Year of Faith

I have moved on from A Short Introduction of the Baha’i Faith, and have started in earnest on the Katab-I-Iqan, the Book of Certitude written by Baha’u'llah himself. I won’t be able to finish it, as I have gotten too far behind on my university readings as it is. But I am almost half way through part one, so I hope to finish at least that much before the month is up.

The Iqan is the Baha’i primary theological work, and one of the most sacred texts. It was written whilst Baha’u'llah was exiled in Baghdad, over the course of two days and two nights, in order to prove himself as a prophet to his uncle. The book is divided into two parts, the first sets up the principles of progressive revelation over time, and the unity of religions. The second part is made up of arguments for the Bab’s position as a prophet.

It is a really fascinating read, full of some very eloquent passages that I would like to share here.

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So instead of trying to put up a last minute post about Baha’i, I thought I would just point you toward the Baha’i community on livejournal.

I posted there about my concerns about the Baha’i faith and homosexuality, and there has been quite a turnout of replies, very intelligent discussions are being fostered.

Check it out if you wanted to explore the topic a bit more, and see it from the perspective of real adherents to the Baha’i faith.

This will be the last post I intend to make that is somewhat critical of the Baha’i faith. Specifically I will be discussing how Baha’i in general views homosexuality and how that seems to conflict with the rest of the Baha’i religion.

I’ll admit that the title gave it away just a little.
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I am going to pretty much continue on from what I said yesterday, investigating the philosophy of the Baha’i faith. This time I will focus on some philosophical and theological concerns that have arisen during my short but intensive study.

Firstly, Baha’u'llah describes God as being indescribable.

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Alright, so I have finally set aside time to consider the Baha’i faith, and so for the rest of this week I will do my best to actually delve in to some of the topics and beliefs of Baha’i. For most of this month I have remembered to pray, but I am certainly not a morning person so some days have slipped my attention. The morning prayer (which is also the shortest, and this is not a coincidence) seemed to me a little silly at first. I didn’t really see it as anything special, but just like the Navkar Mantra, it has grown on me and has made me realize its importance.

I bear witness, O my God, that Though hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy strength, to my poverty and to Thy wealth. There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.

The prayer encompasses all that is Baha’i, like a handy reminder, or a quick answer to what Baha’i is all about. It is a prayer that is ‘full of utility’, as one of the people at the Naw Ruz dinner aptly put it.

Anyway, now that I have really started to study and read about the Baha’i faith I have so many things I want to talk about that I am in danger of writing a long, overblown post that tries to cover multiple topics. So I will try to keep this short and simply discuss the parts of the Baha’i religion that I find intriguing and the philosophies that I agree with so far.
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During the Naw Ruz Diner, one of the women seated at our table tried to elucidate the finer points of the Baha’i faith and philosophy to us. It is a shame that I cannot remember her name, and I forget to get her contact info. She was certainly kind and wise, and she tried hard to get the message across, she even tried to yell over the Brazilian music later in the night. But before the band started, as we were making our way, most thankfully, through an amazing meal, she said something that hit home, something I whole heartedly believed:

“Man is a talisman.”

I now know that it is a quote from this section of Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, which goes on to say how we can come to know God with a proper education. But it could have easily been something an atheistic philosopher would have said (not to say that the two always come hand-in-hand) about humanity. I believe we do contain “gems of inestimable value,” and we are capable of such great insight and understanding. To me this quote said that we are valuable in light of us simply being and having an intellect, not in believing in God or having potential therein. To me we are beautiful and boundless without God and he seemed superfluous to this message.

I have been very busy this month with university, and it doesn’t seem like it wants to let up for a while. But during this last week of my time as a Baha’i, I want to make an earnest attempt at understanding God. While I was at the library I picked up a copy of the Kitab-i-Iqan as well as A Short Introduction to the Baha’i Faith to help that sort out this inner conflict I seem to have.

Please understand that I have spent most of my life as an atheist, and my reasoning has been that God was largely unnecessary in my personal life, as well as a wholey illogical concept. Through science and philosophy, and my own intellect, I could understand the world and all within it, leaving no place for God. Like Laplace famously said to Napoleon, “I had no need of that hypothesis,” I never saw the need of a designer, or some kind of ethical rule maker. I believe that we created the idea of God as a stand in to explain all those mysterious things in the world, or to help us order society or cope with death, something that we can now do without.

But God is a big part of what it is to be Baha’i, and belief in some kind of deity is a large part of the majority of the religions I will be practicing this year. Ideally I could be converted every time, to get that insight and that alternative perspective and thus gain a genuine understanding of each religion. But that leap of faith doesn’t seem like a return trip. If I could see the world with God, to have a genuine belief in His existence and involvement in my life, it seems doubtful that I could go back to being an atheist. Some part of me knew that when I took on this project, but I could still try to get a better understanding- a less muddled view of how that world works. At the very least, I would like to be able to jump this minor hurdle that comes up everytime I see someone praising or worshipping God- that it is all just kind of unnecessary.

So here I am now, on the other side of a one-way mirror, trying to peek into that monotheistic world. If anyone from the other side would share their own insights or stories of how they came to believe in God, or their understanding of what or who God is, I would be eternally grateful.

Today we celebrated Naw Ruz, the Baha’i New Year and the end of the Nineteen Day Fast.

We were guests of the West Vancouver Baha’i Community, who were incredibly friendly and receptive. It was a formal, catered dinner that felt closer to a wedding reception than something religious. It was like an extended family getting together, full of love and people who were happy to see each other. I felt out of place at first, but as I discussed the project and chatted with people about Baha’i I began to feel at ease.

I learned that one of the central aspects of Baha’i is the renewal of religion, that most religions have lost the proper way, confused in old rituals and superstitions. Baha’i seeks to renew our connection with God, realizing that religion must change to keep up with the needs of society. Baha’i is the latest method of revelation, God’s next attempt to get us to listen to him and be good to one another. Though we can never hope to understand God, His love for us in limitless, so long as we learn to love Him.

I am having troubles with monotheism, especially this kind of knowledge cap that denies me the ability to know or question the Supreme Being. But I will get to this in detail later on, when I have a better grasp of Baha’i.

The couple that organized the community were very helpful and generous, and I hope I get a chance to talk to them without the intervening mambo music (there was a live band, I danced).  Hopefully we will be able to get involved with a study circle to learn more about the faith from fellow adherents.

This was the first time we were able to interact with a religious community, and it was a very rewarding experience.  The Baha’i are certainly all about family and community.

And now, I am off to dream of lunch and midday snacks.

Tonight the three of us attended the Norouz celebration of the Baha’i Community of West Vancouver.  Had it been less short notice, we might have realized it was a formal event, and Andrew might have remembered his camera.

I am too tired to do a proper summary.  Suffice to say the Baha’i community is very welcoming and we greatly enjoyed ourselves.  I begin to wish I had put more effort into my faith this month.

In other news, the fast is over.  Starting tomorrow I will savour my lunches like never before.

I may not come to know what it is like to believe in a unified God this month, and I may never possess genuine faith or belief in any kind of deity. But by the end of this month I will definitely know what it is like to be hungry.

I have never fasted before, and aside from very irregular occasions I manage two meals a day (I rarely have breakfast) with regular snacking in between. So before this fast I only had a pitiful glimpse into what it was to really be hungry, to go any extended period of time without nourishment.

Before this experience, I would have said that I knew what it must be like to be starving. I would have told you that people would lie, cheat, and steal in order to feed themselves, but I did not actually know. What I had been trying to do was approximate a state of need and discomfort that I had never really experienced. I did not possess what some philosophers insist on for a definition of knowledge- I did not ‘genuinely believe’ in the power of hunger.

Now I have experienced ten days, barely without food, and I don’t even like these pitiful little reflections of what it is to be starving. Thoughts of eating intrude on my work, I begin to fantasize about what I will finally get to eat when the sun goes down. I am not thinking about God or about the Baha’i faith, mostly because university has been keeping me busy, but also because I am thinking of food and how much I miss regular meals.

This experience is teaching me that starvation has to be a really terrible state of being, which I had always assumed but never actually knew. In much the same way as I can now identify with the views of vegetarians, I think I can now identify with people who are forced to go without food for long periods of time. I have had the necessary experience in order to achieve genuine belief. And although I can think of plenty of reasons not to give money to people living in the street, people that must live amongst cardboard, garbage bags, and recyclables, I can’t think of a good reason not to give them food. I know what it is like to go hungry, and I would be failing as a person if I willingly let other people go through anything worse than this.

I had intended to post progress updates on my February goals, but that failed for reasons I shall explain below. Instead this will be a progress report for the entire Jainist experiment, and even that a few weeks late.

If you recall, my goals for February were:

1. Veganism (with additional restrictions)
2. Ahimsa - Nonviolence in thought, word and deed
3. Truthfulness
4. Limiting possession and use of worldly goods
5. Daily prayer, meditation, and/or study of religious texts

The first few days are always shaky as we try to remember what our new rituals are, but I got into the routine fairly quickly. The first week I was proud of my success in sticking to my goals. And then things unhinged messily, due to a case of the February Blahs. (more…)