From Nietzsche Gibran learned how to convey his ideas in a messianic overtone, while at the same time using a flammatory style for criticizing the organized religion and the social establishment.

Now, to be precise, I call your attention to the fact that although Gibran was attracted by Nietzsche, he was not, however, in complete agreement with his teacher’s philosophy. For one, Nietzsche was a pessimist and an atheist. His Zarathustra declared the death of God, and denied the immortality of man.30 But Gibran’s Almustafa is theocentric and believes that Good will prevail over Evil. Of his own, Gibran confesses: “His [Nietzsche’s] form [style] always was soothing to me. But I thought his philosophy was terrible and all wrong. I was a worshipper of beauty—and beauty was to me the loveliness of things.”31 In the text, I will, when needed, further elaborate on the similarities and dissimilarities between the two.

2. THE BIBLE

When I visited the private library of Gibran located in the Museum in Bsherri, I noticed many editions of the Bible and in different languages, among his few other readings. This indicates, in contrast to Nietzsche’s The Antichrist, that Gibran is a firm believer in the teachings of the Gospel. And indeed, his philosophy of love recapitulates in its fullest details Christ’s sermons on “Agape.” Actually, it is my understanding that Gibran’s hermeneutics of life is his personal paraphrasing in a simple and highly emotional language, of the Holy Book. Besides the parabolical figure of speech that he borrows from Jesus and the anthropomorphism of the Gospel’s metaphors, I find it interesting that he makes ample use of the biblical numbers 3, 7, 12 and 30, whenever he wants to convey a messianic or prophetic numerology of events. About these numbers, he once attempted to explain them in the following way: “7 is probably from the five planets the ancients knew, and the sun and the moon. And 12 was sacred too, from the months of the year, and 4 from the four seasons and the four points of compass. And 3 we can never get away from.”32

3. BUDDHISM

In The Poet From Baalbek, The Nymphs of the Valley, and “The Farewell” of The Prophet, in as much as in many other passages, Gibran speaks of the reincarnation of the soul and Nirvana. Undoubtedly, through reading his predecessors the Middle-Age philosophers Avicenna, Al Farid and Al Ghazali on whom he wrote articles33, he got acquainted with the doctrine of transmigration.

A brief expose of reincarnation as propounded by Buddhism will help us to understand the spirit of Gibran.

The term used in Buddhism for transmigration or rebirth is samsara, that is, moving about continuously or coming again and again to rebirth. The term refers to the notion of going through one life after another. The endlessness and inevitability of samsara are described in Samyutta - Nikaya, II. (A portion of the Buddhist scriptures.)

The idea of rebirth in Buddhism receives its most essential meaning from the Buddhist truth of the dukkha or suffering entailed in all existence. To understand suffering, it is not enough to consider one single lifetime, wherein dukkha may or may not be immediately evident; one must have in view the whole unending chain of rebirth and the sum of misery entailed in this whole seemingly endless process.

One of the great affirmations of Buddhism is that human consciousness cannot be transformed in a single lifetime. The first conviction of Gautama was the conviction that became known as first of the Four Holy Truths, namely: “now this, monks, is the noble truth of pain; birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, death is painful, sorrow, lamentation, dejection, and despair are painful. Contact with unpleasant things is painful, not getting what one wishes is painful.” Suffering or dukkha means more than just physical pain; it is the pain of heart and mind. Conflict, alienation, estrangement is at the very root of man’s existence. It is claimed by Buddha that to appreciate properly the truth of dukkha entailed in all existence one must keep in mind this whole frightful chain of rebirth.

But samsara refers not only to round after round of rebirth in human forms. The whole range of sentient beings is included from the tiniest insect to the noblest man. This range forms an unbroken continuum.

The good news of Buddhism, however, is that the continuum can be broken and has been broken. At the stage of human existence samsara can be transcended, and released and Nirvana (or the Pali word, Nibbana) be attained. Nirvana was the final peace, the eternal state of being. But how to describe for his followers the state in which all identification with a man’s historical finite self is obliterated while experience itself remains and is magnified beyond all imagination did not occupy the mind of the Buddha. When he was asked by a wandering monk if it was possible to illustrate by a simile the place called Nirvana, the Buddha replied:

If a fire were blazing in front of you, would you know that it was?

Yes, good Gautama.

And would you know if it were to be put out?

Yes, good Gautama.

And on its being put out, would you know the direction the fire had gone out to from here—east, west, north, south?

This question does not apply, good Gautama.

The Buddha then closed the discussion by pointing out that the question the ascetic has asked about existence after death was not rightly put either. “Feelings, perceptions, those impulses, that consciousness” by which one defines a human being have passed away from him who has attained Nirvana.