Mirrors of the Soul (7 page)

Are you a poet, who plays the tambourine at the doors of emirs, or the one who throws the flowers during weddings and who walks in processions with a sponge full of warm water in his mouth, a sponge to be pressed by his tongue and lips as soon as he reaches the cemetery?

Or have you a gift which God has placed in your hands on which to play heavenly melodies which draw our hearts toward the beautiful in life?

If you are the first, then you are a juggler who evokes in our soul that which is contrary to what you intend.

If you are the second, then you are love in our hearts and a vision in our minds.

In the Middle East there are two processions: One procession is of old people walking with bent backs, supported with bent canes; they are out of breath though their path is downhill.

The other is a procession of young men, running as if on winged feet, and jubilant as with musical strings in their throats, surmounting obstacles as if there were magnets drawing them up the mountainside and magic enchanting their hearts.

Which are you and in which procession do you move?

Ask yourself and meditate in the still of the night; find if you are a slave of yesterday or free for the morrow.

I tell you that the children of yesteryears are walking in the funeral of the era that they created for themselves. They are pulling a rotted rope that might break soon and cause them to drop into a forgotten abyss. I say that they are living in homes with weak foundations; as the storm blows — and it is about to blow — their homes will fall upon their heads and thus become their tombs. I say that all their thoughts, their sayings, their quarrels, their compositions, their books and all their work are nothing but chains dragging them because they are too weak to pull the load.

But the children of tomorrow are the ones called by life, and they follow it with steady steps and heads high, they are the dawn of new frontiers, no smoke will veil their eyes and no jingle of chains will drown out their voices. They are few in number, but the difference is as between a grain of wheat and a stack of hay. No one knows them but they know each other. They are like the summits, which can see and hear each other — not like caves, which cannot hear or see. They are the seed dropped by the hand of God in the field, breaking through its pod and waving its sapling leaves before the face of the sun. It shall grow into a mighty tree, its root in the heart of the earth and its branches high in the sky.

1.
  Fifty years before this translation.

9. SOLITUDE AND SECLUSION

by Gibran

Life is an island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion.

Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams, and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of an ocean of solitude and seclusion.

Your life, my friend, is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness and far away in its compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries.

I saw you, my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold, happy in your wealth and great in your riches and believing that a handful of gold is the secret chain that links the thoughts of the people with your own thoughts and links their feeling with your own.

I saw you as a great conqueror leading a conquering army toward the fortress, then destroying and capturing it.

On second glance I found beyond the wall of your treasures a heart trembling in its solitude and seclusion like the trembling of a thirsty man within a cage of gold and jewels, but without water.

I saw you, my friend, sitting on a throne of glory, surrounded by people extolling your charity, enumerating your gifts, gazing upon you as if they were in the presence of a prophet lifting their souls up into the planets and stars. I saw you looking at them, contentment and strength upon your face, as if you were to them as the soul is to the body.

On the second look I saw your secluded self standing beside your throne, suffering in its seclusion and quaking in its loneliness. I saw that self stretching its hands as if begging from unseen ghosts. I saw it looking above the shoulders of the people to a far horizon, empty of everything except its solitude and seclusion.

I saw you, my friend, passionately in love with a beautiful woman, filling her palms with your kisses as she looked at you with sympathy and affection in her eyes and the sweetness of motherhood on her lips; I said, secretly, that love has erased his solitude and removed his seclusion and he is now within the eternal soul which draws toward itself, with love, those who were separated by solitude and seclusion.

On the second look I saw behind your soul another lonely soul, like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop of tears in the palm of that woman.

Your life, my friend, is a residence far away from any other residence and neighbors.

Your inner soul is a home far away from other homes named after you. If this residence is dark, you cannot light it with your neighbor's lamp; if it is empty you cannot fill it with the riches of your neighbor; were it in the middle of a desert, you could not move it to a garden planted by someone else.

Your inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and seclusion. Were it not for this solitude and this seclusion you would not be you and I would not be I. If it were not for that solitude and seclusion, I would, if I heard your voice, think myself to be speaking; yet, if I saw your face, I would imagine that I were looking into a mirror.

10. THE SEA

by Gibran

In the still of the night
As man slumbers behind the folds,
the forest proclaims.

“I am the power

Brought by the sun from

the heart of the earth.”

The sea remains quiet, saying to itself,

“I am the power.”

The rock says,

“The ages erected me as a monument

Until the Judgment Day”;

The sea remains silent saying to itself,

“I am the monument.”

The wind howls

“I am strong,

I separate the heavens from the earth.”

The sea remains quiet, saying to itself,

“The wind is mine.”

The river says

“I am the pure water

That quenches the thirst of the earth”;

The sea remains silent saying to itself,

“The river is mine.”

The summit says,

“I stand high like a star

In the center of the sky.”

The sea remains quiet saying to itself,

“The summit is mine.”

The brain says,

“I am a ruler;

The world is in those who rule”;

The sea remains slumbering saying, in its sleep,

“All is mine.”

11. HANDFUL OF BEACH SAND

by Gibran

When you tell your trouble to your neighbor you present him with a part of your heart. If he possesses a great soul, he thanks you; if he possesses a small one, he belittles you.

Progress is not merely improving the past; it is moving forward toward the future.

A hungry savage picks fruit from a tree and eats it; a hungry, civilized man buys it from a man who, in turn, buys it from the man who picks it.

Art is one step from the visibly known toward the unknown.

The earth breathes, we live; it pauses in breath, we die.

Man's eye is a magnifier; it shows him the earth much larger than it is.

I abstain from the people who consider insolence, bravery and tenderness cowardice. And I abstain from those who consider chatter wisdom and silence ignorance.

They tell me: If you see a slave sleeping, do not wake him lest he be dreaming of freedom.

I tell them: If you see a slave sleeping, wake him and explain to him freedom.

Contradiction is a lower degree of intelligence.

Bravery is a volcano; the seed of wavering does not grow on its crater.

The river continues on its way to the sea, broken the wheel of the mill or not.

The greater your joy or your sorrow, the smaller the world in your eyes.

Learning nourishes the seed but it gives you no seed of its own.

I use hate as a weapon to defend myself; had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of weapon.

There are among the people murderers who have never committed murder, thieves who have never stolen and liars who have spoken nothing but the truth.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

O great intelligent Being! hidden and existing in and for the universe, You can hear me because You are within me and You can see me because You are all-seeing; please drop within my soul a seed of Your wisdom to grow a sapling in Your forest and to give of Your fruit. Amen!

12. THE SAYINGS OF THE BROOK

by Gibran

I walked in the valley as the rising dawn spoke the secret of eternity,

And there a brook, on its course, was singing, calling and saying:

Life is not only a merriment;

Life is desire and determination.

Wisdom is not in words;

Wisdom is meaning within words.

Greatness is not in exalted position;

Greatness is for he who refuses position.

A man is not noble through ancestry;

How many noblemen are descendants of murderers?

Not everyone in chains is subdued;

At times, a chain is greater than a necklace.

Paradise is not in repentance;

Paradise is in the pure heart.

Hell is not in torture;

Hell is in an empty heart.

Riches are not in money alone;

How many wanderers were the richest of all men?

Not all the poor are scorned;

The wealth of the world is in a loaf of bread and a cloak.

Beauty is not in the face;

Beauty is a light in the heart.

Perfection is not for the pure of soul;

There may be virtue in sin.

This is what the brook said to the tree upon its banks;

Perhaps what the brook sang was of some of the secrets of the sea.

13. FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, MY HEART!

by Gibran

For heaven's sake, my heart, keep secret your love,
and hide the secret from those you see
and you will have better fortune.

He who reveals secrets is considered a fool;
silence and secrecy are much better for him
who falls in love.

For heaven's sake, my heart, if someone asks,

“What has happened?,” do not answer.

If you are asked, “Who is she?,”

Say she is in love with another

And pretend that it is of no consequence.

For heaven's sake, my love, conceal your passion;
your sickness is also your medicine because love
to the soul is as wine in a glass — what you
see is liquid, what is hidden is its spirit.

For heaven's sake, my heart, conceal your troubles;
then, should the seas roar and the skies fall,
you will be safe.

14. THE ROBIN

by Gibran

O Robin, sing! for the secret of eternity is in song.

I wish I were as you, free from prisons and chains.

I wish I were as you; a soul flying over the valleys,

Sipping the light as wine is sipped from ethereal cups.

I wish I were as you, innocent, contented and happy

Ignoring the future and forgetting the past.

I wish I were as you in beauty, grace and elegance

With the wind spreading my wings for adornment by the dew.

I wish I were as you, a thought floating above the land

Pouring out my songs between the forest and the sky.

O Robin, sing! and disperse my anxiety.

I listen to the voice within your voice that whispers in my inner ear.

15. THE GREAT SEA

by Gibran

Yesterday, the far and the near yesterday,
my soul and I walked to the Great Sea to wash
from ourselves, in its waters, the dust and dirt
of the earth. Arriving at the shore, we searched
for a secluded place far from the sight of others.

As we walked, we saw a man sitting upon a gray rock,
in his hand a bag of salt from which he took one
handful at a time and threw it into the sea.

My soul said, “This man believes in bad omens;

He sees nothing of life except its shadows.

No believer in bad omens should see our naked
bodies.

Let us leave; we can do no bathing here.”

We left that spot and moved on to a bay.

There we saw a man standing on a white rock,
and in his hand was a vase ornamented with precious
stones.

From the vase he was taking cubes of sugar
and throwing them into the sea.

My soul said, “This man believes in good omens,
and he expects to happen things which never
happen.

Beware, for neither should we let him
see our naked selves.”

We walked on until we came to a man
standing by the shore,
picking up dead fish and throwing them
back into the sea.

My soul said, “This man is compassionate,
trying to bring back life to those
already dead. Let us keep away from him.”

We continued on until we saw a man
tracing his own shadow on the sand.

The waves rolled across his sketches and erased them,
but he continued to retrace his work.

My soul said, “He is a mystic, creating

images to worship in his own imagination.

Let us leave him alone also.”

We walked on again until we saw a man
in a quiet bay skimming the foam off the waves
and putting them into an agate jar.

My soul said, “He is a visionary like
one who tries to weave a garment from
spider threads. He is not worthy of
seeing our naked bodies.”

We moved ahead until suddenly we heard
a voice calling, “This is the sea!
This is the frightful sea!” We looked for
the source of the voice, and we found a
man with his back turned to the sea. In his
hand he held a shell over his ear, listening
to its murmur.