. What peculiar psychology.

religions abound with stories.

But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in His mouth.

The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself ? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin’s answer.

This Son is a god who spent most of His time telling stories, talking.

This Son is a god who walked, a pedestrian god—and

Christianity is a religion in a rush. Look at the world created in seven days. Even on a symbolic level, that’s creation in a frenzy.

Why, Islam is nothing but an easy sort of exercise, I thought. Hot-weather yoga for the Bedouins. Asanas without sweat, heaven without strain.

I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion.

The feeling, a paradoxical mix of pulsing energy and profound peace, was intense and blissful.

I felt I saw her, a vision beyond vision.

The presence of God is the finest of rewards.

a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.

An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose.

‘All religions are true.’

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defence, not God’s, that the self-righteous should rush.

“If there’s only one nation in the sky, shouldn’t all passports be valid for it?”

The Imitation of Christ.”

I believe the answer lies in something I mentioned earlier, that measure of madness that moves life in strange but saving ways.

The circus lions don’t care to know that their leader is a weakling human; the fiction guarantees their social well-being and staves off violent anarchy.

I’m sure even the adult viper, as it swallowed the mouse, must have felt somewhere in its undeveloped mind a twinge of regret, a feeling that something greater was just missed, an imaginative leap away from the lonely, crude reality of a reptile.

No greatness without goodness.

mainly the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago

Things didn’t turn out the way they were supposed to, but what can you do? You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

“And what of my extended family—birds, beasts and reptiles? They too have drowned. Every single thing I value in life has been destroyed. And I am allowed no explanation? I am to suffer hell without any account from heaven? In that case, what is the purpose of reason, Richard Parker? Is it no more than to shine at practicalities—the getting of food, clothing and shelter? Why can’t reason give greater answers? Why can we throw a question further than we can pull in an answer? Why such a vast net if there’s so little fish to catch?”

must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent.

It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.

A part of me did not want Richard Parker to die at all, because if he died I would be left alone with despair, a foe even more formidable than a tiger. If I still had the will to live, it was thanks to Richard Parker. He kept me from thinking too much about my family and my tragic circumstances. He pushed me to go on living. I hated him for it, yet at the same time I was grateful. I am grateful. It’s the plain truth: without Richard Parker, I wouldn’t be alive today to tell you my story.

In my experience, a castaway’s worst mistake is to hope too much and do too little. Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one’s life away.