Why Do We Study Philosophy? — Continued, Part Six

I would like to conclude with passages from Paulo Coelho's Manuscript Found in Accra, in the free Persian rendering preserved in the source:

Like the sun, life gives its light in every direction. To kindle a fire, we must gather the scattered rays of sunlight and focus them on a single point.

In childhood we want everything at once, and we cannot yet control the enormous light and energy that life has given us.

Eventually a day comes when we need to concentrate the light within ourselves so that we can kindle an inner fire capable of giving passion and meaning to our lives. But we do not know what that meaning is, so we turn towards the sky and ask: what is the meaning of my life?

Many people pass quickly over this question and bury the disturbing question somewhere within themselves, because if we genuinely try to find an answer we will not easily be able to rest our heads peacefully at night. Those who forget the question will live tomorrow as they lived yesterday; and when that unexpected guest arrives to release them from their yesterdays and todays, they will complain bitterly:
“My life was very short, and I never had the chance to live.”

...........

There are also those who are not afraid of the question and go searching for an answer. But because they do not know it, they begin reading the answers of people who confronted the difficult question before them. Eventually they find an answer that, in their judgement, is correct.

Once they reach that answer and the question is gone, they spend the rest of their lives as slaves to the answer they have found. They derive rules from it that others must also obey, because they believe they have found the single reason for both their own existence and everyone else's.

They build temples for those who accept the answer and tribunals for those who do not.

............

Finally there are those who discover that the question is itself a trap, because there is no answer to it somewhere outside.

Instead of searching for the answer outside themselves, they turn inward and return to childhood, remembering what once filled them with profound passion and enthusiasm. Regardless of what others say, they devote their lives to that rediscovered inner fire.

They know that passion and love are the sacred fire within us, born from focusing the rays of the inner sun.

Gradually they discover that what they do in life under the guidance of this love is connected to a mysterious source beyond human knowledge. Before this mystery that shapes their fate they bow their heads in acceptance and respect, and they do not turn away from the journey along the path illuminated by the burning flame in their hearts.

They move forward trusting the inspirations of the heart. When they cannot see those inspirations clearly, they rely honestly on the logic of an inner order that keeps them steady on their path.

Others may regard them as mad, and sometimes they truly behave like mad people. The truth is that those who discover genuine love and will always appear, in the eyes of others, mad and detached from the outside world.

They have chosen their path because they allowed the mysterious power of the path to choose them. Perhaps they discover the meaning of their lives only when they can stand smiling before that unexpected guest. They are happy because their path has been beautiful and filled with awareness and heart.

“A free translation from Paulo Coelho's Manuscript Found in Accra”