Keep No Accounts With Love

You are the tree of Life. Beware of fractioning yourselves. Never set fruit against fruit, a leaf against a leaf, or a bough against a bough, the stem against the roots, or the tree against the mother - the soil. But that is what you do when you love one part more than the rest, or worse yet, to the exclusion of the rest.

You are the Tree of Life. Your roots are everywhere. Your boughs and leaves are everywhere. Your fruits are in every mouth. Whatever the fruits on that tree may be ... whatever its boughs and leaves may be ... whatever the roots may be ... they are your fruits; they are your leaves and boughs; they are your roots.

If you want the tree to bear sweet and fragrant fruit, and if you want it to be strong and green, pay attention to the resin -- the life-blood of the tree. Love is the resin of Life. Love is the blood that must circulate unhindered in the veins. If you repress the blood, it becomes a plague. Hate is Love repressed or Love withheld. [...]

You do not know the Joy of Love if there is any hatred in your hearts. That which you hate is bound up inseparably with that which you love, like the head and tail of the same coin. If you are truly honest with yourself, then you must Love what you hate and what hates you before you can Love what you love and what loves you.

Love is not a virtue ... it's a neccessity of greater importance than bread and water, and more important than even light or air. Let no-one have pride in their loving. Inhale and exhale Love just as unconsciously as you breathe in and breathe out air. Love needs no-one to exalt it. Love will only exalt the heart that it finds worthy of itself. Don't seek out rewards for Love. Love is rewarded sufficiently with Love, just as hate is a sufficient punishment for hatred. Love accounts to no-one but itself. Love neither lends nor borrows; Love doesn't buy or sell.

But when Love gives, it gives all; when it takes, it takes all. Its very taking is giving. Its very giving is taking. Therefore is it the same to-day, to-morrow and forevermore.

--Mikhail Naimy, From "Book of Mirdad"