The Wisdom of Self-Reflection

How astonishing is the condition of the human being! You see him sharp of sight regarding the manifestations of the universe, penetrating of insight in the affairs of his own kind, subtle in observing the states of his friends and foes. From their actions he extracts their causes, from their stumbles he uncovers their motives, and he is guided to the facets of correctness in their matters just as the night-traveller is guided to the star in the pitch darkness of night. Yet when he turns to himself and directs towards it the mirror of his intellect, his insight is veiled by a film, and that which yesterday was plain and clear now becomes closed to him. It is as though the wisdom that flowed upon his tongue has refused to settle in his heart, and the intellect by which he directs others has misled him at the very moment he stands in need of it. For other people he is a seeing eye; for himself an eye screened by caprice. He sets up the balances for others, but when he himself is weighed by them his scale tilts, and he points them to the path of salvation, but when he walks upon it he loses the way.

Perhaps one of the most eloquent portrayals of this trait within human nature is the tale of the dove, the fox and the heron contained in the book Kalīlah wa-Dimnah; a story that on the surface recounts craft and stratagem, yet in its inner sense is a polished mirror revealing the secrets of the soul and exposing the gap between knowing what is right and possessing the ability to act upon it.

They relate that a dove had made at the top of a date-palm a nest to which she would retire. A cunning fox lay in wait for her, anticipating the moment she would lay her eggs and hatch her chicks. He would then come to her menacingly, offering her a choice between handing over the chicks or suffering harm at his paw. Fear took hold of the dove’s heart, so she would cast down to him her young one after another, imagining that obedience meant safety, and that surrendering what she loved was easier than exposing herself to danger. Thus the fox continued to attain his desire, not by the strength of his paws, but by the weakness of her heart; not by his power to reach her nest, but by the terror and dread he had sown within her.

One day a heron (a well-known water-fowl) passed by her, saw her sorrow and brokenness and inquired about her story. She informed him of the fox’s affair. He marvelled at her surrender and counselled her not to submit to his threats, nor to present to him her chicks merely because of his intimidation; for not everything with which an enemy threatens is he able to enforce, and fear itself is no proof that the danger will certainly occur. The dove clung to his advice, and when the fox returned demanding his accustomed portion, she refused him and frustrated the stratagem that had so often ensnared her.

The fox, however, is not of those who are incapable of changing tactics once a ruse is exposed, nor of those whom failure turns back from achieving their aims. He realised that behind the dove’s change stood an opinion the heron had given her, and he went off searching for him—not to face him openly, but to lure him into a new trick. He began asking him how he protected himself from the violent winds, and about the secret of hiding his head beneath his wings, until he induced him to demonstrate what he did and thereby reveal his point of weakness. The fox thereupon seized the moment of his heedlessness, pounced on him, and the heron met his death precisely from the direction from which he had sought to teach another how to be saved.

Here the story reaches the locus of the lesson and the paradox that arrests the mind is laid bare: the heron perceived for the dove what she had not perceived for herself and opened for her a door that had been shut before her insight. Yet when he himself became the target of the fox’s guile, he did not see for his own soul what he had seen for another; he recognised the point of danger while it was distant from him and overlooked it when he stood upon its very edge. It is as though he possessed an insight that others might borrow, yet when he himself needed it he returned it to its sheath!

And how plentiful are the likes of the heron in the Easts and Wests of the earth! How many are those who hold in their hands for other people the keys of wisdom, then stand before the doors of their own selves bewildered, unable to find the locks! One man counsels his friend to patience and deliberation, but when an affliction befalls him his endurance narrows, his anger flares, and he casts the reins of his soul to impulse. Another warns people against arrogance, but if someone disagrees with him his pride swells and his breast constricts at criticism, as though truth resides only on his side. A third reproaches his companion for attachment to one who harms him, yet he himself continues in a relationship that drains his spirit, weaving from excuses a veil that hides the reality from his eyes. A fourth reminds people of the consequences of haste, yet when a matter presents itself he rushes into it, plunging into the depth of a decision before distinguishing its bottom from its surface.

It is not astonishing that a person should perceive the faults of others; for the eye was created to see and the intellect was granted to discern. Rather, the wonder is that a man should set himself up as a scale for the people, then exempt himself from being weighed; that he be severe in his condemnation of others, yet gentle with his own soul to the point of justification and disguise. What in others was a falling short, in him is a necessity; what in them was conceit, in him is self-respect; what in them was obstinacy, in him is steadfastness upon principle; what in them was offence, in him is the reclaiming of a stolen dignity!

When passion takes absolute power over the soul, it erects around itself walls of illusion and appoints the intellect as a guard at its gates, allowing no truth to enter except after it has passed through the tribunal of rationalisation. If someone else errs, she opens against him the ledgers of reckoning and counts his every breath and step; but if she herself errs, she folds up the pages, shuts the records and summons such a multitude of excuses that, were they distributed among the guilty, they would suffice them all. Thus does a person become at once adversary and judge, plaintiff and advocate, finally issuing for himself an acquittal before the trial has even begun!

This affliction originates from the fact that the human being sees others through the screen of their actions, while he sees himself through the veil of his intentions. He judges others by what appears from them, and excuses himself by what lies hidden in his breast. If someone wrongs him, he pays no heed to that person’s circumstances; but if he wrongs another, he hides behind his own circumstances. Should people wound him with a single word, he cannot forget it; yet if he wounds them with many words, he forgets them or belittles their gravity. One of the fairest prompts for awakening the conscience is that a person ask himself: were another to do to me what I have done to him, would I grant him the same excuse? And if I were to hear my own advice from someone else, would I act upon it, or would there arise within me such obstinacy as would prevent me?

Wisdom is not merely to describe the road well, but to travel it well; not merely to uncover for people the spots of slipping, but to avoid them when you pass by. Not every possessor of the maps of salvation is himself saved, nor everyone who knows the malady is able to drive it away from his own person. A man may possess of knowledge that which could guide an ummah, yet be incapable of guiding himself at the first bend; a preacher may pour into the ears of people pearls of speech that soften hearts, yet when alone with his own soul be furthest of the people from those pearls—as though his words were a rainfall upon the lands of others, leaving his own land barren, yielding no growth.

What a striking difference between one who adopts wisdom as a garment with which he adorns himself before the people, and one who adopts it as a light by which he walks through the darknesses of his own soul! The former speaks much about virtues and enumerates vices expertly, yet goes no further than the outer shell of wisdom; whereas the latter makes of every counsel he hears a mirror in which he inspects himself, and of every fault he observes in another a warning awakening him to what may be concealed within his own nature. He does not look at the flaws of people in order to rise above them, but rather to take admonition from them; nor does he mention their slips to number them, but so that he may beware lest he have a share in them.

It is not of wisdom that a person seek for himself the station of the infallible, or imagine that attaining maturity requires that he never slip nor err; for the human being is the child of deficiency and the captive of his nature, and no one is safe from stumbling so long as he walks upon the earth. All merit—every bit of it—is that he recognise the place of his stumble, that he not make of his pride a stone over which he trips time after time, and that he possess of courage of soul what impels him to admit when he is wrong, to return when he strays, and to apologise when he harms. Acknowledging an error is not a diminution of the doer’s worth; rather, it is an elevation of the soul above the bondage of obstinacy. Retreating from falsehood is not a defeat; rather, it is salvation from persisting upon destruction.

How direly we need to learn from the tale of the heron that an insight which does not guard its owner is insufficient, and that advice which the adviser himself does not act upon remains words suspended in the air, bearing no fruit on the earth and altering no reality. What benefit is there in a lamp that illumines the roads of the people, yet leaves the one carrying it stumbling in darkness? What advantage in directing the drowning man to the shore, then proceeding yourself into the depths, heedless of its waves? The perfection of wisdom is that a person be the first to benefit from it, the first to submit to its authority, and the first to stand before its mirror: he does not exempt himself from a right he demands of others, nor require from people a virtue to the cultivation of which he will not subject himself.

Let there be for a person from within himself a preacher that never falls silent, and from his conscience a sentinel that never sleeps. Let him place between his eyes a mirror that offers no flattery, in which he beholds his own flaws before he searches for the flaws of others. For whoever sees in people many faults yet sees not in himself a single fault, let him know that the defect may lie in his own eye, not in the world around him; and that a man may traverse vast deserts with his insight, then lose the way upon the threshold of his own house.

Blindness of the two eyes is not that they lose light; rather, the very worst blindness is that they perceive the defects of the whole world, then fail to see the defect that dwells within their owner. The greatest wisdom, therefore, is not that you discern the opinion for someone else, but that you discern it for your own self, and that you begin by repairing the house you inhabit before you busy yourself with repairing the dwellings and homes of the people.