Question

12 In his poem, On Pain, Khalil Gibran compares pain to:

Answer 1

Khalil gibran refers pain to - He sees both pain and talking as entities which can be used as tools for the peaceful liberation of the self and consciousness or as ways for the individual to remain in a state of turbulence and ignorance. Gibran sees pain and talking as dependent on the perception and wisdom of the individual for their values, purpose and definition. They are not necessarily good or bad in and of themselves.

The prophet is asked to speak on pain, and he says that pain is a necessary factor in the awakening of the self and the soul. Without the presence of pain, the self would come to imagine that it had grown to its full awareness. The presence of pain reminds the self that it has not reached its full measure of understanding: "Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain". The prophet is saying here that pain is not only inevitable, but also a force for goodness in its catalytic role related to the expansion of human consciousness. To move from darkness into the light, to grow into spiritual enlightenment, pain is necessary for the individual.

The negative aspects of pain have not to do with the pain itself, but rather with the individual's response to pain. The prophet takes for granted that the questioner and her query about pain emerge from a state of unawareness of pain's true purpose. It is assumed that the questioner sees pain as something undesirable, as something which makes no sense in the world, as something perhaps, at best, to be endured.

Instead of being something to be at best endured, pain is described by the prophet as a force as necessary for spiritual development as sunlight is for the growth of plants.