Life of Pi
This is my favorite new book. I haven't finished it yet but I'm about half way through it now. I've laid my eyes on this book for years already, probably since it came out, but never came around to buying it. It's one of those books where the words really leaves a smart imprint inside you. It's definitely one of those books where you flip back to the pages where the words were so strong that you couldn't help but re-read it again, and even possibly write it down for further referencing. If anything, I think it has such a unique perspective on religion, life and animals. I'm definitely not a religious person. But reading Life of Pi actually made me appreciate the mysteries and wonders of religion more. It's really hard for me to describe why I like it so much. But it's honest, funny, sad, interesting and serious at the same time. And I guess that's what I think life is about, I suppose.
It's about an Indian boy name Piscine Molitor Patel. His name really cracks me up as it reminds me of a dental cavity. But he gets teased so much in school (people were calling him Pissing Patel) that on his first day of his new school he scribbled on the chalkboard, "My name is Piscine Molitor Patel, known to all as Pi. Pi = 3.14." And then drew the symbol that looked like a slanted shack with a dented roof. He grew up in a zoo, which his family owns. He went on to study zoology and religious studies in Canada. He is a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian.
Some things he said about animals that I thought were really interesting:
"I have heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about God and religion. Well-meaning but misinformed people think animals in the wild are 'happy' because they are 'free'... This is not the way it is. Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of freedom in such a context? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor in their personal reations."
"I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both."
When Pi met an atheist:
"Some people say God died during the Partition in 1947. He may have died in 1971 during the war. Or he may have died yesterday here in Pondicherry (Pi's hometown) in an orphanage. That's what some people say, Pi. When I was your age, I lived in bed, racked with polio. I asked myself every day, 'Where is God? Where is God? God never came. It wasn't God that saved me - it was medicine. Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die."
Pi on comparing atheists and agnostics:
"It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are also permitted to doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immoblity as a means of transportation."
On religion:
"We are all born like Catholics, aren't we - in limbo, withour religion, until some figure introduces us to God? After that meeting the matter ends for most of us. If there is a change, it is usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life's way."
And the way he describes Hinduism is beautiful:
"First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first. I owe to Hinduism the original landscape of my religious imagination, where those towns and rivers, battlefields and forests, holy mountains and deep seas where gods, saints, villains and ordinary people rub shoulders, and, in doing so, define who and why we are."
And I love his take on Jesus Christ, and the comparison between Hinduism and Christianity:
"I couldn't imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified - and at the hands of mere humans, to boot. I'd never heard of a Hindu God dying. Devils and monsters did, as did mortals, by the thousands and millions - that's what they were there for. Matter, too, fell away. But divinity should not be blighted by death. It's wrong. The world soul cannot die, even in one contained part of it. It was wrong of this Christian God to let His avatar die. That is tantamount to letting a part of Himself die. For if the Son is to die, it cannot be fake...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."
"This Son (Christ), on the other hand (when compared to a Hindu God), who goes hungry, who suffers from thirst, who gets tired, who is sad, who is anxious, who is heckled and harassed, who has to put with followers who don't get it and opponents who don't respect Him - what kind of a god is that? It's a god on too human a scale, that's what. There are miracles, yes, mostly of a medical nature, a few to satisfy hungry stomachs; at best a storm is tempered, water is briefly walked upon... 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 in a hot place, at that - with a stride like any human stride; and when he splurged on transportation, it was a regular donkey. This son is a god who died in three hours, with moans, gasps and laments. What kind of a god is that? WHat is there to inspire in this Son? Love."
And that was why he turned Christian, because he found Christ, whose humanity to be so compelling.
Pi also turned Muslim a year later:
"I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion."
And the last thing I read before I started typing here that I thought was interesting:
"Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizons? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult? The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life."
I don't know if this is true for many people or not. But I guess for me, who wants to travel and have been travelling a lot, there is a ring of truth to it.
It's about an Indian boy name Piscine Molitor Patel. His name really cracks me up as it reminds me of a dental cavity. But he gets teased so much in school (people were calling him Pissing Patel) that on his first day of his new school he scribbled on the chalkboard, "My name is Piscine Molitor Patel, known to all as Pi. Pi = 3.14." And then drew the symbol that looked like a slanted shack with a dented roof. He grew up in a zoo, which his family owns. He went on to study zoology and religious studies in Canada. He is a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian.
Some things he said about animals that I thought were really interesting:
"I have heard nearly as much nonsense about zoos as I have about God and religion. Well-meaning but misinformed people think animals in the wild are 'happy' because they are 'free'... This is not the way it is. Animals in the wild lead lives of compulsion and necessity within an unforgiving social hierarchy in an environment where the supply of fear is high and the supply of food low and where territory must constantly be defended and parasites forever endured. What is the meaning of freedom in such a context? Animals in the wild are, in practice, free neither in space nor in time, nor in their personal reations."
"I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both."
When Pi met an atheist:
"Some people say God died during the Partition in 1947. He may have died in 1971 during the war. Or he may have died yesterday here in Pondicherry (Pi's hometown) in an orphanage. That's what some people say, Pi. When I was your age, I lived in bed, racked with polio. I asked myself every day, 'Where is God? Where is God? God never came. It wasn't God that saved me - it was medicine. Reason is my prophet and it tells me that as a watch stops, so we die."
Pi on comparing atheists and agnostics:
"It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' then surely we are also permitted to doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immoblity as a means of transportation."
On religion:
"We are all born like Catholics, aren't we - in limbo, withour religion, until some figure introduces us to God? After that meeting the matter ends for most of us. If there is a change, it is usually for the lesser rather than the greater; many people seem to lose God along life's way."
And the way he describes Hinduism is beautiful:
"First wonder goes deepest; wonder after that fits in the impression made by the first. I owe to Hinduism the original landscape of my religious imagination, where those towns and rivers, battlefields and forests, holy mountains and deep seas where gods, saints, villains and ordinary people rub shoulders, and, in doing so, define who and why we are."
And I love his take on Jesus Christ, and the comparison between Hinduism and Christianity:
"I couldn't imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified - and at the hands of mere humans, to boot. I'd never heard of a Hindu God dying. Devils and monsters did, as did mortals, by the thousands and millions - that's what they were there for. Matter, too, fell away. But divinity should not be blighted by death. It's wrong. The world soul cannot die, even in one contained part of it. It was wrong of this Christian God to let His avatar die. That is tantamount to letting a part of Himself die. For if the Son is to die, it cannot be fake...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."
"This Son (Christ), on the other hand (when compared to a Hindu God), who goes hungry, who suffers from thirst, who gets tired, who is sad, who is anxious, who is heckled and harassed, who has to put with followers who don't get it and opponents who don't respect Him - what kind of a god is that? It's a god on too human a scale, that's what. There are miracles, yes, mostly of a medical nature, a few to satisfy hungry stomachs; at best a storm is tempered, water is briefly walked upon... 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 in a hot place, at that - with a stride like any human stride; and when he splurged on transportation, it was a regular donkey. This son is a god who died in three hours, with moans, gasps and laments. What kind of a god is that? WHat is there to inspire in this Son? Love."
And that was why he turned Christian, because he found Christ, whose humanity to be so compelling.
Pi also turned Muslim a year later:
"I challenge anyone to understand Islam, its spirit, and not to love it. It is a beautiful religion of brotherhood and devotion."
And the last thing I read before I started typing here that I thought was interesting:
"Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizons? Why climb this Mount Everest of formalities that makes you feel like a beggar? Why enter this jungle of foreignness where everything is new, strange and difficult? The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life."
I don't know if this is true for many people or not. But I guess for me, who wants to travel and have been travelling a lot, there is a ring of truth to it.
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