Baha'i Perspectives

Baha'i Perspectives March 15th, 2009

Then it is clear that the honor and exaltation of man must be something more than material riches. Material comforts are only a branch, but the root of the exaltation of man is the good attributes and virtues which are the adornments of his reality. These are

the divine appearances,
the heavenly bounties,
the sublime emotions,
the love and knowledge of God;
universal wisdom,
intellectual perception,
scientific discoveries,
justice,
equity,
truthfulness,
benevolence,
natural courage and innate fortitude;
the respect for rights and the keeping of agreements and covenants;
rectitude in all circumstances;
serving the truth under all conditions;
the sacrifice of one’s life for the good of all people;
kindness and esteem for all nations;
obedience to the teachings of God;
service in the Divine Kingdom;
the guidance of the people,
and the education of the nations and races.

This is the prosperity of the human world! This is the exaltation of man in the world! This is eternal life and heavenly honor!

These virtues do not appear from the reality of man except through the power of God and the divine teachings, for they need supernatural power for their manifestation. It may be that in the world of nature a trace of these perfections may appear, but they are unstable and ephemeral; they are like the rays of the sun upon the wall.

As the compassionate God has placed such a wonderful crown upon the head of man, man should strive that its brilliant jewels may become visible in the world.”

~ Abdu’l-Baha

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nava January 22nd, 2009

We swim upstream and currents strong

Heighten struggles to move along

We paddle hard, yet go so slow

Why so painful, it’s hard to know

But hearts seek beauty, and so we go

The voyage long, the distance far

The path uneasy, the goal so hard

For growth we battle, for truth we yearn

With guidance we move, through failure we learn

For nearness we strive, with longing we burn

Scars we accrue, and strength we amass

Wisdom we glean, and tests we pass

We pray, we beg, we bow, we cry

We worship, we kneel, we love, we die–

To ourselves, to the world, but in Him, we abide

In heart’s beloved, at last, we’re alive

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nava December 22nd, 2008

“It is not an easy task to present minds obsessed with the conception of this world and its affairs as complete in itself rather than as an ante-room to a larger, freer life, a scene in which the dominant note [is] Eternity.”
~ Howard Colby Ives

What would it look like if we lived our lives at every moment aware of the fact that this world and everything in it was merely a prelude to a world much greater than this.  Rather than allowing that knowledge to dull us into nonchalance or trick us into thinking the prelude was inconsequential, we would live knowing that the prelude was absolutely crucial in dictating what was to come.

The prelude would define the rest of the play- the body and the characters, the scene titles, and even the very last period on the very last page of the final act.

How might we live if we understood that the prelude was not more important than the rest of the play, but was absolutely essential to its unfolding.

And what if we knew that this play would tell the greatest love story of all time.  Greater than Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Bella and Edward, Leili and Majnun…greater than the love felt by the most adoring, devoted, sacrificial father for his favorite daughter…and that the prelude’s purpose was to set forces in motion which would allow for the lover and the beloved to meet in the chamber of eternity.

The meeting of the two was inevitable.  But the prelude would determine how quickly it would happen.  The prelude would determine how long the lover would sigh in longing for her beloved.  How long she would feel consumed by the flame of separation from the one for whom every cell in her body existed, every beat of her heart resounded, nay, the reason why every atom in the universe was. For these two to meet, to love, to be near.

What if you knew that you were the lover in the prelude.  And that every decision you made, every thought, every action or inaction, bore direct influence on how near you would be to the greatest, most radiant, most resplendent, kind, loving, wonderful, unimaginably glorious being.

That every kind act, every selfless thought, every step taken to help ease someone else’s burden, to help improve the quality of another’s life, to help those other lovers living the prelude with you would draw you nearer to this object of adoration — and what if you knew that your time in the prelude was very, very fleeting, especially as compared with the dominant note of eternity, which the rest of the play would unfold — would you waste a single moment on anger? On jealousy?  On lethargy or inactivity?

How much time would you devote to leisure?  To pleasure pursuits that distracted you, perhaps even moved your further away from, the path that led to this all-glorious one?

If we lived every moment of our lives consciously aware that we were created to know and to love God, to worship and adore Him in our actions towards His other creatures, that in serving our fellow man, we drew nearer unto Him, that whether or not we felt it now, when we exited the ante room and entered the chamber of eternity, we would be totally aware of and consumed by our love for Him and that if we were remote from Him we would feel sorrow and regret more intense than any hellish brimstone or scalding fire could impose on us …and that our nearness or remoteness from Him would be in direct proportion to how we had spent our time in the ante room, or how we had penned our story in the prelude — I wonder how differently we would behave.  How different our entire atmosphere would be.  One directly affects the other, after all, and both help shape the kind of eternity that awaits us.  An eternity which we are already a part of, which is always as near to us as the air we inhale and exhale at every moment.

It is the duty of every seeker to bestir himself and strive to attain the shores of this ocean, so that he may, in proportion to the eagerness of his search and the efforts he hath exerted, partake of such benefits as have been pre-ordained in God’s irrevocable and hidden Tablets. If no one be willing to direct his steps towards its shores, if every one should fail to arise and find Him, can such a failure be said to have robbed this ocean of its power or to have lessened, to any degree, its treasures? …This most great, this fathomless and surging Ocean is near, astonishingly near, unto you. Behold it is closer to you than your life-vein! Swift as the twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this imperishable favor, this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift, this most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty.

~ Baha’u'llah

Tags: afterlife, freedom, love, service

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Baha'i Perspectives November 27th, 2008

Portals to Freedom is one of those books that’s impossible to put down once you’ve started reading it. Written by Howard Colby Ives, at the time a Unitarian Minister, it describes his soul-stirring encounters with the personage of Abdu’l-Baha during his epoch-making journey to North America in the early 20th century. In Chapter Four of this flowing composition, Colby Ives tells a story of the love that Abdu’l-Baha demonstrates towards an unruly group of young urchins. Through his perfect example – in word and in deed – they learn a valuable lesson about unity and harmony among all races.

Towards the latter part of April, late one Sunday afternoon, I was again at the home where so many wonderful hours had been spent. It had become almost a habit, when the service at my church was over and dinner dispatched, to hasten in to New York and spend the rest of the day and evening at this home. Sometimes I would have an opportunity to speak to Abdu’l-Bahá, but usually I must be content with a glimpse of Him, or with listening to Him while He spoke to a small group. This particular afternoon, however, was destined to be a red-letter day. I was standing alone at one of the windows looking out upon the street, when I was startled by seeing a large group of boys come rushing up the steps. There seemed twenty or thirty of them. And they were not what one would call representatives of the cultured class. In fact, they were a noisy and not too well dressed lot of urchins, but spruce and clean as if for an event. They came up the steps with a stamping of feet and loud talk, and I heard them being ushered in and up the stairs.

I turned to Mrs. Kinney, who was standing near. “What is the meaning of all this?” I asked.

“Oh, this is really the most surprising thing,” she exclaimed, “I asked them to come today, but I hardly expected that they would.”

It seemed that a few days before Abdu’l-Bahá had gone to the Bowery Mission to speak to several hundred of New York’s wretched poor. As usual, with Him went a large group of the Persian and American friends, and it made a unique spectacle as this party of Orientals in flowing robes and strange headgear made its way through the East Side. Not unnaturally, a number of boys gathered in their train and soon they became a little too vocal in their expression. As I remember, even some venturesome ones called names and threw sticks. As my Hostess told the story, she said: “I could not bear to hear Abdu’l-Bahá so treated and dropped behind the others for a moment to speak to them. In a few words, I told them Who He was; that He was a very Holy Man who had spent many years in exile and prison because of His love for Truth and for men, and that now He was on His way to speak to the poor men at the Bowery Mission.”

“Can’t we go too?” one who seemed to be the leader asked. I think that would be impossible, she told them, but if you come to my home next Sunday, and she gave them the address, I will arrange for you to see Him. So here they were. We followed them up the stairs and into Abdu’l-Bahá’s own room. I was just in time to see the last half dozen of the group entering the room.

Abdu’l-Bahá was standing at the door and He greeted each boy as he came in; sometimes with a handclasp, sometimes with an arm around a shoulder, but always with such smiles and laughter it almost seemed that He was a boy with them. Certainly there was no suggestion of stiffness on their part, or awkwardness in their unaccustomed surroundings. Among the last to enter the room was a colored lad of about thirteen years. He was quite dark and, being the only boy of his race among them, he evidently feared that he might not be welcome. When Abdu’l-Bahá saw him His face lighted up with a heavenly smile. He raised His hand with a gesture of princely welcome and exclaimed in a loud voice so that none could fail to hear; that here was a black rose.

The room fell into instant silence. The black face became illumined with a happiness and love hardly of this world. The other boys looked at him with new eyes. I venture to say that he had been called a black–many things, but never before a black rose.

This significant incident had given to the whole occasion a new complexion. The atmosphere of the room seemed now charged with subtle vibrations felt by every soul. The boys, while losing nothing of their ease and simplicity, were graver and more intent upon Abdu’l-Bahá, and I caught them glancing again and again at the colored boy with very thoughtful eyes. To the few of the friends in the room the scene brought visions of a new world in which every soul would be recognized and treated as a child of God. I thought: What would happen to New York if these boys could carry away such a keen remembrance of this experience that throughout their lives, whenever they encountered any representatives of the many races and colors to be found in that great city, they would think of them and treat them as “different colored flowers in the Garden of God.” The freedom from just this one prejudice in the minds and hearts of this score or more of souls would unquestionably bring happiness and freedom from rancor to thousands of hearts. How simple and easy to be kind, I thought, and how hardly we learn.

When His visitors had arrived, Abdu’l-Bahá had sent out for some candy and now it appeared, a great five pound box of expensive mixed chocolates. It was unwrapped and Abdu’l-Bahá walked with it around the circle of boys, dipping His hand into the box and placing a large handful in the hands of each, with a word and smile for everyone. He then returned to the table at which He had been sitting, and laying down the box, which now had only a few pieces in it. He picked from it a long chocolate nougat; it was very black. He looked at it a moment and then around at the group of boys who were watching Him intently and expectantly. Without a word. He walked across the room to where the colored boy was sitting, and, still without speaking, but with a humorously piercing glance that swept the group, laid the chocolate against the black cheek. His face was radiant as He laid His arm around the shoulder of the boy and that radiance seemed to fill the room. No words were necessary to convey His meaning, and there could be no doubt that all the boys caught it.

Tags: prejudice, race

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iman November 18th, 2008

We may know what brings about spiritual happiness but knowing isn’t enough.  Our free will determines what we ultimately do.  It is essential to continually put into practice ‘tools’ such as detachment, sacrifice, service and faith, as painful as it may seem at times.  Modern society has pre-determined what “makes us happy”, this being largely materialistic in nature. It hasn’t worked.  It’s up to us to tower over the society around us in search of true, spiritual contentment.  This is especially difficult to do and is only a first step in a journey that requires continual effort and unwavering resolve.

In the search for spiritual contentment, everything that draws us closer to God will make up happier, and to find God in this day is to recognize and accept His Channel to us.  Baha’u'llah, who Baha’is believe is the latest in the line of  Manifestations from God says, in the first paragraph of His Most Holy Book, the Kitab-i-Aqdas:

The first duty prescribed by God for His servants is the recognition of Him Who is the Dayspring of His Revelation and the Fountain of His laws, Who representeth the Godhead in both the Kingdom of His Cause and the world of creation.

(Baha’u'llah, The Kitab-i-Aqdas, p. 19)

We owe it to ourselves to conquer sadness with joy, and to actively seek it. We owe it to our latent capacities of intellect, comprehension and intelligence; in other words, to achieving our God-given potential. Consider this passage:

Joy gives us wings! In times of joy our strength is more vital, our intellect keener, and our understanding less clouded. We seem better able to cope with the world and to find our sphere of usefulness. But when sadness visits us we become weak, our strength leaves us, our comprehension is dim and our intelligence veiled. The actualities of life seem to elude our grasp,  the eyes of our spirits fail to discover the sacred mysteries, and we become even as dead beings.

(Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 109)

The nature of life is such that it will always have it’s ups and downs. Nobody goes through life without experiencing some form of hardship, be it mental or physical. Yet, the degree to which external factors affect one’s internal well-being is a true indicator of spiritual strength.

“Anybody can be happy in the state of comfort, ease, health, success, pleasure and joy; but if one will be happy and contented in the time of trouble, hardship and prevailing disease, it is the proof of nobility.”

(Abdu’l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu’l-Baha v2, p. 263)

Tags: happiness

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geoffrey September 22nd, 2008

Sometimes I think back to when I was younger; well, I mean, I only just turned 24. So “younger” is a relative term. I guess also with turning 24 I think of myself less of as a “youth” and certainly not a “pre-youth” or “junior youth”. I’ve hit an age that, at least in my mind, brings with it connotations of blooming adulthood, where life may become more serious. But certainly, how you take life doesn’t have to. In this third post, I promised to talk briefly on the power of youth with regards to language.

I see that one of my co-posters, Negin, has recently published a post entitled “Youth Can Move the World”. I’ll make sure that repetition is limited or negated all together. What I want to talk about today is “horizontal thinking”. Recently I watched a YouTube video of Thomas Friedman on his book “The World is Flat“. He was giving a keynote address at MIT, and though he covered a lot of material, some of which I did not agree with (but this is for another post perhaps), he did touch on one thing that I was really able to latch on to – it was this process of “horizontal thinking“.

The main thrust of this conjecture about the state of the world is that growth in opportunity, coupled with the integration and growing connectivity of the world, has basically made it flat. And that a person’s ability to access a much larger market, or to interact with a variety of other people across the world, has increased at an incredible rate. Thus, our orientation with respect to the rest of the world is side-to-side rather than top-down, which is a break from traditional vertical thinking (where hierarchy rules and systems of class dominance are perpetuated). Horizontal thinking allows us to see greater opportunities for equality and implies devolution of authority and an increased sense of autonomy for the individual.

Now, in one respect, this does nothing to stem the tide of, what a good friend has called, the cult of individualism, but what it does do is allow greater chances for influence — particularly for youth.

I’ve also recently been getting increasingly fascinated with the medium of podcasting. I mean, I’m only about three years late in becoming interested in this form of media. But it’s never too late I guess. And I look at blogging too, of course. Here I am, writing to… no one and everyone… about things just spinning around in my head… and I hope against hope that it is somehow interesting to someone, somewhere.

And now we find ourselves in a burgeoning world of global connectivity, creating these golden threads of light that circumnavigate the world — creating what though? That we can only guess — what will be the outcome of all this? The only thing we can do is to grasp it, use it and exploit it to its fullest and make sure that this mode of connection can help bring us together.

Where are the poets? We are here; we are everywhere.

This servant appealeth to every diligent and enterprising soul to exert his utmost endeavour and arise to rehabilitate the conditions in all regions and to quicken the dead with the living waters of wisdom and utterance, by virtue of the love he cherisheth for God, the One, the Peerless, the Almighty, the Beneficent.

(Baha’u'llah, Tablets of Baha’u'llah, p. 172)

It would be exhaustive at this point to speak of the power of youth, about their potential. What is more important perhaps is how this potential is used. Wisdom and utterance are of the utmost significance with regards to communication. They are the foundations of mutual understanding and beneficial interactions. The youth of today, as we continue to create a virtual mesh over the entirety of the world, need to utilize, must tap into and be educated in these processes that lead to the “quickening” of men.

And especially in a horizontal world, where communication has become the catalyst for so much, the use of wisdom in incredibly important.  There is a passage in the Baha’i writings that says “Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age in which ye live, and certain your deliberations and exigencies upon it”.  The use of language as a means of power, influence and ultimately love are, in reality, among the greatest goals of today, whether we realize it or not.

The youth of today, indeed, are the vanguard of this endeavor.

O SON OF DUST!
The wise are they that speak not unless they obtain a hearing, even as the cup-bearer, who proffereth not his cup till he findeth a seeker, and the lover who crieth not out from the depths of his heart until he gazeth upon the beauty of his beloved. Wherefore sow the seeds of wisdom and knowledge in the pure soil of the heart, and keep them hidden, till the hyacinths of divine wisdom spring from the heart and not from mire and clay…

(Baha’u'llah, The Persian Hidden Words)

Let me retract me initial statement.  I am a youth.  This is where the real power of civilization-building lies.

O Lord! Make this youth radiant, and confer Thy bounty upon this poor creature. Bestow upon him knowledge, grant him added strength at the break of every morn and guard him within the shelter of Thy protection so that he may be freed from error, may devote himself to the service of Thy Cause, may guide the wayward, lead the hapless, free the captives and awaken the heedless, that all may be blessed with Thy remembrance and praise. Thou art the Mighty and the Powerful.

(Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’i Prayers)

Tags: art, language, poetry, youth

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nadim September 1st, 2008

I find it fascinating how so many profound theological concepts are explained in the Baha’i Writings using simple metaphors.

Trawling through the Web one day, I came across this marvellous story that demonstrates, so lucidly, the nature and interconnectedness of justice in this world and the next. In it, Baha’u'llah explains to us that justice, and the manifestations thereof, exist on multiple realms beyond our own and take on countless different forms. This story, I find, resolves a number of questions that invariably come to the mind when examining world affairs, when witnessing inequity and injustice and wondering what, if any, are the consequences faced by perpetrators of these acts. And what, if any, are the reparations for the helpless victims?

Before carrying on, here is the story. It is a commentary on the original Tablet revealed by Baha’u'llah:

Let us imagine that in the springtime a powerful man robs a weak man of his provision of seeds and that he plants these seeds in his own garden. The seeds germinate and in summer produce plants, trees and ultimately fruits. Then, it befalls that a just king decides to redress the wrong that was done to the weak one. In what manner should this just king proceed? Should he require from the oppressor that he return the same quantity of seeds? At harvest-time the seeds are of no immediate utility. Or should he return to him the product of the seeds that were stolen from him? We understand immediately that justice requires that we return to the victim not the original seeds but that which they produced. The seeds changed in form, they were transformed into something else, the appearance and the qualities of which are only distantly related to their first appearance and qualities. The relationship between this world and the other world is of the same nature, and of the same nature also is the nature of justice that links the two. Here below things exist only in the state of seed. When they evolve in the divine worlds, they are completely transformed in form, appearance and qualities. Nevertheless, the qualities of the tree and of the fruit depend upon the qualities of the seed that produced them.

In this Tablet, Baha’u'llah proceeds with a digression of a moral rather than a metaphysical character. In this life, the material things that we might lose do not matter. In due course, these materials things show their true colors, becoming tests and of calamities in our spiritual evolution, while tests and calamities prove to be the source of true riches. At the final count, the fact that we have lost material goods for spiritual reasons, whether we have offered them to God in a spirit of detachment, or lost them because of the oppression of men, makes no difference… However he who has unjustly seized the goods of another in order to accumulate his own riches in fact has but accumulated obstacles to his own spiritual development. Without fail, the consequences of our actions follow us from one world to the next.

(Jean-Marc Lepain, An Introduction to the Lawh-i Haqqu’n-Nas, commentary on a provisional translation of this Tablet of Baha’u'llah)

There is indeed a lot to digest here. In considering Divine justice and it’s application, the picture that comes to mind is one of a weighing scale that tips from side-to-side during the course of one’s life, yet ultimately achieves perfect balance. In other words, imbalances that manifest themselves during the course of this life are always compensated, be it in this world or those to come. This is certainly reassuring for victims of injustice and, I would imagine, equally worrying for the perpetrators.

What I also find interesting is the assertion that accumulating material goods is, in a sense, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is praiseworthy to earn an honest living and enjoy the benefits that may present themselves. But there also exists a paradox — that if we aren’t vigilant, we can easily find ourselves moving from a state of ownership to that of being owned by our possessions. I’m sure we’ve all witnessed cases of people wasting all their time and energy in the feverish pursuit of getting more “stuff”, often compromising their values along the way, while we sit and wonder when it will finally dawn on them — that in their pursuit of freedom through material means, they have, in reality, taken on a life of slavery. But it’s not just them. Avoiding the pitfalls of materialism is a mighty test for every one of us, for in the blink of an eye, we can completely lose sight of our ultimate spiritual purpose. As Christ said:

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.

(Mark 10:25)

Finally, I believe the moral of this story can be applied beyond the realms of the powerful exploiting the weak. It can be applied to our own daily lives. Have we been kind and just towards those around us? Are we truly preferring others before ourselves? Do we avoid backbiting and slander? It seems fair to suggest that all human beings have a role to play in promoting a just society. Both individual and societal justice is required, and there exists a reciprocal relationship between the two. Indeed, to pay little attention to one’s own behaviour, while simultaneously expecting a perfect system of justice to be imposed from above, is surely counterproductive.

Do you have any additional thoughts to share on reading this story?

Tags: justice, materialism

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