“A life of ashoi”

Kudos to Veera Dastoor on her very thought provoking letter "A life of ashoi” (Readers’ Forum, Parsiana, August 7, 2007). As she has very aptly put it, "The starting point is always the thought, the most difficult, enigmatic and elusive entity.” Indeed, once an evil thought enters the mind it creates illusions, anxieties, fears, anger, prejudices, hatred, selfishness and a gamut of ill feelings which may lead us to undesirable actions as a consequence.

We are only too human. The baser part in us has been derived during the evolutionary process from our earthly nature and animal ancestry. No wonder we wander aimlessly through life chasing fickle, short-term goals which, after they are achieved, result in an empty feeling of disillusionment. Momentary success may elate us, but when the euphoria subsides we are deflated and depressed. Our acquisitive and materialistic tendencies inhibit our rising above pettiness and evolving toward an awakening of the divine light. Obviously, we are too encrusted in our egos and selves even to attempt treading on the path of the divine laid down for us by our Paigamber Saheb.

Maulana Roomi wrote these famous lines: "Meh fashanad noor, va sug af, af, kunad. Her kasi ber khallatea khud me tanad (It is the characteristic of moon to spread light in darkness; while it is the characteristic of a dog to bark in darkness. We all behave according to our inherent character).”

We are born with a brain that is genetically hard-wired and hence we all have certain instinctual patterns of behavior. However, it has been scientifically proved that the wiring in our brain is not static, not irrevocably fixed. In fact, our brain is quite malleable, ever changing, reconfigurating its wiring according to new thoughts and experiences. Hence all we need to do is to reconfigure the wiring in our brain "to have always the right thought, right speech and right action” as our holy Zend Avesta guides us. It is only then that we can respond to any situation rather than merely reacting to it.

To echo Dastoor’s sentiments, we should indeed feel fortunate to be born Mazdaysni Zarathushtis. Let us live by our religion and become worthy of the divine. Dastoor has rightly quoted Asha Zarathushtra on ‘ashoi’: "It purifies our whole being, mental, physical and emotional which awakens the tiny spark of divinity in us to achieve frashokerti (union with the divine).”

D. WADIA

New South Wales, Australia