And the Lesser Mortals
This might and probably will step on all faith believers of the almighty. My humble apologies to all readers, the next few pages are thoughts collected from years of rubbing shoulders with good and evil, looking for spiritual guidance, sometimes receiving it by way of praying and withheld by explanations on karma, reincarnation, whichever fits that particular incident. Unfollow my blog if I have over-stepped on those sacred boundaries, and by way of explanation, it is a privilege that my life’s journey allowed such freedom to enter and exit beliefs as I moved countries.
Theravada Buddhism and Christianity were a daily feature, building the foundation of the first seven years of my childhood. At home, the Buddha room had many forms of Buddha relics in all positions, leaning, standing, sitting. Small urns held grandfather’s and grandmothers’ ashes; their powerful spirit forever ruled over us. The location was London, England.
The school I attended worshipped Protestant Christianity. Morning rituals at school were reciting the Lord's prayer and reading and interpreting the scriptures. It was only natural to compare the two faiths. First, the two Gods were male. Their prophets, again men, were instructors to strictly uphold governing rules. Nuns had not arrived in my life at that point. Both faiths used candles and lighted incense sticks, holy water from some region of the world and deity replicas placed for worshipping. Daily prayers aided by the incense smoke connects the earthly world to the universal power, often competing with the kitchen’s culinary aroma.
One faith seemingly more devout than the other. I often wondered if the two Gods ever drank heavenly beer together, up there, somewhere. It was only a matter of time I couldn’t help but saw the funny side of faith, and later its strength. I learnt Nammo ta-sa, having mumbled while father prayed Clasping hands was prayers when you wanted something to work in your favor. So, I figured if one God didn't help the other one would. Their prophets wore different uniforms, one wore floor-length black cloak the other wore saffron yellow robes. The yellow robe could not touch women, must remain celibate, for desire, prevents the goal of reaching Nirvana. The black cloak was able to marry, the result of Henry VIII’s defiance of Catholicism’s no divorce rule – two opposing beliefs on sex and procreation; which one held the balance in my adolescent mind?
Entering teenage years, we crossed continent, and I attended a Catholic school, The Convent of Jesus and Mary. Early morning Catechism class taught by strict nuns, finally women entered the game, and started the ritual of holy water blessing, dotting an imaginary cross over our heads in the land of ………
Allah.
I had discovered a third God, the God of Islam. The Location was Karachi, Pakistan.
The bible was read every day. But on Friday afternoons, schools and offices closed so that the whole nation stopped to pray Allahu Akbar from Mosques, heard throughout the city via loudspeakers. From the Buddha room, Nammo-ta-sa could not quite compete that audio level. The ten commandments plus Buddha’s five precepts, was turning my rebellious volume higher. Tempted to adjust my record player to the Beatle’s latest hit single, “I wanna hold your hand” to drown it all out, then decided, fighting three gods could prove disastrous.
Allah must have heard my dilemma and sent a friend to enlighten me in the form of a classmate, Benazir Bhutto, a politician’s daughter, later became Pakistan’s first woman Prime Minister. She came from a Sunni family with an Iranian mother who was a Muslim Shia. We were both 12; intellectually ahead of everyone, she was always bored. By choosing me, a visitor to her country, no threat to rejection, she unloaded what was pushed down her throat in educating me about Islam. I listened intently only because in my confused mind; if the Christian God were saying no to my prayers and Buddha was adamant that it is my Karma, then maybe I have a chance with Allah. They pray five times a day against my father’s three.
Allah is the one true God of Islam, worshipped by all Muslims. Followers of the prophet Muhammad accepted Allah’s teachings by calling themselves Sunnis. The opposing side wanted Muhammad’s successor to be in direct bloodline, so they differentiated themselves as Shiite’s. I only realized Benazir saw herself as a Shiite through her mother, but to be popular with the people she pretended she was her father, Zulfikar Bhutto’s daughter, a Sunni. Because of Benazir’s assassination in Islamabad, Pakistan in 2007 by a suicide bomber, I fight on her behalf when remarks come from anti-Islam sentiments of their government’s propaganda, putting the blame on Islamic fundamentalist; I helped the uneducated to see the theories Benazir hammered home to me when our schoolmates were playing ‘pass the parcel’ waiting for the birthday cake to appear so she could go home.
Benazir always reminded me, “Prophets are not God, they are men in uniform, to bow to, and pray to, differentiating them from other mortals”. Absorbing all this knowledge at 14, quirky I was not. It was a by-product of adjusting to each country move. To be amongst different faiths, allowed me to join, learn, follow, but not commit, was a gift beyond gifts.
Not allowed to be left on my own in Karachi, Tehran brought a new awareness to my 15th year on this earth. The trips were short but too long to be out of school, so a retired tutor, Professor Darius was hired, his nephew Parviz, was his designated chauffeur. While waiting for the lessons to finish, the Aryan Indo-European Parviz saw a gap, and successfully secured my undivided attention.
The professor’s teachings increasingly became dull, while Parviz’s compelling story of how Parsi’s, followers of Zoroastrianism believed in excarnation. That sounded more exotic than trigonometry. This was my introduction to Zoroastrianism, and the opposite sex.
Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s oldest faiths going back 3,500 years. I learnt about their faith, not through scriptures or prayers, but by attending different important life rituals.
Excarnation, a new vocabulary for me, Parviz explained, that the Tower of Silence, only four kilometers north of us, near the Alborz mountains, built on high ground, was a circular raised structure, for exposing human corpses for decomposition to be eaten up by vultures, was their funeral practice. Fascination of both the Aryan and the macabre ritual, I accepted a date to attend a Parsi funeral.
The sight and sound of vultures swirling above, as the mourned family pushed their grandmother’s body over wooden stilts and quickly began to shut the tower door. An immediate gathering of vultures fighting and snatching their turn in swooping their wings down to pick on fingers and toes. Those few minutes of monotone prayers imprinted a savage memory of animalistic hissing, fluttering wings, the intestinal ligature ripped fiercely by one voracious bird, that attempted to fly but the dangling heavy cord was too long. Standing at the bottom of the mount, only the sound captured the ferocity.
Having witnessed the end of a Zoroastrian’s life, I was privileged to attend my best friends’ new beginnings; Tilat’s Navjote, and her acceptance into the faith, with Parviz along to explain the rituals.
Navjote is equivalent to the baptism ritual. In the ceremony, Sudrah, a white muslin vest, worn as prayers are said as acceptance into the faith. Sewn into the vest is a small pocket symbolizing a keeper of good deeds. It is a reminder before accusing others of their unethical behavior, to look inside the symbolic pocket if you have the standing with which to make such a moral judgement. A cord called Kusti, made from72 threads of lamb’s wool tied three times around the waist over the Sudrah, a symbolism of binding commitment to be worn for life. That ceremony struck a chord, locked away, as I humbly retrieve it today when judgement is called upon.
It also struck another chord as Parviz teased if I ever needed to touch an extension of God, I need only to caress his Kusti. He tried. It was a clever move by the boy/man; it was also enticing; but he did not realize that the titillation had an attachment to the Almighty’s decision to strike that very basic human need committed in desire. So obviously Buddha’s teaching surfaced naturally when needed.
Zoroastrianism faith worships fire and water, in ancient times, and it stands in today, unrefutably two very important, yet simple requirements in sustaining life. I immediately wanted my modern world of John Lennon back, and so Parviz, in his borrowed tight jeans and T-shirt changed back to the Jamal Kameez that his body and soul fitted more comfortably.
Famous Zoroastrian singer Freddie Mercury, from the band Queen, always wore white on stage, symbolic of his faith. If the outfit left his upper half naked, he continued to wear his Kusti, unseen, well below his trouser belt. Bohemian Rhapsody, a global smash hit in 1975 was up a ladder or two from John Lennon.
Back to my nomadic life. No school nor tutors, for this move was sporadic and short. Mesopotamia and all its history of ancient beliefs unfolded at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, where visiting the ancient site in extreme dry heat, led the need for sugar. The young Prime Minister Al-Naif of Iraq noticed the SE Asian diplomatic group was about to faint, instantly ordered pomegranate juice and dates; to his staff, and a young Baha’i lady called Tahira, saved the day and became my life-long friend, sustained through the years until 2008 ended in tragedy as she tried after many attempts to escape the tyranny of the Islamic fundamentalists. She was shot as she reached the border. Which border I never found out as all her legit and non-legit email addresses were shut down. What she did leave behind was our constant exchange of the differences between the Baha’i faith vs Buddhism, in good humor determining which one belief was nearer to the Almighty. Sometimes she won, sometimes I did. Eventually the memory of our deep friendship through my atheism and her unwavering belief was put into an imaginary cupboard to store my anguish of her departure.
Until…..
A magical connection took place in Singapore over lunch, and subsequently through her many introductions, my Persian episodic memories were brought back that had been locked away for so long. Conversations of a favorite dish called Fesenjan, simply a chicken stew with pomegranates, and to die for, the Rose flavored Lukhum, led me to look for a Baha’i community in this corner of Thailand to re-generate what I considered flourished my personality. Comparisons are always judged; but how does progress continue its achievement without comparison.
My good fortune led me to meet the Representative of the Baha’i Community who unknowingly reconnected my broken thread of Baha’i knowledge with Tahira. In order to bring those wonderful memories out of the cupboard, and not blindly follow, I challenged the Representative with complicated and absurd questions; everything from birth to death rituals, even how to convince a Scientologist to the wisdom of Baha’u’llah. Her patience and thoughtful answers to the ten questions made me humble, allowed my invested interest to learn further from the books she brought for me to understand. My maturity saw all those teenage questions that lingered, at that time, came from a vision of clear horizon, untainted by life’s bumpy road. Now with age comes wisdom through mistakes that grew into an intellectual insight, I came away with unequivocable truth that the Baha’i heart is pure, unadulterated with unlimited capacity of love through humanitarian service.
Different periods of human evolution, The One God brings teachings to Jesus Christ, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Muhammed, Buddha, Baha’u’llah for that period of humanity to carry forward the on-going, ever-advancing civilization.
Forward thinking in this modern world of fast paced, hard to keep-up ongoing change, is truly an understanding of time scale, vision and acceptance.
To be a Baha'i is to be of service to humanity and mankind. Baha'i is considered to be the second most widespread religion in the world as there are members in 236 unique countries and territories. The Baha'i World Centre is in Haifa, Israel, and open to every human being regardless of race, religion and gender. Having role-played as a Christian, a Catholic, a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian, and a Muslim, the idea is not to convert but to declare, as the American actor Rainn Wilson says, "I'm a Christian and also a Baha'i".
Baha’i faith likens a man and a woman to two wings of a bird, each essential and balance is crucial in order to fly. It comes down to this essential core and progressive thinking quoted below:
“The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: the male and the female. So long as these two wings are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly. Until womankind reaches the same degree as man, until she enjoys the same arena of activity, extraordinary attainment for humanity will not be realized; humanity cannot wing its way to heights of real attainment. When the two wings become equivalent in strength, enjoying the same prerogatives, the flight of man will be exceedingly lofty and extraordinary.”
* The Baha’is - a publication of the Office of Public Information of the Baha’i public community:
My privileged journey continues the quest to balance spirituality with reality; following the thoughts of Oundlian-Oxonian Richard Dawkins, a famous evolutionary biologist whose fearless discussion on religion is much admired. Life devoid of prefixes in a box required to tick on forms to conveniently label your ideology is only there for death reasons. We are all one of the same, no division should separate individual ideology. The mark of respect under one roof should be our humanistic aim.
