Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Why Kahlil Gibran rocks.

On Children
Kahlil Gibran


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.



For those of you who liked this and have not read Gibran before....am also putting down my all time fav :

On Marriage
Kahlil Gibran


Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.


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.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this one -
"Yes, there is a Nirvana, it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem....
(or clicking the 'publish' button on your blog!)

Arch said...

hear hear! :)

Anonymous said...

The reason that quote is particularly deep is because it tells us there is joy, pleasure and fulfilment at some level even in the seemingly mundane things we do everyday - If only we can connect to those. If only we embrace them. If only we cherish those. If we - all of us that walk the earth - can, there will be a lot more love and respect and sensitivity to experiences of lives other than our own, not to mention a lot fewer bombs going off...

Arch said...

i got it the first time justpathe :) Isnt it terrible that Gibran was just another human being like all of us...!! I would have been happier if he was a god!! sigh.

Anonymous said...

yeah...your comment sparked a thought - what if God decided that the human population is WAAAAY to huge, the dispersal is waaay too far spread, the confusion WAAAY too much for a single avtar or son or prophet to accomplish or even be noticed...and he, getting inspired by web2.0 and twitter and microblogging, is actually indulging in a new variant of Avtardom:
Micro-Propheterring!
Perhaps KG was one such twitter broadcast to mankind.

Arch said...

Sorry i missed this comment. But funny that you should say that coz i often thought works of KG should be spammed to everyone in the world!! (guess i could only think that far coz i am slightly technologically challenged - among other things ;)