More Gibran

After my final CPD lecture for the year on Saturday, I went to the HK Book Centre. I went there the previous day, asking them to find for me any books that they had by Khalil Gibran but they could not find any when I was there. I was told to go back later but by the time I did, they were already closed! This time, I was more lucky. They found three. One of them was all yellow. It had probably been lying quietly there for years, hidden amongst little piles of other books behind the first row of shelves facing the relevant aisle. I pointed this out to the sales woman and said that since I was buying all three and that book would probably stay there for another 10 odd years if I did not want it, the least they could do was to give me a further discount than my usual readers privilege from my reader's card. She talked to the manager and gave me a further 15% discount. I was happy. So was she.

Yesterday, I looked at one of them. It was a really tiny little book, 6 inches by 4. It was the smallest book that I ever bought. It is a hard cover. It comes with a black jacket full of shiny vine-like curves and curls folded into shapes of a heart, with tendrils at appropriate places along its side in red and purple, with tiny dragon flies, bee-birds, bees, butterlies, tiny little stars dotted at every corner and in between the tendrils. One look at its cover is sufficient to convince me that it must have been designed by a woman! Its title is "The Little Book of Love". I looked at its fly leaf. It was first published in 2007 and revised in 2008 and reprinted again in 2009 by Oneworld Publications.  It was dedicated to MB with the words: "My first glimpse of you was not in truth the first. The hour in which our hearts met confirmed in me the belief in Eternity and in the immortality of the soul". Khalil's message to the world is: "Let love, human and frail, command the coming day.". His message is echoed by John Lennon's famous song of the 1960's "All you Need is Love".

The Introduction to the little book says that for Khalil Gibran, "love...was both a holistic state of being and a deeply spiritual experience, a 'sacred mystery' that 'remains forever wordless....the only path to self-realization is the path of true love...everyone is on a pilgrimmage towards that celestial city of love eternal.". It continues, "Gibran's concept of love is not an artificial romantic affectation but a positive romantic rapture and ecstasy, despite the fact that love can be wounding, painful and entail great suffering."  Gibran did not however give any definition of love himself. I think it is wise for him to refuse to do so. For indeed, I don't think love can be defined. Love can only be felt. It can only be experienced. There can be as many different kinds of love as there are people in this world and the peculiar way they have lived through such a wonderful, bitter, sweet, mesmerising and agonizing experience. From what he has written, it seems that he thinks that love makes demands on us: it has its own laws, its imposes its own rights and responsibilities upon us and in its deepest forms, it helps us to understand ourselves.

The book therefore samples Gibran's views on love of God, love of country, love of family and friends, love between men and women, love of nature, and love of all humanity. As Gibran says in The Prophet, which I also bought, "Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?".  And as the introduction says, "For him, no gift can ever compare with the unique gift which only love can offer."

According to the biographic note to the book, Gibran (1883-1931) was born in Bisharri, Lebanon, emigrated to America in 1895 at age 12, received 2 years education at al-Hikmah (La Sagesse) school in Beirut 1898-1901. His literary career is divided into an Arabic period(1905-1918) and an English period (1918-1931). His views were strongly influenced by the Bible and in his Arabic period, he spoke out strongly in favour of social justice and women's rights, attacked political and religious corruption, feudalistic values and in English period, he published 8 works including his most famous work, The Prophet and two posthumous works The Wanderer and the Garden of the Prophet. He is also a painter. His painting shows remarkable similarities to those of William Blake.

I shall set out below some of the writing from this little book that are particularly close to my heart but I shall omit those I already set out in my previous blog.

Think not that you can direct the course of love/For love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course./Love has no other deisre but to fulfil itself. ( from The Prophet)

Will you accept a heart that loves/ But never yields? And burns, but /Never melts? Will you be at ease/With a soul that quivers before the/Tempest, but never surrenders to it?/Will you accept as a companion/Who makes no slaves, nor will become/One? Will you own me but not possess/Me, by taking my body and not my heart? (from The Secrets of the Heart)

My soul showed me that Love prides itself not only in the one who loves but also in the beloved....Love has become a halo whose beginning is its end, and whose end is its beginning.It surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be. (from Thoughts and Meditations)

Love knows not its depth till the hour of separation. (from Spiritual Sayings)

"Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping./For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts./ And stand together yet not too near together:/For the pillars of the temple stand apart,/And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow. (from The Prophet)

Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course. ( from The Broken Wings)

What thing is this love? Whence does it come?...What is this wine which courses through the veins of one whom maidens' glances left unmoved?..Is it something sowed in his heart by man-wrought beauties without the awareness of his senses? Or is it a bright light veiled by the mist and now breaking forth to illumine the emptiness of his soul? Is it perchance a dream come in the stillness of the night to mock at him, or a truth that was and will be to the end of time? (from Nymphs of the Valley)

A woman's happiness is not in the glory and lordship of a man. Neither is it in his generosity or clemency; it is in a love that binds her spirit to his spirit, pouring out her love into his heart and making them a single member in the body of Life and one word on the lips of God. (from Spirits Rebellious)  

Was the love of Judas' mother for her son less than the love of Mary for Jesus? (from Sand and Foam)

Life without Love is like a tree without blossom and fruit. And love without Beauty is like flowers without scent and fruits without seeds...Life, Love and Beauty are three persons in one, one cannot be separated or changed.  (from Thoughts and Meditations)

I love the place of my birth with some of the love for my land. I love my country with a little of my love for the world, my homeland; I love the world with my all, for it is the pastureland of Man, the spirit of divinity on earth. (from A Tear and a Smile)

Those whom Love has not chosen as followers do not hear when Love calls. (from the The Broken Wings)

Love is dense fog to enshroud the soul, and veil from it the shows of life,/So that the soul sees naught but the shadows of its desires/Lost among rocky steeps/And hears naught but the echo of its voice shouting from the valleys of desolation (from Sand and Foam)

Love that does not renew itself every day becomes a habit and in turn a slavery ( from Sand and Foam)

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth./Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself./He threshes you to make you naked./He sifts you to free you from your husks./He grinds you unto whiteness./He kneads you until you are pliant; /And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast. (from The Prophet)

How shall my heart be unsealed unless it be broken? (from Sand and Foam)

Love is a sacred mystery. To those who love, it remains forever wordless; but to those who do not love, it may be but a heartless jest. ( from Jesus, the Son of Man)

..Love when love is homesick exhausts time's measurements and time's soundings (from The Garden of the Prophet)

"Happiness desires not contentment, for happiness is naught but a longing which union embraces; contentment is a diversion conquered by forgetfulness. The immortal soul is not contented, for it is ever desiring of perfection; and perfection is the Infinite. And my heart spoke to the youth of Beauty and said; "Show to me the secret of woman, O Beauty, and enlighten me, for you are knowledge." He said, "She is you, human heart, and as you were, so was she. She is I, and whoever I be, there is she. She is as a religion when the ignorant profane it not; as a full moon when clouds do not hide it; as the breeze untouched by corruption and impurity," (from A Tear and a Smile)

It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created in years or even generations.   (from The Broken Wings)

Love is a nectar which the brides of dawn pour for the strong/So that they rise glorified before the stars of night and joyous before the sun of day. (from the Spirits Rebellious)

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.  (from Sand and Foam)

Love is gracious host to his guests though to the unbidden his house is a mirage and a mockery. (from Jesus, the Son of Man)

Love is our lord and master./It is not a wanton decay of the flesh,/Nor the crumbling of desire/When desire and self are wrestling;/Nor is it flesh that takes arms against the spirit./Love rebels not./It only leaves the trodden way of ancient destinies for the sacred grove,/To sing and dance its secret to eternity. (from The Earth Gods)

All life is twain, the one a frozen stream, the other a burning flame/And the burning flame is love. (from Prose Poems)

We are both of us between the hands of a hidden force, a just and merciful force; let it do with us as it will.    (from Spirits Rebellious)

Love comes in different shapes. Sometimes it comes in wisdom; at other times in justice and oftentimes in hope.  (from Thoughts and Meditations)

Love is a word of light, written by a hand of light, upon a page of light. (from Sand and Foam)

There is no punishment so severe as that suffered by the woman who finds herself imprisoned between a man she loves and another man who loves her (from The Secrets of the Heart)

With my lips I have denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.(from The Forerunner)

When loves becomes vast, love becomes wordless. (from Jesus, the Son of Man)

Love passes us by, robed in meekness; but we flee from her in fear, or hide in the darkness; or else pursues her, to do evil in her name.           (from The Voice of the Master)

Love, like death, changes everything (from Spiritual Sayings)

Love embraces that which is between them rather than each other. (from Sand and Foam)

For love lies in thes soul alone, not in the body and like wine/Should stimulate our better self/To welcome gifts of Love Divine. (from The Procession)

Love is a force that makes our hearts; our hearts cannot create that force. (from Spirits Rebellious)

Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. We three are one in loneliness and the love that binds us together is deep and strong and strange. (from The Madman)

And the two lovers walked among the willow trees, and the oneness of each was a language speaking of the oneness of both; and an ear listening in silence to the inspiration of love; and a seeing eye seeing the glory of happiness. (from Nymphs of the Valley)

You tell me that you fear love; why my little one? Do you fear the light of the sun? Do you fear the ebb and flow of the sea? Do you fear the dawning of the day? Do you fear the advent of spring? I wonder why you fear love?...do not fear love; do not fear love, friend of my heart. We must surrender to it in spite of what it may bring in the way of pain, of desolation, of longing, and in spite of all perplexity and bewilderment. ( from Letter to May Ziadeh)

Love is an inborn weakness which we have inherited from the first man. ( from Prose Poems)

But love is beyond our question,/And love outsoars our song. (From The Earth Gods)

Read, reflect and reframe our thoughts on love, my friends.