Baha’i Perspectives

iman May 25th, 2010

The 2010 FIFA World Cup is just around the corner, hosted in a country where the disparity between rich and poor is striking.  The paradox of hosting a multi-billion dollar global entertainment event amongst an economically lopsided population brings to light society’s seemingly tunnel-vision attitude towards pleasure-seeking, coupled with an indifferent oversight of attempting to meet the community’s basic needs:

We see amongst us men who are overburdened with riches on the one hand, and on the other those unfortunate ones who starve with nothing; those who possess several stately palaces, and those who have no where to lay their head.

Abdu’l-Bahá : Paris Talks

One could mention that an event such as the 2010 FIFA World Cup provides employment for thousands.  This may be true, but of a certainty there exist more genuine approaches of sustainable empowerment and community building; approaches that are not the mere by-products of a once-off event.

One could also argue that this camaraderie and entertainment promote personal as well as community well-being. This may be true, but where do our boundaries lie?

One of the signs of a decadent society, a sign which is very evident in the world today, is an almost frenetic devotion to pleasure and diversion, an insatiable thirst for amusement, a fanatical devotion to games and sport, a reluctance to treat any matter seriously, and a scornful, derisory attitude towards virtue and solid worth…Frivolity palls and eventually leads to boredom and emptiness, but true happiness and joy and humour that are parts of a balanced life that includes serious thought, compassion and humble servitude to God, are characteristics that enrich life and add to its radiance.

(From a letter dated 8 May 1979 written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer)

Presently, the global sports industry is worth billions.  The question is what should it be worth?  Are the salaries that individual players earn just and acceptable?  Is the importance attached to one’s fanatical devotion to largely commercial entities justified?  Importantly, what qualitative value can be attached to sports, as far as the rank of professions and service to society is concerned?

The arrangements of the circumstances of the people must be such that poverty shall disappear, that everyone, as far as possible, according to his rank and position, shall share in comfort and well-being…Now the remedy must be carefully undertaken. It cannot be done by bringing to pass absolute equality between men…Equality is a chimera! It is entirely impracticable! Even if equality could be achieved it could not continue — and if its existence were possible, the whole order of the world would be destroyed. The law of order must always obtain in the world of humanity. Heaven has so decreed in the creation of man.

Some are full of intelligence, others have an ordinary amount of it, and others again are devoid of intellect. In these three classes of men there is order but not equality.

Certainly, some being enormously rich and others lamentably poor, an organization is necessary to control and improve this state of affairs. It is important to limit riches, as it is also of importance to limit poverty. Either extreme is not good. To be seated in the mean [1] is most desirable.

[1 'Give me neither poverty nor riches.' -- Prov. 30: 8]

Abdu’l-Bahá goes on further to outline the basic requirements of preserving the ‘law of order’:

There must be special laws made, dealing with these extremes of riches and of want. The members of the Government should consider the laws of God when they are framing plans for the ruling of the people. The general rights of mankind must be guarded and preserved.

The government of the countries should conform to the Divine Law which gives equal justice to all. This is the only way in which the deplorable superfluity of great wealth and miserable, demoralizing, degrading poverty can be abolished. Not until this is done will the Law of God be obeyed.

Tags: entertainment, equality

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nooshin January 11th, 2010

You probably won’t be too surprised to read that only 71% of New Year’s resolutions are kept past the second week of the year, and only 46% past June.  Many people (myself included) don’t even bother to make resolutions, certain that they will be broken.  But according to a recent survey, those that actually make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals than people who don’t.  Perhaps the process of explicitly resolving to change something in your life, and taking concrete steps to do so, makes you more likely to succeed.

Self-awareness is crucial in deciding what needs change.  As spiritual beings, we need to constantly evaluate both our inner and outer lives, and try every day to do better than the day before.  In the Hidden Words, Bahá’u’lláh says:

O SON OF BEING! Bring thyself to account each day ere thou art summoned to a reckoning; for death, unheralded, shall come upon thee and thou shalt be called to give account for thy deeds.

I think the misconception we have is that bringing ourselves to account will necessarily be a depressing exercise, merely deepening our sense of inadequacy and feelings of guilt.  But it doesn’t have to be.  If we see our mistakes, not as failings, but as opportunites for learning and growth, self-evaluation can be empowering.  I think there is a sense of freedom from realizing that yes, I made a mistake, but I have the chance to fix it.  That every morning is a fresh start and that I am not defined by my past.

Also key is the issue of forgiveness.  Sometimes we have to forgive ourselves in order to be able to move on.  But more crucially, we have to show sincere repentance and ask forgiveness from God.  Bahá’u’lláh instructs us as follows:

..when the sinner findeth himself wholly detached and freed from all save God, he should beg forgiveness and pardon from Him. Confession of sins and transgressions before human beings is not permissible, as it hath never been nor will ever be conducive to divine forgiveness. Moreover such confession before people results in one’s humiliation and abasement, and God—exalted be His glory—wisheth not the humiliation of His servants. Verily He is the Compassionate, the Merciful. The sinner should, between himself and God, implore mercy from the Ocean of mercy, beg forgiveness from the Heaven of generosity…

But self-evaluation is not just about identifying mistakes.  We have to give ourselves credit where it’s due, and to build on our strengths.  Having a positive outlook can be so much more powerful than a negative one.  Which is why the following prayer from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is one of my favourite ones:

O God! Refresh and gladden my spirit. Purify my heart. Illumine my powers. I lay all my affairs in Thy hand. Thou art my Guide and my Refuge. I will no longer be sorrowful and grieved; I will be a happy and joyful being. O God! I will no longer be full of anxiety, nor will I let trouble harass me. I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life.

O God! Thou art more friend to me than I am to myself. I dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord.

Tags: forgiveness, new year, repentance

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leila June 1st, 2009

“Bahá’u'lláh found the world in a ’strange sleep’. But what a disturbance His coming has unloosed!”

Like Washington, it was sticky this time last year in northern Israel.

I had awoken with a start to the chirp of my mobile phone at 2:00 a.m., the fluorescent light glaring “Nasim“.  My alarm had failed to go off, and I had sixty seconds to re-orient, get dressed, and splash some cold water onto my face

Bahji, aerial view at night.

Harrison drove us to Bahji that night — one part chilly and two parts humid — in a decades-old hand-me-down Benz whose rear window was jammed halfway.  It was the evening commemorating the passing of Bahá’u'lláh, the Prophet-Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, and over a thousand of us– staff, pilgrim, and visitors– shivered in the Haram-i-Aqdas. The warm glow of the lamps that dotted the precincts of surrounding the Shrine of Bahá’u'lláh, adjacent to the mansion in which He passed away (in which He resided in the last years of His life, still a prisoner), gleamed through the wet air.  I struggled to stay awake halfway through the program.  But as the nocturnal birds chirped at the cusp of dawn, Bahá’u'lláh’s words on the eve of His declaration in the Garden of Ridván came to mind:

Consider these nightingales. So great is their love for these roses, that sleepless from dusk till dawn, they warble their melodies and commune with burning passion with the object of their adoration. How then can those who claim to be afire with the rose-like beauty of the Beloved choose to sleep? (God Passes By, Chapter IX, page 153)

***

The stickiness of the evening loomed as I rushed home at half past eight. Though it had ceased raining an hour ago, the neighborhood park, my shortcut home from the metro, was devoid of the life that had occupied it only yesterday: the wet benches where I had lazily lounged last night, reading a book; the dripping basketball hoop that had swooshed against the backdrop of middle-aged chocolate-skinned men disputing a call; the dampened and chewed-up soccer field where Central American jugadores breathlessly raced. I quickened my pace, mindful that I had to crawl into bed early for a nap.

Shastri’s call awoke me at 2:00 a.m.  His ambiguously accented voice — the kind I grew accustomed to last year (if not unknowingly adopting myself) amongst fellow staff members from across the globe — let me know that he was on his way. The air was warm and humid, and I absentmindedly pulled my unruly hair into a braid as I stumbled out of bed to throw some cold water onto my face.

Kathleen and I crawled out of his car parked near the Best Buy in the Tenleytown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the streets nearly deserted, and I remarked, “The humidity– it’s as if we were in Bahji tonight.”

“Right, and we’ll circumambulate America’s Qiblih of choice,” Shastri joked, gesturing toward the yellow sign screaming “Best Buy!”

There were just seven of us at the Rassekhs’ home that evening, and the peculiarity of being so awake and alive at 3:00 a.m. hardly registered as the flickering candles reflected in the coffee table’s glass pane.  We arose reverently in their cozy living room to read the Tablet of Visitation (read on Holy Days associated with Bahá’u'lláh) and, like the nightingales in the Ridván Garden, I had the feeling of not wanting to sleep for a very long time.

We feasted on watermelon and pound cake and flatbread with hummus afterward, and washed it down with tea.  And we told stories, animated and forgetting that it was 4:00 a.m. and we had hardly slept.  Mrs. Rassekh recalled the candle-lined pathways of Bahji in the early, darkened hours of May 29, 1992– the centennial of Bahá’u'lláh’s passing– as one of the many guests invited from every country around the world (they were living in Mali then); Shastri, Kat, and I laughed as we recounted stories from our time working at the Bahá’í World Centre; and we all wistfully remembered the lamps that illuminated that evening in Bahji, and the inevitable rising of the sun on the drive back toward Haifa.

We certainly weren’t at the nerve-center of the Bahá’í world anymore (at the nerve-center of the so-called “free world,” maybe).  But as I arose to face eastward for the Tablet of Visitation, I remembered something that my friend had said earlier that evening that tempered my nostalgia, in a phone call prior to my nap.

We had been discussing plans for our Saturday afternoon children’s class in a mostly Salvadoran neighborhood.  Our class was composed of beaming children filled with the capacity for excellence, whose attention would drift as police sirens cackled by at intervals, who were unruffled by the drunken, muttering loiterers who occupied the urban playground where we lay our picnic blanket and discussed the light of unity being so powerful as to illuminate the whole earth.

As the conversation hovered to a close, it drifted to the topic of waking up in the middle of the night for this holy evening.  He recounted how, growing up, his family would go to the Bahá’í House of Worship in Chicago on that night.  His grandfather, among the last living Hands of the Cause and in the twilight of his years, never failed to remind him to say a special prayer on those evenings filled with spiritual potency.

And so we agreed to remember in our prayers those children that had come into our lives so fortuitously. The spirit of the teachings of this Manifestation, whose passing we were commemorating, were, sometimes gradually, touching their tender lives, and certainly infusing the world with a power, the source of which many are as yet unaware.

Bahá’u'lláh found the world in a ’strange sleep’. But what a disturbance His coming has unloosed! The peoples of the earth had been separated, many parts of the human race socially and spiritually isolated. But the world of humanity today bears little resemblance to that which Bahá’u'lláh left a century ago. Unbeknownst to the great majority, His influence permeates all living beings. Indeed, no domain of life remains unaffected. In the burgeoning energy, the magnified perspectives, the heightened global consciousness; in the social and political turbulence, the fall of kingdoms, the emancipation of nations, the intermixture of cultures, the clamour for development; in the agitation over the extremes of wealth and poverty, the acute concern over the abuse of the environment, the leap of consciousness regarding the rights of women; in the growing tendency towards ecumenism, the increasing call for a new world order; in the astounding advances in the realms of science, technology, literature and the arts — in all this tumult, with its paradoxical manifestations of chaos and order, integration and disintegration, are the signs of His power as World Reformer, the proof of His claim as Divine Physician, the truth of His Word as the All-Knowing Counsellor.

Tribute by the Universal House of Justice to Bahá’u'lláh on the Centenary of His Passing, http://info.bahai.org/article-1-3-6-2.html

Tags: Baha'u'llah

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Baha'i Perspectives May 23rd, 2009

The words of the first disciple of the Baha’i era :

This Revelation…so suddenly and impetuously thrust upon me, came as a thunderbolt which, for a time, seemed to have benumbed my faculties. I was blinded by its dazzling splendor and overwhelmed by its crushing force. Excitement, joy, awe, and wonder stirred the depths of my soul. Predominant among these emotions was a sense of gladness and strength which seemed to have transfigured me. How feeble and impotent, how dejected and timid, I had felt previously! Then I could neither write nor walk, so tremulous were my hands and feet. Now, however, the knowledge of His Revelation had galvanized my being. I felt possessed of such courage and power that were the world, all its peoples and its potentates, to rise against me, I would, alone and undaunted, withstand their onslaught. The universe seemed but a handful of dust in my grasp. I seemed to be the voice of Gabriel personified, calling unto all mankind: ‘Awake, for, lo! the morning Light has broken. Arise, for His Cause is made manifest. The portal of His grace is open wide; enter therein, O peoples of the world! For He Who is your promised One is come!’

May 23, 1844, signalizes the commencement of the most turbulent period of the Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Era, an age which marks the opening of the most glorious epoch in the greatest cycle which the spiritual history of mankind has yet witnessed. 

Read more about this turning point in human history.

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Baha'i Perspectives March 6th, 2009

As one of the better known Baha’is on the international scene, Rainn Wilson (who plays Dwight on The Office) has been letting people know the basics of this Faith whenever afforded the opportunity in the media — particularly mentioning the onenesses of God, religion and humanity.

Recently, as many are already aware, he wrote a commentary for CNN bringing awareness to the plight of the 7 Baha’i leaders who remain wrongfully incarcerated in Iran.

And now, he will be chatting with Oprah Winfrey on her “Soul Series” webcast. Some details of the upcoming interview, taken from Oprah.com:

Rainn Wilson
Actor and creator of a website that aims to connect people and offer a place to discuss life’s big questions. 

Coming Up: March 9

Be sure to tune in online. Spread the word to your friends. And in case you were wondering which website is being referred to, here is a sneak preview:

Soul Pancake

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shadi March 2nd, 2009

Since the age of 15, the age of maturity defined in the Baha’i Faith, I have attempted to follow the Baha’i 19 day fast starting from sunrise on March 2nd (today!) and ending at sunset on March 20th. The Baha’i fast consists of abstaining from food and drink between sunrise and sunset.

To be honest, for the first several years or so, I secretly resented fasting and felt extremely hypocritical for doing it. I felt so incredibly hungry and thirsty (and blasphemous) that I couldn’t fathom how one was suppose to be feeling “spiritual” at the same time. I even had a print out of sunrise and sunset times and followed it staunchly: big last minute gulps of water within 30 seconds of sunrise and a big steaming spoon of food in my hand READY to inhale seconds before sunset. I would often tell myself that once I got married, I would have at least three kids because with combined pregnancy and breastfeeding that would be at least six years of being exempt from fasting! How spiritual is that!

Shoghi Effendi explains the point of the Baha’i Fast in the following excerpt:

…essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires.

(Compilations, Lights of Guidance, p. 232)

I am happy to announce that some progress has been made over the years. Last year I found myself on a work trip in Ethiopia during the fast and strangely blasé about all the tasty injera and incredible coffee. I managed to connect with the Addis Ababa Baha’i community one evening and had an unforgettable dinner filled with prayers and celebration.

It would make sense at this point to go on and describe that one magical event that completely revolutionized fasting for me, but the truth is, the internal progress happened and continues to do so as the years go by and, I deepen my understanding for prayer and fasting through the sacred Baha’i writings.

Before I finish off this blog, I wish to share a few gems from a wonderful book of compilations called the Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting and wish all my sisters and brothers throughout the world a spiritual, reflective fasting period:

These are the days of the Fast. Blessed is the one who through the heat generated by the Fast increaseth his love, and who, with joy and radiance, ariseth to perform worthy deeds.

Verily, I say, fasting is the supreme remedy and the most great healing for the disease of self and passion.

And We have ordained obligatory prayer and fasting so that all may by these means draw nigh unto God, the Most Powerful, the Well-Beloved.

Even though outwardly the Fast is difficult and toilsome, yet inwardly it is bounty and tranquility.

There are various stages and stations for the Fast and innumerable effects and benefits are concealed therein. Well is it with those who have attained unto them.

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nooshin February 10th, 2009

Watching the inauguration of President Barack Obama, I was struck by how multi-racial his family is, and I am sure I was not the only one who was.  African American, English, Indonesian, Irish, and Kenyan…it’s a very global bunch.

My own family does pretty well in the global stakes too. We have Singaporian, Ukranian, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Japanese, American (white and black), as well as a good dose of Iranian.  And all this in just one generation.  When my parents were growing up in Iran, I doubt that they could have imagined that in their lifetime our extended family would start to look like the United Nations.

But it was probably inevitable, given that as Baha’is, almost the first thing that we are taught as children is that the “Earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens”.

Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith, explained the fundamental importance of the unity of the human race:

O ye children of men! The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity.

The most glorious fruit of the tree of knowledge is this exalted word: Of one tree are all ye the fruit, and of one bough the leaves. Let not man glory in this that he loveth his country, let him rather glory in this that he loveth his kind.

Tags: family, oneness

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