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Children are gifts from Heaven, not your children — Children have independent personality from the start!
I’d like to introduce two poems from “Prophet” by Khalil Gibran, a poet from Lebanon.
The poems are referred to exactly as the words filled with inspiration. Please read the parts in red letters of the second poem “On giving” below. Some people can smoothly accept the poem without a feeling of strangeness. I think that such people are religious in the true sense of the term and they are with God.
The poem introduced on the video “On Religion” can be said to express the true religiosity. However, modern people who put value on rationality are losing true religiosity.
The poem “On Children” by Khalil Gibran starts with the phrase “Your children are not your children.” In a word, he says that children are gifts from Heaven, not your children. Some people can easily understand it but others can’t. I suppose that those who can’t understand it would get perplexed by the following phrase from the Diamond Sutra.
“Buddah’s teachings prajna-paramita is not prajna-paramita and therefore it is called prajna-paramita”
If it is abstracted, it means:
“A is not A. Therefore, A is called A.”
Your children are not your children. Your children are linked by fate and your children were born to you. Therefore, your children are not your children, let alone not your possessions. Children have independent personality from birth. However, we use the word “your children” after fully understanding the fact in this world.
To put it simply, it turns out that “Your children are not your child. Therefore, we use the word ‘your children’ for convenience sake.”
Those who can easily understand it have sensibility of Oriental mind. However, if you learn only rational way of thinking represented by mathematics and logic, you become unable to understand.
I think that oriental mind is much closer to truth than rational mind. As shown by the above example, what can be expressed by words is not the whole but a part of it. Words can contain only part of truth.
What should we do when we cannot describe truth in words? You can know truth just by feeling intuitively or feeling physically. This is why many wise men keep silent when asked what truth is.
January 8, 2019
Masatoshi Takeshita
Note:
Shanti-phula has indicated some parts of the following text in black boldface type or in red letters.
Distributed by YouTube– June 22, 2017-
Khalil Gibran on Religion
On Religion
Kahalil Gibran
Have I spoken this day of aught else?
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?
Who can spread his hours before him, saying, “This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?”
All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self.
He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.
And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.
The freest song comes not through bars and wires.
And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.
Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute,
The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.
For in revery you cannot rise above your achievements nor fall lower than your failures.
And take with you all men:
For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.
And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.
Source:
Excerpt from a Japanese article: Oriental Way of Viewing – June 19, 2017 –
On Giving
Khalil Gibran
You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in the trackless sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city?
And what is fear of need but need itself?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?
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.
Source:
Translated into Japanese by Mieko Kamiya
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