A Zoroastrian Educational Institute

Journal

Good Leading a Good Life[i]

The most vital functions to preserve the most important thing, our life, are very simple. When was the last time one of us had to sit and think “Hey! I have to breathe today”.  If I had to do that it would be too late, I would not be sitting and writing this. 

Our religion is like that, it is very simple, very basic and that is what makes it very profound.  We are given a formula, a flow chart to follow the process of thoughts, words, deeds-actions.  We are supposed to educate ourselves, not just by opening books but also by opening our eyes and our hearts and really observing, absorbing and imbibing. Once we have perfected that awareness we are expected to go to the next stage and digest those experiences, internalize them and come up with a summary to articulate that experience to ourselves so that we know what our thoughts are and by saying them aloud it confirms our thinking to ourselves and at the same time we can communicate and share with other like-minded people and improve
ourselves through the process. It is a filtering, polishing and perfecting process for our thoughts. The final step is to take action to culminate and bring to fruition our thoughts and words.

This is the sequence we are enjoined to follow to perfect ourselves. Once we have mastered these three levels, we can help others on their path to reach the goal of ‘frashokereti’ – the perfection of all creation. When there is a short circuit in the system, problems occur and that is the state our community is in. We start getting in the middle of the first step and all of a sudden BOOM, our ego kicks in. By ego I mean our lack of knowledge and confidence in the full topic, in ourselves and our lack of faith in Ahura Mazda.

We start correcting others, telling them what to do etc. Sometimes we perpetuate that ourselves due to lack of knowledge and confidence in ourselves by looking for an easy way out by asking others and following
what they say blindly because of their position and status. I have tremendous respect and reverence for our learned priests and scholars. They have kept our religion alive and thriving but for our religion to pro sper and blossom we need the active participation of each individual to avail of the freedom we have in today’s environment to take on the responsibility to follow the steps before taking any action. We need to live our religion on a daily basis and prove to ourselves that we belong and not just take it for granted because we were born in it. We need to work on perfecting ourselves before we can even start improving others.

We need to recognize the tremendous goodness in ourselves because we are a small part of Ahura Mazda and realize that every living being has that in them and learn to respect and revere others for who they are and refrain from trying to make them like us. After going through the process of answering the questions posed to me for this topic in my mind and from my experiences I have come up with this plan of action for myself to follow. I do believe that the only person I can change is myself and every one of us has the freedom and responsibility to do so