Thought and Meditation

by Kahlil Gibran

Book Overview

This collection of thoughts by Kahlil Gibran, author of "The Prophet", "The Broken Wings", "The Voice of the Master", and other twentieth-century classics, demonstrates three major aspects of his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555218946
• ISBN13: 9781555218942
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Booksales
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

At The Door Of The Temple

"I saw no poverty; neither did I encounter excess. I saw fraternity and equality prevailing among man." -Kahlil Gibran, A Glance At The Future, page 70 Kahlil Gibran's "A Glance At The Future" was not a prophetic vision. If nothing else, it may have been the expression of some of his deepest wishes for humanity. Gibran envisioned a world where ignorance had been defeated and mankind would rise above confusion. He saw a world as beautiful as people who, "understand the meaning of the flower's breath and the cadences of the nightingale." Above all else perhaps, he hoped that mankind would see itself as the cornerstone of creation and that Light would triumph. According to Anthony R. Ferris in the Preface to Thoughts And Meditations, Kahlil Gibran became somewhat disappointed in the world we live in. Gibran began to see that governments can by tyrannical, that honest men are forced into deceit, and that the people have been, "led into narrow, separated faiths and suspicious, unfriendly, separated nations". Ferris points out that Kahlil Gibran's life was an example of the belief in the authority of the great mind, and that he imagined a place illumined by reason and understanding. It is from this disappointed, yet hopeful, view of the world that Thoughts And Meditations has been compiled. Of the twenty-nine short stories and poems in this book, there are many that stand out as living up to the high and beautifully-poetic standards that what we have all come to expect from the writings of Kahlil Gibran. In the poem "Perfection", Gibran gives an answer to the question of when someone will reach perfection, in much the same way he did in his book, The Prophet. The poem is divided into two parts, the first being what is required to reach the halfway point. To reach this halfway point, the requirement is only for someone to "feel" certain things, such as: "A calm wind or a raging tempest, a thundering sky or a rainy heaven, A singing brook or a wailing rivulet, a tree abloom in Spring, or a naked sapling in Autumn" The second requirement to perfection is to perceive, experience, and understand things such as: "A nun suffering between the flowers of her faith and the thistles of her loneliness." There are also poems and stories where Gibran expresses a more critical view, as in, "Mr. Gabber" where he asserts from the beginning that he is, "bored with gabbers and their gab." Perhaps it was beyond the tender heart of Gibran to be hateful or truly spiteful, towards those whom he saw as conducting, "loose talk, empty of meaning but stuffed with hypocrisy" because "Mr. Gabber" is quite humorous at times. In addition to describing them individually, Gibran goes so far as to say that, "Gabbers are innumerable. They can be divided into clans and tribes." One such tribe Gibran describes are those who belong to a family of gnats: "They hover around our heads and make tiny devilish noises." Despite the fact that Kahlil Gibran may have been occas