Zarathushtrian Religion, Philosophy and History

you hello my name is shadows ash and I am going to conduct an interview today with Professor chaos Roy Ronnie from City University in New York he is a professor of ancient philosophy and it is a great pleasure and honor to have him here today and to be able to do an interview with him we have individuals who have translated the gothis but yet their profession is translation and they have lacked philosophical knowledge and understanding it is like me translating an economic document but there are certain terms in their interest rate supply and demand but there yet I'm not an economists to understand it so my job is to really translate it and then we send that translation to the economic department let's say of a university and they're the experts to comprehend it so isn't the best source of understandings or to shras message for most part is to refer to philosophers who have studied it as opposed to trance trance different translators you're so right there will be people who would resist your suggestion but undoubtedly it is a philosophic doctrine and it needs very subtle interpretation and some of the linguists are able to offer visions at least partly valuable but the general conception has to be reconstructed by appropriate philosophic analysis and she would like me to do that I'll give you my reconstruction on crazy sir the wrath of strobe offers a view of the in terms of certain abstract concepts which as was traditional in those days I mean throughout the world her religious poetry personalized abstract concepts and he does that the creation that her mother thought of it was in his mind and he articulated it and made it an ideal creation not material but ideal now that is called Russia literally that word means truth but the notion of truths here is a very special one truth really means all the totality of the vision of ideal existence it doesn't mean in our ordinary sense the truth or falsity of a statement the truth that he is talking about is the relationship of all things in perfect harmony so that nothing occurs at the expense of something else there is no friction in that existence this ideal world of Zarathustra Asha was then actualized in the material world our Mazda in his wisdom conceived of a perfect existence in purely ideal terms and this is what is called Asha the truth the truth then means an ideal form of existence where nothing is in conflict or in abrasion with anything else it is also the notion of social justice no one prospers at the cost of somebody's injury now this ideal conception exists in an ideal world what we might call the mental world the term is mine U which exactly the way it comes the source of the red is the way between English we have mind now this ideal conception our mother then created into a material world this is called the Gaggia well and the ideal world was supposed to be materialized actualized in matter there would be of course material objects physical objects that be animal life there'd be human life and so on it was supposed to evolve according to asha to a state of total perfection however and here comes the essential duelist doctrine of Zarathustra within this material world there is also the possibility that the doll that asha may not be actualized indeed Zarathustra says there are two forces I use the term vectors but often the term spirit is used but we shouldn't transform these into personalities there is the spirit which promotes asha and there is the spirit which opposes frustrates asha and this is the dualism between good and evil the universe is to be understood as a potentially ideal evolution which has been contaminated by internal opposition and frustration the world is to be looked at as a moral reality in which there is the movement towards goodness but there is also the movement towards frustration now this vision is the central religious vision of Zarathustra and if one doesn't accept that one cannot accept the faith of Zarathustra now what is the individual to do here come the different abstractions of Zarathustra each individual is gifted with the good mind it's not just the mind which enables us to break out mathematical problems or something like that but the mind which is capable of grasping the moral nature of things when you see something in occurring in your society you recognize that this much is fair and this is unfair as one of the later priests say it is not conceivable that a human being can look at the face of injustice and not recognize it so we recognize it when we recognize it then we should articulate it and commit ourselves to improvement we discuss it with people whose lives will be affected we formulate a way of actualizing the good to whatever extent we can and then we do it and this is repeated in a phrase which comes in prayers all over it's called the practice of good thought good word and good deed see there is no such thing as a good deed without good thought because in the tradition of Zarathustra there are no prescriptions do this don't do that and so on you are left to think through what should be done the responsibility is yours this acceptance of this responsibility becomes a way of life and you have the view of the world the world is a moral reality your way of life act with good thought good words and good deeds and you have accepted the doctrine of Zarathustra now the interesting thing here is contrary to the tribal notion this is a decision to accept this way of life this vision and this way of life is a purely individual matter involve the voices of the gossip Zarathustra says I talk to each of you listen with care and with careful thought and make a judgment each individual by individual man and woman why does he say this he distinguishes it from the tribal conception where each individual didn't think for himself or herself the tribe made the decision if you remember of the tribe that's what you did but you each one is asked to make the decision and each one is asked to bear the responsibility for that decision you choose to live in this way or you don't and thus what we have is a shift from the Thai tribal to the individual which has sometimes been called the first enlightenment and recognition that you have to take the responsibility for what you do and this is at the heart of it it must have been a very strikingly different teaching to us it appears rationally clear but in a tribal society disappearing before Zarathustra humans had a deterministic view of the world and they thought that each person had their destiny preset and their future was predetermined and it seems after his arrival we started gathering the notion that we are in control of our future and that we are free and that we can shape the future according to our own will in the garthe's there are two places where he talks about this home or making responsible decisions freely in one case he says that our Mazda made us such that he gave us this privilege of thinking and deciding and being responsible for the decision but the individuals existence was so caught up with the notion of tribal existence that there was really no individuality everything was done in the tribe the tribe controls the families the families controlled the individuals and you see tribal life today certain regions we have the idea of Asha and its opposite which is the root root and then we have the idea of free will so there's this right and wrong ideal situation and we freely choose one of these and then you have reward and Punishment which is the consequence of the choice and based on the reward and Punishment we judge that well we judge what I like this outcome not this so we're constantly judging our actions based on whether I desire the outcome or not and I guess that will ultimately lead into what people have become to understand as a final judgment how did I conduct my life accumulating add in all of these rights and wrongs and going to immortality this is I guess how we get the idea or the notion of heaven and hell what is this idea of the final judgment is this judgment something we've render up on ourselves do we judge ourselves at the end or is there some deity that judges developed this notion right from the start we human individuals look at various circumstances of our lives and make decisions we see alternatives of action and we choose one how this choice is made is an important thing is it made with the good mind with good intentions with good thought now what does this good thought me that you recognize a situation you see that in some way it is flawed you notice that it is flawed because it is in some way distinct from what it ideally should be with your good mind Bauman is capable of seeing then that should be only reason that is called righteousness to do the right thing merely because it is right and that's a very famous prayer which everyone recites that that will give me ultimately my satisfaction to do the right thing because it is right what is evil evil is that intention which violates that which gets you to do something for some reason other than that is it is right some self promotion or something else one of the priests of the nature sasanian period said that all our thoughts if they are kept pure which tell us what the right thing is then why don't we do it his son asked the high priest but why don't we do this and the high priest says because our mind is clouded it is clouded by mainly by two forces greed and fear when these move us then we look for self-interest we put that about the interest of the right and fail to act correctly well in that case we have failed in our responsibility these all these acts of doing the right thing for the right reason doing the right thing for some act out of some accidental judgment doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason or doing the wrong thing accidentally and so on all this is so to speak collected in a book of accounts and when the soul goes to the other side of the gates of death it and now we come to a kind of a dramatic vision it comes to the bridge of the separator and now on this bridge its accounts all the good is put on one side and all the evil and the opportunities for good that were lost or put on the other side and if the good outweigh is evil you cross the bridge into the state of best consciousness if not you fall off the bridge into the state of waste consciousness these became heaven and hell later on these are states of consciousness of our speed these are not holes where we live in comfort and so on that's a highly materialist conception of Heaven and Hell but the conception that there are two different ends for different differently valued Souls is part of the doctrine and this you don't appeal for mercy you don't breed for this or that it is the consequence of your life the moral consequence of your life appears in the state that you go into after you die going back to this heaven and hell the idea of heaven and hell we later on we develop the idea of Satan or the devil character so to say and Enzo Astron ISM as you mentioned we have this serpent Amane you and the Angra mean that to the evil spirit and the Holy Spirit or evil mentality or good mentality his is the Satan a personification then of this anger remind you exactly they were the the only body experiences you see what happens in every religion in every teaching of the initial prophet there is a spiritual message gradually the spiritual message is promulgated to the people by the priesthood and the priesthood require the people to do this and that and so on rituals various kind and the message is mythologically degraded into standard stories of divine forces which look human we already had standard Greek mythology standard Babylonian mythology standard Egyptian mythology but with these reflective religions like a Zoroastrian ISM the teaching of Zarathustra or the upanishadic religion which come at the end of the Vedas or the certain prophetic girl prescriptions in the Old Testament the Book of Isaiah for example where you have abstract commitments which are demanded of the religious person but the priesthood gradually humanizes them and now you do this you pray to so-and-so you do this and that and there is a ritual and has bound slag once said the priests have to construct rituals because they are by profession technologists there is a technique of communicating with the divinity and one day I was in a discussion someone asked me what do you need this technique form and I said this is a technique for getting into the good graces of the divinity asking for this and that who special him tell me precisely what this technique does and I said well actually I can't do that because this is the kind of as the technology of beggary we asked to do give me this given better health they give me save my son do they and so on but that stop Europe Max Weber in his sociology of religion says that with most prophets the religious vision is given and offered by a charismatic character who makes this believable and then gradually this person disappears and the priest of then and I'm now using the word of Max Weber the priesthood develops the ritualization of charisma and and the chapter ends with this phrase it may well be that in the end the priest becomes the enemy of the Prophet now that's not always the case but often but the priest transforms the religious vision into techniques and practices and mythology Satan is the myth of organization of that force in opposition to usher and then he became a person and then there were all sorts of stories about him and so on now I want to switch the subject to Greek philosophy and as to Herodotus the Greek historian for example rights and states that the surest reans taught their children three things one is horse riding the use of bow and arrow and speaking the truth with this culture of truth come down from the the raspbian base oh yes without any doubt but the notion becomes degraded because one often thinks of speaking the truth as merely not telling lies but that is not the essence of the faith the essence of the faith is grasping a deeper ideal reality that's what understanding of grasping the truth is for example if you ask me how many cups of coffee did you drink this morning and I say one well in fact I had to attend your falsehood but that's not the kind of lie that Zarathustra is talking about he's talking about the sort of thing in which I see that so-and-so has been treated unjustly and someone says what do you think of this treatment and I would say something like but this is usually the way it is done I've lived long in the academic life and I know that's the usual way administrators put it well that's how it's always done and I once told the president in in a situation which I think somebody was very unfairly terminated and I said here is a competent person person wishes to teach it he has done nothing wrong what what has happened is that he is in a kind of a program that we don't want to promote and he said he is prepared to teach in an analogous one and the president this is how it's usually done and I said bet the president just recognized what is happening to this person he is not being treated justly and simple you know administration implies certain rules and regulations I said if the rules and regulations are such that they lead to injustice something should be done he looked at me and laughed he says well what sort of a fellow are you to talk in this way but the amazing thing was about Rico changed about ten or twelve days later he told me you know I've been thinking about what you said maybe we'll put him in this other department talk to him and so on me she was a president in whom the spirit of righteousness resonated and we could talk this is the notion of truth philosophy originated about 4000 years ago with the indo-iranians and this is according to Oxford University's chronology of philosophers also many Greek philosophers used to live in the zoroastrian territory and obtain their education in the Zoroastrian territory of the ancient times are the Iranians and the indo-iranians the predecessors to the Greek philosophy and when they became came into contact with each other how did they influence the Greek thought and thinking oh yes surely well the earliest visions we have in the Iliad and the Odyssey and so on is a tribal religion as all the indo-european religions were whether tribal gods and you have to placate the tribal gods to manage to lead a successful life the gods are sorta Li human that they were not above trickery among themselves and so you had to know that and play along but that view was transformed and suddenly transformed by Socrates who said that there was such a thing as right and wrong and how do you get that I thought human thought and how do tribal societies flourish they flourish my tradition this is our tradition why are you doing this well that has been the traditional ancestors did it our parents did it we do it that notion that tradition was unacceptable to Socrates in the dialogue Euthyphro Euthyphro which is an ironic dialogue this is the last year of the life of Socrates and beautiful 25 year old fellow who has received instructions in the temple and he says though I've learnt all about piety I know whatever there is to know about it sake says let's examine then what is piety and said piety is doing what the gods wish and not doing what the gods don't we and Socrates says is this an adequate definition and Euthyphro says yes of course it is that's what's taught and Sakari says yes that may well be but shouldn't we examine it that's the matter that the human being takes upon himself or herself you the authority to examine what is given by tradition and the traditionalists are horrified at that idea who are you to examine something we just come to us from immemorial tradition I've been told that by some Cesaro Astri ins who don't like my views who are traditionalists and I have nothing against tradition but I think we should examine you they said who are we to examining we are rational human beings we need no additional Authority and so they say well you know the church at one time the Catholic Church at one time considered this attitude to be an act of pride a major sin gradually that has been restrained oh well but you see this is what we face and as you point out that notion of free will is not just a separate notion of determinism free the moment you introduce the notion free will you introduce the right to I was reading a book by Russia Afghan called zu rasters influence on anaxagoras the Greek tragedians and Socrates and he on page 33 he emphasizes that an acci giris been I guess a teacher of the Greek tragedians Socrates emphasized to be skeptic and to freely think that's right that's the culture exactly to the to have the absolute freedom to inquire and question yes yes this is the enlightenment that's the concept of the Enlightenment in the 18th century this was raised by the French fill ourselves by the English social writers and by Immanuel Kant in Germany where he wrote an essay in German is of assist of clear what is the Enlightenment and he says the Enlightenment is the view where you accept and it has a Latin phrase sapere Aude supper I mean II thought how they means same bread as audacity when it means have the courage to think have the courage to think on your own and having done that you recognize that you have the right to thing but that's not the only part because if then it follows that you also have the responsibility to judge carefully let's see this is the end these are to stream position was the first one the same image in the socratic enlightenment of the Greeks and in the Platonic doctrine this is a very major element the dictionaries of philosophy claimed at Plato's middle platonic which is his part of his work was influenced by Zoroastrianism in what context or can you shed some light al zour astron ISM influence middle platonic work and there was great works and pieces in there such as the Republic can you tell us a little bit about this please one idea reaches characteristic of the thinking of Zarathustra is this existence in two realms the existence which the mental existence the my new existence as it is called in the gothy and the material or the tangible existence called the Gaggia and this distinction that we as human beings possessing a mind can grasp mental existences independently of perceiving their actualizations in this world and also perceiving objects in the material world this separation of two realms which we find in Zylstra we find in Plato Plato call this grasping of the essences which were in the ideal world the world of ideas that a capacity is called news and that grasping is the act of Nueces and this is certainly it appears nowhere it appears in Zarathustra and it appears in Plato then it appears later on in European thinking and that's always called platonic thinking but this is so characteristic a a seem that many people think that Plato was informed of it in some form or other by the Greeks who lived in Asia Minor which was a province of the Persian Empire and where there were fire temples and major teachers of the faith oh I don't know if to what extent Plato was influenced by but I think you must have read of it and then he was inspired by and produced his own conception this is a very interesting one you don't get the idea of justice by looking at just acts and unjust acts you make the distinction between justice and injustice by grasping the idea of justice and seeing to what extent it's actualized Tsar two shows view of the world materialistic or or did he believe in this duality of material and the non material similar to what you just explained about Plato and then whether it's the soul or the mind we tend to separate out to the rhythms he definitely had these two realms to mine your world and he gave you hell but he didn't have them the notion of a different kind of reality implanted in matter I think we do have souls and the soul then is judged by its with morale with Jana and the soleus after death is known as the Iran and that is clearly there so they he has a notion of existence of material existence and a non material existence and is this the duality later on that they car to tries to further articulate but it was applying the same thing dominated philosophy zenith on State Cyrus the Great the ancient Zoroastrian King was a Mazda worship which means a wisdom worship who was responsible for the education of the Zoroastrian Kings in the field of wisdom oh yes what happened was that the Medes and the Persians who got together to separate tribes of the whole set of Iranian tribes and they they got together with the father or the father-in-law of Cyrus who was a meet and Cyrus married his daughter Cyrus was a patient they got together and then the church was established which was the Church of the a communion Empire and the Medes were the organizers the the administrative priests and the ritual priests and the I throw pots were the the teachers and they were usually perfume and they taught the Gothic message to imprisoned the Kings at that time I said that law and also I suppose to the more literate of public but also to the general public it was a very enlightened population in those days and the fact that they absorbed this message we can see in their inscriptions and in their practices many scholars claim as Cyrus was one of czar to his disciples and also in the Bible we see the name of Cyrus is the anointed one and a savior in what context is he known to be and the Savior in the Bible can you articulate and elaborate this notion for us please this is what happened Cyrus was he viewed himself as a world ruler to establish the Kshatriya that means the authority the Dominion which would organize the world according to usher and so he just walked into other Empire other states and incorporated them into what he called the good state he did not impose any of his laws on him of course these people had to pay tax naturally to support the authority and they had to live by the national laws but the particular private laws were left to each group each state the family laws were the laws of the people as they had them and he permitted them to have their own religious temples religious practices and so on when he conquered Babylon Babylon goes under tyranny and many Babylonians themselves were agreeable to having him enter Babylon he entered with a minimal of military friction and one of the first things he did both the Jews were in Babylonian captivity you know they had been conquered by the grandfather of the King and brought to babylon the elite and they went to Cyrus and said we are prisoners here etc and Cyrus freed them and they said we have to go back and we have to build our temple was destroyed and so Cyrus helped them to build the temple and the temple vessels had been confiscated by the Babylonians he restored those two so the the Jews said here is someone who is helping us our tribe and therefore he is sent by Jehovah to be our helper and they considered him as the anointed of the Lord Professor Richard fry from Harvard University argues that Cyrus was the first person who demonstrated the concept of separation of church and state he also claimed Cyrus stablished a secular society where each person could freely practice their own individual beliefs Cyrus is also known for writing the first declaration of human rights there's a cylinder in the British Museum called the Cyrus cylinder is this because Cyrus believed that basic human rights such as freedom equality and justice are universal and therefore their moral absolute I think so he didn't put it that way we haven't a record of this kind of thing but she certainly saw that as a toaster said each individual must make an informed and intelligent choice now in order to do that you must be left free there is also the notion of Asha which is justice and so he established the National courts what we might call the federal courts where any dispute of this kind would be treated fairly in order to have a standard way of life he established the rules of the marketplace so that was governed throughout the empire but in each individual state they would have their own laws about property transfer inheritance and so on that was for the local people to decide on their own in this book philosophy of history by Georg Hegel he claims the Persian Empire is an empire in the modern sense so we find it consisting of a number of states which are indeed dependent but which have retained their own individuality their manners and laws the general enactments binding upon all did not infringe upon their political and social ideal synchronous but even protected and maintained them so that each of the nations that constitute the whole had its own form of Constitution can you tell us a little bit about the formation of the government that Cyrus the Great had established that represents what Hegel is stating for us wins this is the idea that each culture has its own vision of life and that that was part of their heritage I do not the function of the emperor to trespass upon it the emperor merely established a universal Society which harmoniously practice to trade and organized in such a way that there is the least amount of friction this is a very interesting idea social friction is you as a very damaging thing we because the economic what has happened with our contemporary societies that we have we have viewed our welfare so very much in terms of economic advantage and many people are not satisfied with being just economically adequate there's this constant need to have more because who knows in the future you may need the money and so on and so forth this kind of uncertainty and the anxiety has produced the a culture which is my suppose that may have been that sort of thing even in the old days but today this is a very big problem and the tribalism is being replaced by the conflict between classes which was of course magnified by the Communist vision it seems part of it is because man feels insecure fixing and certain philosophies that life is nothing but a struggle to survive and since we equate survival to economics it seems if we gave everyone a blanket security of some form and perhaps it might hopefully reduce some of their I hope so at least that was the view of Franklin Delano Roosevelt but they are now trying to turn that back so if social some that social legislation we need a balance exactly that's the thing in these matters there are always issues where somebody's interest is being imposed upon and one must get the best possible balance that is what democracy was supposed to be instead it has become battle for you but what's the use of complaining about these things but there must be a vision somewhere that can solve it Sara so stress vision is that there is a solution there is the idea Russia you need to have the intelligence and the insight to get to it by restraining your personal self-interest or set or your fears it seems this notion of heaven that man has it's the supreme idea because we see this world to be imperfect so it's a perfect state of mind or idea that comes to the mind except we lack the wisdom to create that yes and in order for someone to do the right thing and progress to that ultimate state it seems bizarre to shred reduces finally everything to wisdom it's it's ultimately we lack the wisdom and he puts so much emphasis on this which he becomes his he's the garden and theory that every that that is the final frontier there's two aspects one is grasping the ideal state of the social order where most of the friction lies and even in the natural order because there is friction between us and the natural order to diseases for example and so on so forth so the curing of diseases becomes a morally where the act produces good one of the reasons why there are so many doctors among the Zoroastrians this is and I I give some high degree of optimism will be able to grasp this truth and we will know what to do you must get to know what the truth is you must be able to formulate the proper way to achieve it and you must have the will and the courage to put it into practice this is the wisdom can anyone choose this religion and philosophy freely for themselves Zarathustra declares this to be a vision to be chosen by each individual by himself or herself and say individuals of this kind of that kind belonging to this group or that group this is an individual faith and therefore it is absolutely inconceivable that you would have thought that this applies only to this group or that group his whole approach was to move from tribalism to individuality you you

Channel: California Zoroastrian Center

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Keywords: Zarathushtra, Gatha, Zartosht, Shahrooz, Assembly, CZC, Avesta, Irani, Kaikhosrov, Cyrus, Einstein, Zarathustra, zoroaster

Id: 3s1t0hrl4pE

Length: 54min 36sec (3276 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 21 2012