Thursday, October 16, 2008

Taming of the shrew

An extract from Paulo Coelho's newsletter, Warrior of the Light on the virtue of Justice.

'When he was young, Cosroes (later on Cosroes I) had a master who managed to make him an outstanding student in all the subjects he learned.

One afternoon, for no apparent reason, the master punished him very severely.

Years later, Cosroes succeeded to the throne. One of the first measures he took was to send for his childhood master and demand an explanation for the injustice he had committed.

“Why did you punish me without my having deserved it?” he asked.

“When I saw your intelligence, I realized right away that you would inherit your father’s throne,” answered the master. “And so I decided to show you how injustice is capable of marking a man for the rest of his life. I hope that you will never chastise anyone without reason.”

- According to the tutor of the King of Persia'

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It always intrigues me how we as a species try to hand-hold each other through life by sharing lessons. Every culture does it and I'm pretty certain it stems from the knowledge that we don't live long enough to learn everything from experience. Hence the sharing and attempted imbibing. That was interesting. :0)

Nino's Mum said...

no, damn, your comment was more interesting! That's a fascinating interpretation OJ: never thought of it that way, but there's a light bulb going on somewhere.