On Giving -- Kahlil Gibran

Guest poem sent in by Neville Clemens

(Poem #1750) On Giving There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. And there are those who have little and give it all. These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space. Through the hands of such as these God speaks, and from behind their eyes He smiles upon the earth. -- Kahlil Gibran

I came across this excerpt form Gibran's 'The Prophet' when I was about 13,
courtesy of my father who had it put up on our living room wall. I loved it
then, and as the years have gone by I've grown to love it even more as I
begin to be more aware of and experience the interplay of emotions involved
in simple acts of my life. Gibran forces us to take a harder look at Giving,
forces us to look past fruitive motives for our actions, at a place where
there exists such a thing as a Selfless Deed, stripped clean of ANY reaction
- pure, simple and childlike to grasp....and yet something we struggle with.

"They give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space."

THAT, to me, is the clinching line of the poem; the line that holds it all
together and gently pours the poet's wisdom over the reader.

Notes:

1. This is part of a larger passage on Giving in 'The Prophet', but this is
the portion that I came across as a child. Since it seems to me to be a
plenary excerpt and since I am biased towards shorter poems I'd like to
submit just this passage. The entire passage can be read here:

   http://www.katsandogz.com/ongiving.html

2. The poet's first name is spelt as Khalil as well as Kahlil. However, the
former spelling does more justice to the pronunciation. The first syllable
is a 'kha', pronounced thickly from the throat - as anyone familiar with
Urdu or Arabic would know. The 'G' in the last name is pronounced as in
Germany. The source of this is a Lebanese friend of mine (Gibran was
Lebanese, so I assume he was right!). I'm only adding this because for
years I'd always mumble his name in conversations to avoid being caught with
a mispronunciation :-). To sum up : kha-leel jib-raan

3. An extensive biography of this Lebanese poet and artist (a la Blake) is
available at:

   [broken link] http://www.kahlil.org/bio.html

Neville

On Laws (The Prophet, Chapter 13) -- Kahlil Gibran

Guest poem sent in by Rajarshi Bandopadhyay

(Poem #1734) On Laws (The Prophet, Chapter 13) Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?" And he answered: You delight in laying down laws, Yet you delight more in breaking them. Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter. But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore, And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you. Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent. But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers, But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness? What of the cripple who hates dancers? What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things? What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless? And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters law-breakers? What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun? They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws. And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows? And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth? But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you? You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course? What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man's prison door? What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's iron chains? And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man's path? People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing? -- Kahlil Gibran

In the light of recent terrorist attacks, there have been various
denunciations of fundamentalist and extremist ideologies, especially
the Islamic variety. IMHO, no matter what religion or philosophy it
subscribes to, extremism is dangerous, because it leads to conflict,
intolerance and violence.

Several articles in recent editions of prominent news sources have
attempted to analyse what drives seemingly normal young men to such
extremes, and they seem to come up with common themes:  youthful
rebellion, spiritual yearning, immigrant isolation, racial
discrimination, sexual repression and existentialist crises.

IMHO, the primary cause for these young men to blow themselves up is
none but the oldest criminal motive, that which caused Cain to slay
Abel: envy. Envy that their own orthodox beliefs, which aims at
suppressing every human pleasure and instinct, do not bring them
happiness, whereas  supposedly inferior cultures seem to be doing so
much better.

Gibran condemns those who would impose arbitrary morality on humanity
"the cripple who hates dancers", and ends the chapter ends on a
resounding blow for personal freedom of the human spirit, within the
limits of self-restraint, "tear off your garment yet leave it in no
man's path".

Raj

Links:
  Gibran bio at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalil_Gibran

Children -- Kahlil Gibran

Guest poem sent in by Radhika Gowaikar

(Poem #1194) Children And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children." And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. -- Kahlil Gibran

Throughout 'The Prophet', Kahlil Gibran manages to bring together great
insight into how life works (or should, at any rate) and truly beautiful
language. And he makes the two seem mutually indispensible.  Which is why he
appeals to me intellectually as well as aesthetically. He is a master of
analogies and his texts have many that are apt and natural - that of the
archer in this poem is close to perfection.

From a more simplistic viewpoint, he places the "Leave me alone/Let go of
me" phenomenon that most 'children' experience at some point in a much
wider context. I say this because in recent months the topic of how one
should "bring one's parents up" <g> has come up repeatedly with some of my
friends. Well, here is how. (The minor problem that remains is conveying
it to the parents... <g>)

radhika.

Google spews out vast amounts of pages on Gibran. To name two:

http://leb.net/gibran has a detailed biography of Gibran as well as a lot
of his writings in full. (Including The Prophet.) They spell the first
name Khalil.

[broken link] http://impact.civil.columbia.edu/~fawaz/g-gallery.html has many of
Gibran's illustrations that appear in The Prophet.