Baha’i Perspectives

negin June 9th, 2008

A sincere longing for being of use and helping one’s surroundings is a natural driving force that most people have. In the Baha’i Faith, love and service to mankind are regarded as “the worthiest and most laudable objects of human endeavor”, through which we can also develop virtues and spiritual qualities within ourselves. In the Baha’i community, the courses of the Ruhi Institute are being used to train individuals to develop skills and attitudes needed to succeed in this endeavour. The courses are offered at the grassroots level and are designed to instill in participants the capacity, as well as the confidence, to embark on service activities aimed at gradually uplifting the wider community.

The Ruhi Institute is an educational system that was originally developed under the guidance of the Baha’i community of Colombia in the 1970s, and is now being used all over the world. Based on the Writings of the Baha’i Faith, the material aims at giving its participants an understanding of the presented topics, not only on a level that generates reflection and analysis, but, more crucially, on a level that facilitates action and change:

O SON OF DUST!

Verily I say unto thee; Of all men the most negligent is he that disputeth idly and seeketh to advance himself over his brother. Say, O brethren! Let deeds, not words, be your adorning.

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

The main sequence of the institute consists of seven books, each with a specific theme and an act of service tied to it. The books are studied in study circles consisting of one tutor and 3-10 participants. Some of the themes of the main sequence are “Reflections on the Life of the Spirit” and “Teaching Children’s Classes”. The last book of the sequence is a tutor training, after which the participant herself/himself can serve as a tutor.

The Ruhi Institute has come to spread all over the world, being used by Baha’is and their friends from the Kiribati Islands in the South Pacific Ocean to the Faeroe Islands and Iceland in Northern Europe. Of course, culture, weather and tradition influences the shape and expression of the study circles in different corners of the world, but they all have in common the purpose of educating and training their participants to be of service to their fellow beings and to mankind.

The Great Being saith: Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.

(Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 259)

Tags: development, education, Ruhi books, service

• General Interest , Principles in Action , Society
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iman October 2nd, 2008

In the third part of this series on happiness, examining the “three S’s” above, it is proposed that the trials of suffering can make one happier.  Sounds counter-intuitive. “Does the soul progress more through sorrow or through the joy in this world?” was the question posed to Abdu’l-Baha in Paris, in the early 20^th century.  He replied:

The mind and spirit of man advance when he is tried by suffering…His attitude in this world will be that of divine happiness. Man is, so to speak, unripe: the heat of the fire of suffering will mature him. Look back to the times past and you will find that the greatest men have suffered most…. Through suffering he will attain to an eternal happiness which nothing can take from him. The apostles of Christ suffered: they attained eternal happiness.

(Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 178)

No-one enjoys sorrow. Suffering presents itself in countless ways and it is for this reason that no-one is left unaffected.  Everyone is tested in various ways; ways which may differ from person to person. Whilst many a time we may find circumstances unbearable,  it is how we deal with, and accept the latent wisdom that lies within these challenges, that provides a path to happiness:

…suffering, although an inescapable reality, can nevertheless be utilised as a means for the attainment of happiness. This is the interpretation given to it by all the prophets and saints who, in the midst of severe tests and trials, felt happy and joyous and experienced what is best and holiest in life. Suffering is both a reminder and a guide. It stimulates us better to adapt ourselves to our environmental conditions, and thus leads the way to self improvement. In every suffering one can find a meaning and a wisdom. But it is not always easy to find the secret of that wisdom. It is sometimes only when all our suffering has passed that we become aware of its usefulness. What man considers to be evil turns often to be a cause of infinite blessings.

(Shoghi Effendi, The Unfolding Destiny of the British Baha’i Community)

Be it illness, the loss of a loved one, or poverty, amongst the many struggles we are faced with, a lot of the times it is through suffering that we develop more compassion and are more willing to sacrifice ourselves for the betterment of the lives of those around us:

To attain eternal happiness one must suffer. He who has reached the state of self-sacrifice has true joy. Temporal joy will vanish.

(Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 178)

Ever wondered why the simple act of giving gifts makes us happy?  In its purest form it is not merely the act of giving the gift, but sacrificial interplay on a higher level. How much more the mutual happiness that can be derived from acts of service on a highly participatory, more global scale?  How much more rewarding to unceasingly sacrifice for our  Creator, the Infinite?:

In the Bahá’í Cause arts, sciences and all crafts are (counted as) worship. The man who makes a piece of notepaper to the best of his ability, conscientiously, concentrating all his forces on perfecting it, is giving praise to God. Briefly, all effort and exertion put forth by man from the fullness of his heart is worship, if it is prompted by the highest motives and the will to do service to humanity. This is worship: to serve mankind and to minister to the needs of the people. Service is prayer. A physician ministering to the sick, gently, tenderly, free from prejudice and believing in the solidarity of the human race, he is giving praise.

(Abdu’l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 176)

In addition, service helps us overlook our own perceived shortcomings (and, sometimes, imaginary remedies), which are often a source of discontent:

The more we search for ourselves, the less likely we are to find ourselves; and the more we search for God, and to serve our fellow-men, the more profoundly will we become acquainted with ourselves, and the more inwardly assured. This is one of the great spiritual laws of life.

(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, February 18, 1954)

Suffering and sacrifice can be overwhelming at times so what can sustain us? – it is the faith that our sacrifices can be the cause of irreversible spiritual growth, both for us and for those around us.   Faith will be discussed in the next post.

“…and the food of them who haste to meet Thee is the fragments of their broken hearts.”
(Baha’u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 95)

Tags: happiness, sacrifice, service, tests

• Baha'i Concepts , General Interest
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leila April 6th, 2010

Trust in the capacity of this generation to disentangle itself from the embroilments of a divided society. To discharge your responsibilities, you will have to show forth courage, the courage of those who cling to standards of rectitude, whose lives are characterized by purity of thought and action, and whose purpose is directed by love and indomitable faith. As you dedicate yourselves to healing the wounds with which your peoples have been afflicted, you will become invincible champions of justice.

(The Universal House of Justice, message to the Paraguay Youth Congress, 2000)

Dr. Susan Moody, with Baha'i women and girls in Iran.

When I was in high school, I read a book that left an indelible impression upon my heart.  It was The Diary of Juliet Thompson, an early American Baha’i living in New York City who had the good fortune to have spent time with ‘Abdu’l-Baha in the Holy Land, Europe, and New York.  Juliet was loved dearly by ‘Abdu’l-Baha — He said that she would become the envy of future queens — but she was by no means perfect, and I think that’s why she appealed so much to me.

I read the book again this year, as summer turned to autumn: before going to sleep, my eyelids growing heavy as I tried to catch another chapter; on the city bus, almost missing my stop; at lunch breaks from work, sitting in a garden tucked behind high-rises and not wanting my hour to be up.  One evening, lying on the couch with dinner in one hand and my book in the other, I gazed out the window at the sunset, watching a plane descend at the distance.  I had the great feeling of wanting to sacrifice very much to help bring about a new civilization that Baha’u'llah taught of, borne out of the great love for ‘Abdu’l-Baha that Juliet transmitted through these pages.

And it occurred to me that I had had that very same feeling when reading it as a high schooler.  I wondered what I had sacrificed — it didn’t feel like very much, and it always felt like I had some excuse; that “it’ll come later.”  But later was now, and what could I show of it?

Juliet’s diary did something to me, for as the autumn progressed, I picked books up and couldn’t put them down.  Books of great heroes, who sacrificed and had faith in a cause that would bring a new world long after they had passed away.  One book became two which became four, and before I knew it, I had devoured ten such books, as the fiery leaves that lined my street shriveled to dust, and D.C.’s first silent snow turned to blizzards.

These were stories of women and men in far-flung places (Persia, Bulgaria, Libya, Australia) and those closer to home (New York, Washington, D.C., Berkeley). They were stories of men who risked their very lives by, openly and stealthily, sharing with others Baha’u'llah’s message; and of women sacrificed material comforts to travel, alone, to distant lands, at advanced ages.

There are my favorites: the Western women who, although single — some never married, others widowed — traversed the globe and performed great acts of heroism.

There was Ella Bailey who, at eighty-eight years old, did not let a bad fall and a recent hospitalization prevent her from alighting upon her pioneering post in Tripoli, equipped with an oxygen mask, only to pass away a month after her arrival.  Martha Root, the “archetype of Bahá’í itinerant teachers,” who circled the world twice.  Keith Ransom-Kehler, twice widowed, with her endless trunks packed with couture, sludged through the mud of East Asia.  Susan Moody, who, at the age of fifty-eight, traveled alone to Iran at ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s request to provide healthcare for women, likewise starting the country’s first school for girls.  Marion Jack, sixty-five years old, moved from Canada to Bulgaria, living in a small hotel room through ill-health, freezing temperatures, and the Second World War.

These names — Ella, Keith, Marion, Susan, Martha — echoed in the memory of my formative years, and growing up, I associated those names with, “Well, I could never do what they did.”

But as I read on, what became increasingly apparent was their great heroism despite their human frailties: impatience, feelings of inadequacy, struggling to work in unity with others.  A line I read from the foreward of one of these books summed it up:

As we read about these early Baha’is, we realize that they were in many ways very much like ourselves, for they too had human weaknesses and shortcomings.  Their greatness lay in the quality of their faith in Baha’u'llah and His Message. This was the secret of their victory– despite their shortcomings.

(Gloria Faizi, Fire on the Mountain-top)

I realized any of us could be like them, and that there were a lot more of such people around me — whose lives are yet to be recorded in books — than I had imagined.

As I leave this city which I have occupied intermittently for the past five and half years, for warmer climes — leaving the comfort of plentiful friendships, organic markets, rapid public transportation, and clean sidewalks — off to an unknown destination to follow in their footsteps; in moments of fear of what may lie ahead, I remember these individuals who, ever human, were champions of justice:

Though they themselves would not live to see that day, they were prepared to sacrifice all they had if by doing so they could raise the call to unity, and prove to an unbelieving world that the wolf and the lamb could truly drink from the same stream….

(Gloria Faizi, Fire on the Mountain-top)

Tags: faith, service, women

• Inspiration , Reflections
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leila October 29th, 2009

Photo credit: Tom Dyson.

The older one gets, the more one’s own mortality becomes painfully evident.  I had a dream the other night that I was on a jet.  My sister was in the lavatory, and I was outside telling her a joke, wanting to make her laugh.

Suddenly, the plane began to plummet.  We both grew silent, on opposite sides of the door, and in my head, all I could think about was how much had been left undone.

Maybe I had that dream because recently, I’ve witnessed people around me, young and old, be afflicted with terminal illnesses.  I spent the weekend in Northern Virginia, at my pseudo-relatives’ home.  My father and another childhood friend of theirs were visiting D.C., and what was meant to be a jovial reunion weekend was tinged with a sense of how quickly life can change.

Mahin Khanum, my pseudo-uncle’s mother, had last week been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She had been a feisty woman with a sparkle in her eye who lost her husband at a young age and, at a not-so-young age, picked up and moved from Iran to Brazil when her two sons moved there. Whereas only weeks ago she was meddling in the kitchen, piling endless tea glasses into the dishwasher and effortlessly whipping up steaming pots of Basmati rice, Mahin Khanum could now hardly speak or react, let alone bathe herself.

In a rare moment of calm at the kitchen table, which was littered with crumbs and crammed with plates of fruit and half-empty glasses of tea, Mahsheed joon, my pseudo-aunt, leaned her elbow on the table and placed her head in her hand.  “Zendegi chegadr zood migzareh,” she sighed.  “How quickly life passes by.”  Switching to English, sweetly accented with Persian and Brazilian Portuguese tones, she waved her fork in the air and said, “You are young! Enjoy your youth and don’t take so heavily what might come in the future.”

A few weeks ago, I might have dismissed that advice as frivolous.  But in the midst of another hectic workday, her words rung through my mind, and I wondered whether I was wrongly associating living a purposeful life with gravity and heaviness.  I remembered a quotation from The Secret of Divine Civilization:

It is clear that life in this fast-fading world is as fleeting and inconstant as the morning wind, and this being so, how fortunate are the great who leave a good name behind them, and the memory of a lifetime spent in the pathway of the good pleasure of God.
‘Abdu’l-Baha, Secret of Divine Civilization, page 70.

I can home tonight, and throwing myself on the couch, I picked up my weathered copy of The Secret of Divine Civilization, searching in vain for the passage.  And as I did, I flipped to the last page and stumbled upon this:

“Happy the soul that shall forget his own good, and like the chosen ones of God, vie with his fellows in service to the good of all…”
‘Abdu’l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, page 116

It seems that in the end, what everyone is seeks is a kind of happiness.  The way they go about obtaining that happiness, however, runs the spectrum of being of benefit to being harmful to others.  Some find happiness in shopping (harmless); some, in volunteer work (beneficial); and some, in vandalism (harmful).  When I think about it, I can’t help but think that some of the pursuit of happiness is linked with that nagging feeling we’re going to get old and die.

Well, we are going to get old and die.  And like that moment in my dream, many of us are terrified– not so much that it may be painful, but that we might die and regret that we didn’t live a full life.

In this ever-fragmented, ever-frantic city, these thoughts sometimes elude us.  Or sometimes, we may mistake a “full life” as being those things that, while wonderful, bring us elusive happiness.  I love Washington, with all its quirks, but sometimes it seems as if someone hit a fast-forward button and forgot to hit “pause.”  Those of us in this city sometimes live as if we’re invincible– and that when we do die, all that really matters is how many times our name appeared in print.

But I have to wonder that, when this life ends– and if you don’t believe in an afterlife, when you lie down at night and honestly assess what you’ve done and who you are– what can we say about a life in service for the good of all?  In this ever-fragmented city, it’s easy to be worn out, run ragged, pulled in many directions, and anxious about career prospects.

It was dusk on Saturday evening, the setting sun peeking through the drawn curtains.  Mahin Khanum’s granddaughter, weary-eyed from a sleepless week, grasped her grandmother’s hands in her own, swinging them and singing old Brazilian carnaval songs to her.  There, amidst the pain and exhaustion, was a token of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s words– forgetting her own self, for the good of a loved one in the sunset of her life in this fast-fading world.

Tags: afterlife, happiness, service

• General Interest , Inspiration
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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

• Baha'i Concepts , Inspiration
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nooshin November 4th, 2008

I am on holiday in the United States, and being here right now, during their presidential elections has been fascinating.  It is, after all, one of the world’s oldest democracies, and should have it all worked out by now.  Right?

If their political advertising is anything to go by, not really.  There seems to be mainly two tactics: Chicken Little politics (“the sky is falling down, the sky is falling down”) and the politics of fear (“Mr. X voted 125 times to ban alligator hunting.  If you vote for Mr. X, he will destroy you, your family and the whole American way of life”).  Four out of five adverts I have seen are negative ones, focusing on what is wrong with the opponent, rather than what is positive about the candidates themselves.

Shoghi Effendi, explaining that Baha’is are expressly forbidden to take part in partisan politics, said the following:

It remains for the individuals to so use their right to vote as to keep aloof from party politics, and always bear in mind that they are voting on the merits of the individual, rather than because he belongs to one party or another.

The merits of the individual, as far as I can see, should be what kind of a servant s/he would be.  In the present world order, to be a servant is to have a low social standing, a low salary and little respect.  In Baha’u'llah’s new world order, this definition will be turned on its head, with the rendering of service a duty and an aspiration.

So, what makes a good civil servant? `Abdu’l-Bahá clearly outlines what is expected of those entrusted with service to civil society;

Should any one of you enter into the service (or employment) of the government, he must live and act with the utmost truthfulness, righteousness, chastity, uprightness, purity, sanctity, justice and equity. But if—I seek refuge in God—any one betray the least of trusts or neglect and be remiss in the performance of duties which are intrusted to him, or by oppression takes one penny of extortion from the subjects, or seeks after his own personal, selfish aims and ends in the attainment of his own interests, he shall undoubtedly remain deprived of the outpourings of His Highness the Almighty.

Bahá’u'lláh, the Founder of the Baha’i Faith, addressed a series of letters to the kings and rulers of the time, which included the following exhortation:

Take heed, O concourse of the rulers of the world! There is no force on earth that can equal in its conquering power the force of justice and wisdom… Blessed is the king who marcheth with the ensign of wisdom unfurled before him, and the battalions of justice massed in his rear. He verily is the ornament that adorneth the brow of peace and the countenance of security. There can be no doubt whatever that if the day star of justice, which the clouds of tyranny have obscured, were to shed its light upon men, the face of the earth would be completely transformed.

These are tough standards to meet, even for those with the best of intentions.  I believe becoming a good servant is a life-long pursuit, one based on the suppression of the ego and increasing selflessness.  For instance, a good civil servant should be a master at consultation.  Consultation is only effective when its participants learn to be detached from their ideas, and work towards the greater good. The more our egos get involved, the more they get bruised, and need to be protected, and the more we lose sight of the goal:

…is there any deed in the world that would be nobler than service to the common good? Is there any greater blessing conceivable for a man, than that he should become the cause of the education, the development, the prosperity and honor of his fellow-creatures? No, by the Lord God! The highest righteousness of all is for blessed souls to take hold of the hands of the helpless and deliver them out of their ignorance and abasement and poverty, and with pure motives, and only for the sake of God, to arise and energetically devote themselves to the service of the masses, forgetting their own worldly advantage and working only to serve the general good.

`Abdu’l-Bahá

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