Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the January - February 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Singleton, Barbara Cunliffe. "Dark and Light in Yazd Central Iran." Quest  91.1 (JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2003):10-15.

By Barbara Cunliffe Singleton

JAFFAR, THE GUIDE, waves his arm at the wind tower, scowls his black eyes at the groundskeeper, andinsists, "We'll go up in the tower!" Below his scowl, his nose arches until it angles steeply and stops with good form. His mouth firms above his cleft chin.

The groundskeeper says, "I told you the tower's impossible." Dry brush strokes of hair cross over his sunburned bald spot. He grips the handle of a garden rake. "The engineer says we can't go up anymore."

Around Jaffar's face the sun glistens his thick black hair, and his voice builds, "Don't be lazy! Go tothe guardbox and get the key!"

The groundsman barely raises his eyebrows and placates, "I swear on the Koran. It's forbidden to go upstairs." He shuffles off into the park.

All this is said in Farsi, but Jaffar obliges and translates for me. He teaches sculpture in a university in Tehran, but since sculpture is forbidden in the Islamic republic, he has to call it "volume-making."

Jaffar, still angry, starts toward the building. "Look! Even without a key we can go as far as the roof." We climb the steps and stand on the flat surface. His anger gone, his voice becomes soothing, intriguing. "This is ancient Iran's natural form of air conditioning. See, the wind blows through those four slats in the tower. They drive the air down to that pool in the room below us. With three sides of the room closed, the wind cools over the pool and blows through the rest of the house." His hands swoosh with feeling, to show air moving through the house. "The city of Yazd is known for these old towers, which collect the prevailing wind—when and if it prevails." Even when I took a walk this morning in the newer residential section, I saw wind towers, sixty feet high, attached to several houses.

We take the steps down from the roof and walk through the garden. The morning air is freighted withthe green smells of plants and earth. A man in a uniform bicycles by, his face like a heavy drop, fullat the bottom, and peers at me with eyes set close together. He turns to ask in Farsi, "Where are youfrom?" By now I know a few Farsi phrases and answer, "Amrika."

"U.S., very good," he responds with a smile and bikes on.

"Is he a soldier?" I ask Jaffar.

"No, a member of the Disciplinary Force. It used to be called the 'Komite.' "

"You can't mean it," I say. "Attitudes are changing, when he of all people says, 'U.S., very good.'"

We step through the park gate to the street. "He and the rest of the local force are quartered over there." Jaffar points to plain adobe buildings with trees growing around them. In front, more guys in green uniforms play soccer on the street. We wait until the ball is kicked out of bounds and then hurry across the improvised field.

"Isn't soccer too western a sport to be allowed in Iran?"

Jaffar's voice draws me in. "It's an exception. We beat the U.S. in the World Cup match. Remember? Muhammad approved of archery, hunting, swimming, horseback-riding, and chess, provided the people don't gamble."

"What about the women? What sports for them?"

Jaffar laughs. "Baby-sitting is the most popular sport for women, though Rafsanjani's daughter helped organize the first Islamic Games for Women in 1993. Tell you what, let's drive out to the Zoroastrian Towers of Silence, before it's a furnace out here. Yazd is surrounded by desert."

We find the car and drive south on Kashani Street, speeding beside Peykan cars. In fact, we'rein a Peykan car. It's made in Iran under the Hillman label. It feels comfortable and light.

After two kilometers, we turn off onto a dirt road and climb into the stony hills, dry with noweed or blade of green. At the top rise the Towers of Silence, shaped like two round adobe reservoirs. Zoroastrians, like their cousins, the Parsees in Bombay, after three days of rituals in the home, would file up into these hills to offer the body to a Tower official, who would prepare it for the vultures.

We get out of the Peykan, slam the doors, and stand near the high-walled Tower. Before us lies a vast view of the flat city of Yazd under sheer blue sky. Bare mountains in the desert beyond the city slice the horizon into haphazard dark shapes. No birds circle in the sky.

"Where are the birds?" I ask Jaffar.

"The birds? Long gone. It's not like the Tower of Silence in Bombay, where Parsees still give the bodies to the birds. Reza Shah [reigned 1925 -1941] stopped all that. He called the custom "barbaric.' When he came to Yazd, where he was having a railroad built, he told the Zoroastrians, 'You either bury the dead as Muslims do, or go join the Parsees in Bombay.' Some left. Those who stayed built a cemetery. You can see it just over there."

Three boys in smudgy clothes wander up and watch Jaffar's mouth, curious about the strange sounds of his English.

Below us, a graveyard of several acres filled with shade trees has been walled off. Jaffar continues, "Zoroastrians think burying a body pollutes the earth. A body represented a defeat of their God of Light, Ahura Mazda, and a victory of the God of Darkness, Ahriman. Therefore, Zoroastrians here bury the bodies in concrete-lined tombs, so they don't pollute the earth."

Jaffar flings his hand toward earthen buildings roofed with cup-shaped domes. "Over there arethe rooms for ceremonies, where relatives used to stay until the rituals in this Tower were complete. According to a folk legend, if a bird took the right eye first, the person went to heaven—if the left, he went to hell."

Jaffar takes out his city map and several children gather around. I think of E. G. Browne's experience outside of Yazd in 1888, when he, too, was looking at a map. Some of the children he talked with that year had never seen maps. Browne showed them the lines for mountain peaks and their names, the dots for villages, and a larger square with lines to represent the streets of Yazd. One child told him, "It's too bad you didn't bring a microscope. We could see what's going on in the streets of Yazd."

As we drive back into the city, I have the feeling that I like Yazd, its dry air, its low buildings built of the color of the earth, its leisured pace. We pass many parks filled with trees and flowers. Houses with tanks of water on the roof face the sunny south, their bricks arranged in protruding designs to form shadow patterns.

Before lunch the waiter brings to the table a plastic covering backed by a fuzz of cotton. Its folds hold the intense smell of scrubbed vinyl until, with a snap, the man flings the plastic over the table. On top he spreads a cloth of heavy cotton, block-printed with leaf and flower designs in tones of wine, peach, and honeydew melon. Jaffar and I talk over coffee, over pilaf, over kebabs, overdone. We take second helpings. The salad's scent is fresh, like the essence of a greengrocery.

We leave the table and go to the Ateshkade, the fire temple in Yazd. Jaffar springs out of thedriver's seat and opens the door for me. I climb out and walk ahead of him toward the steps.There above the porch of the fire temple, the blue tiled wings of the Guiding Spirit are spread wide. Its divine head and beard are turned in profile. I look at this small temple. It could be mistaken for a library with steps leading up to four columns and a shady porch. I realize with a sense of poignancy that this is almost all that remains of what was once the religion of the rulers of the vast Persian Empire. Zoroastrianism was the religion of great kings such as Cyrus and Darius, who worshipped at fire temples and gave credit to the spirit of Ahura Mazda, God ofLight, when they won victories. The religion, full of complex theology, is, in essence, not so hard to understand: good thoughts, good speech, good actions. If the king failed to rule with justice for his people, he lost the divine right to rule at all. Now fewer than 30,000 Iranian followers of Ahura Mazda survive, and most live in Yazd. They believe that, with their good conduct, they renew Creation.

The Zoroastrians' daily struggle against darkness is the more dramatic because of Muslim prejudice and contempt. Their period of highest esteem in this century was during the period of Reza Shah and his son Mohammad Shah (1925 -1979). It was these Pahlavi rulers who guided the nation once again to an increased respect for the accomplishments of the Persian Empire under the Zoroastrian kings.

Indeed, that Zoroastrians have continued the practice of their religion for so many centuries after the Islamic invasion of 637 A.D., is a tribute to their faith and fortitude. During the early years, of course, Muslims forced whole villages to become Muslim or die. In 1719, thousands of Zoroastrians in villages east of Yazd and Kerman were slaughtered in the Afghan invasion. In the twentieth century, not even offers by Muslims for better jobs, higher pay, and places for students in the university could persuade faithful Zoroastrians to convert to Islam. Many feel a pride in being the true Persians.

I look around to find Jaffar. He's talking with a photographer below the steps. When Jaffar catches my glance, he hurries over. "That man's a friend of my father's. I haven't seen him in a hundred years. I always call him 'Uncle.'" Jaffar sits down on the upper step, fixing on me eyes so black they absorb the pupils. "Anyway, I have something to tell you about Zoroastrians. They're known for their honesty, and as you may know they've suffered a lot of persecution. A Zoroastrian from Bombay named Hataria did most to change the bad treatment of Zoroastrians in Iran. He first came to our country in 1854 and worked with authorities to remove the heavy yearly tax forced on all non-Muslims. When a Zoroastrian paid the tax, he had to appear before the Emir and present the fee in hisopen hand. Then the Emir struck his neck, and a court official drove him away. It took Hataria twenty-five years to bring about changes. Many Zoroastrians had lost their property because they couldn't pay the tax. He also worked to change laws that prevented Zoroastrians from building new houses or repairing old ones. The Zoroastrians were required to wear turbans, old clothes, and a certain style of shoes, and they needed to dismount from their donkey or horse if a Muslim was in sight."

I listen, somewhat puzzled about him. I feel surprised that a Muslim would have taken the trouble to learn so much about an officially despised religion.

Jaffar continues, "Hataria helped to open schools for Zoroastrians in Yazd and boarding schools for boys in Tehran with a modern secular program. In 1930, the Zoroastrian girls' school in Tehran was so good that Muslims wanted to enroll their daughters. Really! Muslims in Tehran began to show a greater respect for Zoroastrians.

"Laughing and having fun at weddings and during the seven yearly feasts helps Zoroastrians to enduredark times. Yet since the 1979 revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini, they've become more subdued to avoid the frowns of the intollerant." Jaffar laughs. "I know all this, because I wrote a paper about them for a sociology course in England. Want a really good book? Read Rashna Writer's Contemporary Zoroastrians."

We enter the temple. It feels cool inside after the heat of the sun. I expect incense. None. Framedverses from the sacred book, the Avesta, hang on the walls. Centered on the far wall is a charcoal-tinted window. Behind it, a reddish glow wavers and straightens, as it conquers dark surroundings, then dips and flutters. The flame represents Light and Justice, the energy of Ahura Mazda. (Bapsi Sidhwa describes movingly the spiritual power of the flame and its effect on the worshipper in her insightful book about a Parsee immigrant, American Brat, p. 42.) This flame in Yazd has been burning, though not always in this location, since 470 A.D. I look around, wishing I could talk with a Zoroastrian, but we are the only ones in the room.

We leave the cool sanctuary and feel the desert heat close in. On the street a woman offers a plate offood to a stray. The scruffy dog with matted fur, black muzzle and ears, walks forward, approaches stiffly, sniffing. The lady in a black chador sets down the plate and the dog takes such eager bites that its chest jolts with each mouthful. It holds its tail straight and then begins to wag, alert for more. I wonder if the woman's a Zoroastrian. I remember that their families should feed at least one dog during the day, not just scraps, but good food. In fact, the dog should eat before the family. The Zoroastrian religion is the only one I know of that has written rules about the treatment of dogs.

For example, the Vendidad, a Zoroastrian scripture, states, "Whosoever shall strike a shepherd dog, a house dog, a stray dog, or a hunting dog, when the soul of that man shall pass into the other world, it shall go howling louder and grieved more surely than goeth the sheep in the great forest where the wolf rangeth."

A dog has the power to absorb evil and is present at the time of death. It has a part in the rituals of preparation for the Tower of Silence. In Rohinton Mistry's masterpiece Such a Long Journey, this ritual is described with great feeling and visual clarity. Though not mentioned in that novel, two dogs guard against evil forces when the soul tries to cross the bridge before judgment. When a family's dog itself dies, rituals are performed to help its spirit.

As we walk toward the main mosque, the Masjed-e Jame (built on the site of an early Zoroastrian firetemple), we pass a huddle of foreign tourists, all scarved and wearing the officially approved shapeless raincoats called manteaus or, as alternatives, black chadors. One woman wears black with a style vaguely familiar, but out of context. "It's my son's graduation gown," she tells her friend. "It's been hanging in the closet for ten years. A perfect black chador!" Her earrings, heavy anchors on each side, must help to balance her personality. Yet, if she only knew, they're outlawed by the Iranian dress codes.

An Iranian man, his black hair framing an expectant face, falls into step with an older man in the group and asks, "You're from?"

"Amrika," replies the man. His wide combed beard mixes with his long hair.

The Iranian's eyes widen, and he straightens. "Amrika? I've seen people from Holland, from Germany, from England. You're the first Americans I've seen in Iran. Are you supposed to be here?"

The Americans look at each other and laugh.

We turn the corner and the mosque rises before us. "Elongated" seems a strange word for describing a mosque, but in comparison with all others the façade of this Yazd mosque is El-Greco-esque. The soaring narrow portal, its inner apex patterned like a honeycomb, is the highest in the land. The mosque's geometrical blue tile and blue-banded minarets drain color from the sky, leaving it pale in contrast.

Architecturally, the Yazd mosque, with its innovative hall on either side of the main chamber, set a style. The influence of this mosque reappeared in Central Asia, because Tamerlane, sparing the town, took famous architects and tile-makers from Yazd to build his dream city, Samarkand.

It's a big day for Kodak, because the tour group, and I too, take an excess of both pedestrian and innovative shots from strange angles. On a scale of clicks, this might be the winning mosque of Iran. It's lucky that I'm looking at the sky for minaret shots or I would have missed two large birds slapping their massive wings in flight, wings like those in the symbol of the Zoroastrians over the fire temple, wide wings whose leading white borders taper to dark.

I learn at dinner that the covered bazaar is open at night, so after dark I ask Jaffar to let me off at the entrance. I walk into the bazaar, lit by a row of white lights smiling down from the arched ceiling. Knobs of unlit colored light bulbs vault the passageway, but they must be reserved for weekends or holidays. From deep within the cavern of the bazaar, comes the smoky smell mixed mysteriously with a spice sharp enough to be turmeric. Open stalls on either side sell clothes and crockery. I'm surprised by a row of legs as high as my shoulder, a dark chorus line of shapely calves and tip-toed feet. Certainly the legs are not for sale, but only their black patterned stockings with designs of leaves, hearts, and roses. Who can know what beautifu1 clothing a woman is wearing under her chador?

The lights of a yard-goods stall cast deep shadows on a cluster of women draped in black. With folds of their black chadors gathered to their chins, they examine bolts of black and measure cloth for more chadors. One gives a handful of rials to a young man dressed in a black shirt and trousers, and he wraps her cloth. Bikes and motorcycles lean against the side of the stalls.

From the wall above the counter of a jewelry shop, presides the triad of President Khatami, Ayatollah Khomeini—looking not fierce but benign—and his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, wearing glasses over his stern expression. Jars of cosmetics on shelves across the shop reflect and curve the photographed images.

Voices are soft. Iranian teenagers hold their chadors at the chin and gaze at the displayed strings of gold necklaces. Chains of gold descend to lower rows of bright rings. A teen asks the owner to lift out a tray of jewelry. In excitement, her friends try on rings. The jeweler, hunched and with watchful eyes, doesn't object. One ring's too big. The teen tries another, extends her fingers, admires the glowing effect. Within three minutes, in a flurry of hands and black sleeves, they return the rings and leave across the pebbled concrete floor, glistening from a recent washing.

Across the end of the lane, a row of white lacey girls' dresses, dancing in the breezy width of the vaulted roof, suggest the power of light against darkness, and of joy against solemnity and contempt.

References and Further Reading

Barbara Cunliffe Singleton has taught in Bolivia, Indonesia, Peru, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey,and Uruguay. She has written for many periodicals, including the Boston Review, Christian Science Monitor, English Today (Cambridge University Press), International Quarterly, and New York Times. Her last Quest article was "Mourning Hussein in Ladakh" (Winter 1990).

Originally printed in the January - February 2002 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Dunningham-Chapotin, Diana. "An Infinity Within to Give." Quest  90.1 (JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2002):12-17.

by Diana Dunningham-Chapotin

There is an infinity in each one of us to give; we have to discover the mode of giving it.

—N. Sri Ram, Thoughts for Aspirants

When we are called to the path of service by the suffering around us, we soon discover that a seemingly inexhaustible source of love and energy is required. "Good causes" claim our attention on all sides. The good news, according to Theosophy, is that we have an inexhaustible source of love and energy within us. In fact, according to our literature, we have an infinite source of energy on which to draw.

Of course the tricky part is how to tap our limitless power to give and to love. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were a simple esoteric formula that would magically release this supposed infinite power within us? Just think of all the situations that would be transformed, even little ones we've all experienced, like these:

1. You're standing in the street with an acquaintance who's rambling on because she's lonely. You know that, and so you're trying to be patient. But your mind strays to your watch. In fact it strays again and again. Is there a formula to tap into greater powers of understanding and patience?

2. A friend is really worked up about a certain injustice in society. And you agree with her on the issue. She has invited you to take a petition around your neighborhood. You don't mind asking your friends to sign but you feel shy about approaching strangers. Have you ever wanted to protest against something but felt afraid or reluctant to take the appropriate action?

3. Have you ever found yourself putting off visiting an elderly friend in a rest home? You say to yourself, I really must go this week.

4. You've been helping a friend for months over a relationship difficulty. You come to realize that no one's getting anywhere. No solutions are appearing to your friend's problem, there's no change in the attitude or behavior that may be contributing to it. You've put in weeks and begin to feel you are just keeping your friend company as a listening post. Do you continue in a seemingly useless activity?

5. Have you ever walked past a street beggar or bag lady, avoiding their gaze?

6. Have you ever been in a position of dependency on others, either for financial or health reasons, and felt vulnerable, helpless?

7. Have you ever nursed someone for an extended period—say a friend with cancer or an elderly relative—and got so tired that you wondered just how much longer you could go on?

Our feelings in all these, and other situations like them, are typical human responses—understandable ones, given the limitations we function under until we have tapped that infinity within ourselves, and have discovered the mode of giving it. All these situations involve giving, serving, and receiving, as well as the feelings we inevitably encounter in the process, feelings of powerlessness, cynicism, fatigue, boredom, embarrassment, resentment, impatience, and so on. All these situations require turning within, to deep inner resources.

As we experience such typical human responses, we have a great ally:Theosophy. How does it help us in all these situations? If someone were to ask you what connection Theosophy has to the work you do as service to others, you might reply that it is at the very heart of all your service activities, that it is pivotal. You might say that you are constantly trying to understand in the light of Theosophy all the situations in which you are lending a hand, so it affects the way you look upon and respond to them.

Whether we realize it or not, our underlying metaphysical assumptions influence our attitude toward everything. We are constantly faced with decisions in our lives: which charities we're going to donate to each year and how much we will give to each, what kind of volunteer work we'll sign up for and how much time we will give, whether to bring our aged parents to live with us, whether to go and live with our children when we're elderly ourselves, whether we should register as a conscientious objector when we're young, whether to adopt a child from an underprivileged family, whether to support the call for the forgiveness of the debt of developing countries or UN intervention in this or that war-torn country, or even what political party to vote for.We tend to make decisions like these, consciously or subconsciously, in the light of our philosophy of life.

The quality of our service to others, the depth of our giving, is directly influenced by our worldview. And the worldview of Theosophy sets giving in a very large context. Because Theosophy gives us a vast perspective on life and a deep insight into our own natures, it can revolutionize our motive for giving ourselves to others.

So what is truly Theosophical service and giving?

• Theosophical servers look not just to the physical health and security or the psychological comfort of those they are helping, but also to their long-term growth and their spiritual welfare. They seek not just a quick fix, but a lasting benefit.

• Theosophical servers do not go out and fight the government on social issues with a them-and-us, adversarial mentality; they seek consensus with all the love and intelligence of which they are capable.In supporting the interests of their nation, they try to avoid doing so at the expense of other nations. They try to keep in mind a global perspective.

• Theosophical servers view the peaks and valleys of psychological experience in relation to the larger picture of cyclic evolution. They see the way we swing between pleasure and pain, sorrow and joy, attraction and repulsion, and rest and activity as a function of the polarity operating in the universe. They look at suffering in terms of the growth it can bring and the opportunities to exercise compassion it affords.

• Theosophical servers consider themselves lucky to be engaged in an undertaking in which there are no obstacles. In the ordinary world, if you're booked on a flight to Singapore and the air controllers go on strike, you've got an obstacle. If you want to buy a property and a loan doesn't come through, you've got a problem. On the spiritual path, obstacles are opportunities for action that further our evolution and that of the whole world.

Our relationships with co-workers in the Society who seem to us to be "unbrotherly" may be the very terrain of evolutionary action. I used to think that personality hassles within the Society were time-wasting, annoying things, but maybe they are part of the process of growth and development that we should not resent, but look on as an opportunity for learning how to deal with both personality and hassling. Through them, we can learn how to transform obstacles into opportunities.

So Theosophy, through the spiritual perspective it provides, can deepen our giving. But what happens in the sort of nitty-gritty situations mentioned above? What is the quality of our giving in such cases? If there are no magical formulas to help us, are there not at least some special principles, insights, or practices that can release the will, wisdom, and love latent within every one of us?

Theosophical servers typically hold some convictions that directly affect their capacity to give. One of these is the conviction that every person is perfectible and will inevitably one day be self-actualized or self-realized.

Annie Besant composed an epigram, the first part of which was written in gold letters on the front wall of my old home Lodge in Auckland, New Zealand: "No soul that aspires can ever fail to rise; no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist only in that overcoming them we may grow strong, and they only who have suffered are able to save."

The conviction that everyone is perfectible helps to broaden our power to give and to dissolve the selective, judgmental way we sometimes operate in our giving. This conviction stops us from subconsciously writing people off. The following story, "We Are Three, You Are Three," illustrates this point.

When the bishop's ship stopped at a remote island for a day, he determined to use the time as profitably as possible. He strolled along the seashore and came across three fishermen mending their nets. In pidgin English they explained to him that centuries before, they had been Christianized by missionaries. "We Christians!" they said, proudly pointing to one another.

The bishop was impressed. Did they know the Lord's Prayer? They had never heard of it. The bishop was shocked.

"What do you say when you pray?'

"We lift eyes to heaven. We pray, 'We are three, you are three, have mercy on us.'" The bishop was dismayed at the primitive, even heretical nature of their prayer. So he spent the whole day teaching them the Lord's Prayer. The fishermen were poor learners, but they gave it all they had, and before the bishop sailed away the next day he had the satisfaction of hearing them go through the whole formula without afault.

Months later the bishop's ship happened to pass by those islands again and the bishop, as he paced the deck saying his evening prayers, recalled with pleasure the three men on that distant island who were now able to pray, thanks to his patient efforts. While he was lost in thought, he happened to look up and noticed a spot of light in the east.The light kept approaching the ship, and, as the bishop gazed in wonder, he saw three figures walking on the water. The captain stopped the boat and everyone leaned over the rails to see this sight. When the figures were within speaking distance, the bishop recognized his three friends,the fishermen.

"Bishop!" they exclaimed. "We hear your boat go past island and come hurry hurry meet you."

"What is it you want?" asked the bishop, awe-struck.

"Bishop," they said, "we so, so sorry. We forget lovely prayer. We say, 'Our Father in heaven, holy be your name, your kingdom come . . ..' Then we forget. Please tell us prayer again."

"Go back to your homes, my friends," he said, "and each time you pray, say, 'We are three, you are three, have mercy on us!'"

It is easy to write people off, as the Bishop almost did. One of the problems at the beginning of this article was that we start to feel like a listening post while trying to help friends in distress. After trying for a while to help someone, we may catch ourselves deciding that they are too scarred by their experiences to go anywhere much further in this incarnation. But in arriving at that decision, we have lost sight of their perfectibility, which we need to keep before us as at all times if we are truly to help.

The more experience we have, the more opportunities we have to realize that every individual has some amazing qualities, no matter how damaged the individual may appear to us. Every person has some aspect we can work with, some qualities of value for others. And our presence, for however long or short a time, can be the very gift that person needs.

A growing realization of the preciousness of every individual can make us just a little more patient with the bore, with those who don't seem to be getting on top of their problems, with the elderly person who repeats the same stories endlessly. That realization can open the doors of the heart so wide that no one is excluded. From it, we can glimpse the fact that a hidden Life is indeed vibrant in every atom, that a hidden Light is shining in every creature, and that a hidden Love is embracing in Oneness not just those who are beautiful, grateful, and appealing but also those who are unattractive, irritating, and bothersome to help.

Rachel Naomi Remen ("In the Service of Life," Noetic Sciences Review, spring 1996) distinguishes between fixing, helping, and serving."Fixing," she says, "is a form of judgment." To "fix" a person is to see them as broken rather than inherently whole and perfect. "Helping," she says, "is based on inequality." To "help" is to use one's own strength in place of the lesser strength of those helped and so diminishes their self-esteem and incurs a debt. "Serving," on the other hand, "is mutual." "We don't serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves."Remen says, "If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery and expertise. Service, on the other hand is an experience of mystery, surrender and awe. . . . Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred. . . . When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole."

Thus far we have been considering the "infinity in each one of us to give," which Sri Ram wrote of. His epigram has, however, a second part:"we have to discover the mode of giving it." That discovery comes from a realization of our unity with all other life. As we realize our oneness with others, we begin to tap into what seem like magical powers to comfort, protect, heal, uplift, and transform. What brings about that realization of unity?

Experiences in our lives sometimes come like bolts from the blue, evoking an awareness of unity, but more often than not the realization of oneness comes about imperceptibly. It is a process that starts withthe impulse to reach out to assist others in danger or difficulty. When we see someone on the verge of fainting, our arms go out automatically. When a child falls off its bicycle, we stop and pick it up. When we learn a neighbor is sick, we hang up the telephone with one hand as the other hand is reaching out for the soup pot.

Our impulse to serve others is not born of a desire to shine—not fundamentally. It is born of an underlying kinship, an urge to unity. Cynics might say that we are social animals and that our urge to reach out and help is a sort of herd instinct, an act of collective self-preservation. That is, in fact, probably how our evolutionary journey started, but it is not the essence of the instinct to reach out. We suffer from a sense of our own separateness, which enables us to recognize the pain of isolation in others. This is what makes us care.

In his book How Can I Help? Ram Dass tells about a person with special insight into our underlying kinship with other human beings. We might call the story "Christ, in all his distressing disguises." A woman is speaking:

In the early stages of my father's cancer, I found it very difficult to know how best to help. I lived a thousand miles away and would come for visits. It was hard seeing him going downhill, harder still feeling so clumsy, not sure what to do, not sure what to say.

Toward the end, I was called to come suddenly. He'd been slipping. I went straight from the airport to the hospital, then directly to the room he was listed in.

When I entered, I saw that I'd made a mistake. There was a very,very old man there, pale and hairless, thin, and breathing with great gasps, fast asleep, seemingly near death. So I turned to find my dad's room. Then I froze. I suddenly realized, "My God, that's him!" I hadn't recognized my own father! It was the single most shocking moment of my life.

Thank God he was asleep. All I could do was sit next to him and try to get past this image before he woke up and saw my shock. I had to look through him and find something beside this astonishing appearance of a father I could barely recognize physically.

By the time he awoke, I'd gotten part of the way. But we were still quite uncomfortable with each another. There was still this sense of distance. We both could feel it. It was very painful. We both were self-conscious . . . infrequent eye contact.

Several days later, I came into his room and found him asleep again. Again such a hard sight. So I sat and looked some more. Suddenly this thought came to me, words of Mother Teresa, describing lepers she cared for as "Christ in all his distressing disguises."

I never had any real relation to Christ at all, and I can't say thatI did at that moment. But what came through to me was a feeling for my father's identity as . . . like a child of God. That was who he really was, behind the "distressing disguise." And it was my real identity too, I felt. I felt a great bond with him which wasn't anything like I'd felt as father and daughter.

At that point he woke up and looked at me and said, "Hi." And I looked at him and said, "Hi."

For the remaining months of his life we were totally at peace and comfortable together. No more self-consciousness. No unfinished business. I usually seemed to know just what was needed. I could feed him, shave him, bathe him, hold him up to fix the pillow—all these very intimate things that had been so hard for me earlier.

In a way, this was my father's final gift to me: the chance to see him as something more than my father; the chance to see the common identity of spirit we both shared; the chance to see just how much that makes possible in the way of love and comfort. And I feel I can call on it now with anyone else.

Perhaps the bravest and most radical step we can take to release our infinite capacity to give is to be willing to face our own doubts, needs, and resistances—the inner barriers to the expression of our caring instincts. We can look at specific situations like those at the beginning of this article: when we sneak glances at our watch while someone is rambling on, when we begin to feel like adult babysitters for friends with endless problems, when we avoid meeting the gaze of a beggar or bag lady, when we are so exhausted from caring for someone with a terminal illness, that we wonder how much longer we can go on.

We need to own up to feelings of guilt, anxiety, discomfort, disappointment, and vulnerability. We also have to be willing to look for the deeper fears behind these spontaneous reactions: fears of loss of control, of being overwhelmed, of having our heart broken, and ultimately of extinction. This is the core of Theosophical service and the surest way to open the heart to its potential of limitless giving.

What does it mean to look behind our spontaneous reactions? Maybe when we grow impatient with someone who is going on and on about their problems, we're not being impatient just because we're busy people and they are being self-centered, but also because our subconscious mind is saying, "And what about me and my problems? Who cares about my problems?" Our impatience can actually be our own suppressed cry for love. Maybe when we keep putting off going to visit that friend bedridden and lonely in a rest home, it's not just because of the difficulty of masking our sadness for them and of making conversation.Maybe underneath we are being confronted with the terrifying specter of our own loss of control, our own potential helplessness, and above all our own abandonment.

How does the threat of heartbreak, of being overwhelmed and drowned with sadness by what we see around us affect our giving? It may mean that we are like oysters that open up and let in just so much pain, then snap shut. We help out on Monday and Friday afternoons; after that wecome home and close our front door.

We may drop a friend with terminal cancer, or a friend who has just lost a child, not only because we don't know what words to use to comfort her, but because deep and frightening questions are surfacing. Our philosophy of life, so logical, so beautiful, so metaphysically satisfying, which gives us a sense of security and optimism, is being attacked and undermined by notions of injustice and absurdity.

Everything we do is based on mixed motives. Accompanying genuine sympathy can be a need to avoid boredom, loneliness, or feelings of uselessness. Helping others may give us a good conscience, raise our self-esteem, and give us a measure of authority. But again, what is beneath such motives? Underlying and feeding surface motives can be afear of the terrible inner void.

Considering the deeper motives that underlie much of human behavior should not undermine our enthusiasm for serving others. We are not in the business of self-flagellation. We are not judging. An excessive concern about motives in service can take away our spontaneity and joy. If we wait for perfect purity of motive, we will become paralyzed. But just repeatedly observing, peeling away layers, and noting is the process that removes the barriers between others and us until we realize unity. Eventually there is no longer any sense of "helper" and "helped."We help by who we are, less than by what we do.

Service is really a journey of awakening. We know that we have an infinite power within to give and that every human being is perfectible.We can stride out boldly and joyfully on the path of service, looking fearlessly at the deeper, darker levels of our psyche and reaching gently to touch that special quiet center within. If the conviction of our Oneness is strong and the vision of it remains clear, it will be with us at all times so that only compassion fills our heart.

Diana Dunningham-Chapotin is a New Zealander by birth, an American by adoption, and a Francaise by residence (as she likes to be near her husband). She is International Secretary of the Theosophical Order ofService and edits its bulletin. This article is based on the Founders Address she delivered at the 2001 Convention of the Theosophical Society in America.

Originally printed in the January - February 2002 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Conwell, Alistair. "Silence: The Essence of Perfect Meditation." Quest  90.1 (JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2002):9-11. 

by Alistair Conwell

Let silence take you to the core of life.

—Jalaluddun Rumi (1207-1277)

MEDITATION is a categorical imperative for our spiritual evolution—a point once made by transpersonal psychologist and author Ken Wilber. If the statement is true, then meditation has a significance that is unwise to ignore.

But what exactly is meditation?

When asked that question, Sufi Master Hazrat Inayat Khan replied: "Concentration is the beginning of meditation, meditation is the end of concentration; it is an advanced form of concentration. The subtle working of the mind is called meditation. It is more profound than concentration, but once concentration is accomplished fully it becomes easy for a person to meditate" (Khan 1996).

Naturally, what one concentrates on in meditation is very important because we are a product of our thoughts. Everything we do or say springs from a thought, although sometimes we may not be consciously aware of it. Moreover, if we intensely concentrate upon something for a sufficient period of time, we can lose our sense of identity in the object itself. The following story from ancient India illustrates this point.

Eagerly seeking instruction in meditation, a young farmer named Krishna went to see a sage. The sage advised the youth to recite aspecial mantra while visualizing his namesake god seated on a lotus. Hearing this, the young man became suddenly despondent. "Please forgive me," he said, "but I am only an uneducated farmer, and so I am unable to follow your instructions. They are too complicated, so I won't be able to remember them."

Being in a lenient mood and since the youth was a new student of his, the sage then suggested an alternative, which was to only visualize an image of Lord Krishna without anything else. However, again the young man took on a look of despondency, saying, "Master, I don't think I will be able to do that either. I would have to sit very still and look at the image at the same time."

The master was a little perplexed, yet his immense patience was resolute. In a sympathetic tone he asked the man what he was most fond of. With little hesitation he replied, "The cow on my farm. I love her and constantly think of her because she provides me with milk, curd, and ghee."

The sage then told the man to sit down and meditate on the cow to his heart's content for as long as he could. The man was elated and happily obeyed.

Three days later, he was still sitting on the same spot, his mind firmly attached to the object of his meditation.

Finally, the master decided that enough was enough, so he called his neophyte to come indoors and take some nourishment. Rousing from his meditative equipoise, the man responded with a loud "Moo!" and added in a tone too serious to disbelieve, "I am too big to fit through the door!"

Humor aside, in highlighting the power of our seemingly innocuous thoughts, this old story also is a poignant reminder about the highest purpose of meditation: to dissolve the ephemeral ego-based sense of self into the divine Great Self that some call God, others Buddha, Allah, and so on. The name, being a mere label, is unimportant. With this purpose in mind, sages agree that proper meditation must include another important aspect, the act of listening.

The French ear, nose, and throat specialist Dr. Alfred Tomatis was the first to draw a clear distinction between hearing and listening. His research into sound and the ear is so highly respected that some of his colleagues regard him as the "Einstein of sound" and the "Sherlock Holmes of sonic detection." Born in Nice in 1920, Tomatis conducted research that distinguished two processes. One, which he called "hearing," is a physiological process because it relates to the ability of the auditory system to receive sound. The other, which he called "listening," on the other hand, is primarily a mental process requiring concentration to focus selectively on, remember, and respond to sound.

Arguably the most common advice in all scriptures across the world is to listen. For instance, musicologist Joachim-Ernst Berendtob serves that the word "hear" (meaning in context "to listen") isreferred to at least ninety-one times in the five books of the Torah (Berendt 1992). Also it is no accident that the verb obey comes from the root of the Latin word audire "to hear or listen to." For to listen is to obey. Thus, the act of obeisance through listening is really an exercise in selflessness. Selflessness, of course, is the death knell of the illusory ego. Hence, ancient sages and philosophers tell us that our ego is the greatest barrier preventing us from experiencing union withthe Divine.

Therefore, if listening is necessary to destroy the ego, then meditative listening can be seen to be the direct route to Divine union. In fact, listening is an important aspect in many forms of meditation. For instance, mantra meditation is a popular way to concentrate on a seed syllable like aum, which is consciously heard as it is repeated over and over again. The utterance of the word may be accompanied by the repetitious sounds of musical instruments. With or without the musical accompaniment, clearly the concentration and listening aspects that make for proper meditation are present, and as a result many people around the world have derived immense benefit from practicing this form of meditation. However, a more subtle variation of mantra meditation that involves concentration and a more introspective form of listening is koan meditation as practiced in the Japanese Zen tradition.

A koan is typically a succinct question or problem put to Zen students, which seems unanswerable because it is illogical. The seemingly irrational element of the koan is supposed to make the meditator so focused in search of a "solution" that a fixed point of concentration is attained. So just as the mantra is chanted continuously (usually aloud but also silently), the koan is repeated over and over again in the mind of the Zen student. Being the silent repetition of a question, the student seeks an answer within, expecting at any moment the solution to spring into the mind like a flash of enlightenment. This expectation draws the neophyte further and further inward, to the point where an answer is not found but rather the object of meditation is finally achieved: single-pointed concentration, perfect listening, obedience, the death of the ego.

Ancient Zen masters valued the koan precisely because they believed it made for the perfect listening that enabled the neophyte to face a symbolic death of the ego. Hakuin, the eighteenth-centuryJapanese Zen master, explained: "When you take a koan and examine it persistently, your spirit will die and your ego will be destroyed. It is as if a bottomless, empty pit were to open up before you and your hands and feet can find no hold. You feel as if you were looking at the face of death and as if your heart were going up in flames. Then suddenly you are one with the koan, and you are freed of body and spirit" (Berendt 1991).

The most famous koan, which no doubt has occupied the minds of millions of Japanese and Western Zen students in meditation, is this: What is the sound of one hand clapping? Obviously it takes two hands to clap, and only when two hands clap can any sound be produced. Since itis impossible for one hand to clap then logically there can be no sound produced, only silence. So it seems that the esoteric meaning at the heart of this ancient koan is the profoundly theoretical and practicalact of listening. For the "nonsound" produced by the one hand clapping creates the ideal atmosphere for perfect listening—silence.

Dying to the ego in a sacred silence and being born in Spirit is a fundamental message of all spiritual traditions in the East and West, and not something particular to Japanese Zen or the Indian tradition of mantra meditation. For example, the first rule of the Christian Benedictine Order established in the sixth century is "Listen, my son, to the Voice of your God and open wide the ears of your heart."

Although not itself a question, this Benedictine precept has a koanesque feeling to it because it raises questions that have no immediate answers, such as: What is the Voice of God? And what are the ears of the heart? Just like the Zen koan, these questions entice the monks to listen within for the "answers," and in doing so they naturally follow the Order's rule of obeisance. The result is that, once perfect listening in perfect silence is achieved, they move toward an ego death.

Yet koans and monastic rules, like other contemplative mechanisms found in various traditions, seem to be really only the means to a more profound spiritual end. For in silence there is also Sound that makes for perfect listening in an entirely spiritual context. This is certainly what many great mystics believed. "Nothing in the universe is so like God as silence" (Berendt 1992), wrote the thirteenth-century German mystic and theologian Meister Eckhart.

Indeed, all ancient mystical traditions from around the world believe there is a soundless Sound that can only be apprehended when we truly listen in meditative silence. In India, mystics have called this Sound Shabd or Nada, meaning the Divine Sound. It is the "Voice of theSilence" H. P. Blavatsky (1889) referred to. Believed to be found only in the sanctity of compete silence, this soundless Sound is regarded as the manifestation of the God principle and, therefore, the quintessential object of concentration for proper meditation.

In their different ways, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Zen Buddhism, and Christianity all tell us to listen for the Divine Sound by going within and knowing the Self. Listening in silent meditation to this Sound, which the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras referred to as the "music of the spheres" because of its harmonious tones, one inevitably dies to the limiting ego-self and dances to the Song of the infinite Spirit. This then, sages conclude, is true meditation, for which the essential ingredient is perfect silence.

Alistair Conwell was born in India and grew up in Australia, where he is completing a degree in psychology. He has traveled extensively through Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. He has published on spirituality in international journals and has in preparation a book about preparing for death spiritually.

Originally printed in the January - February 2002 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Ellwood, Robert. "Joy: The Deepest Secret of the Universe." Quest  90.1 (JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2002):24-25.

by Robert Ellwood

TO THOSE WHO SEE ARIGHT, this vast and mysterious universe is as overflowing with joy as the old-fashioned heaven was overbursting with angels. Its stars throb with joy, its radiations hum with it, its dark or glowing nebulae embed it. The dances of the atoms and galaxies are dances of joy. Here below, joy lies hidden deep down at the heart of all things—boulders, trees, dolphins, zebras, and ourselves. Occasionally joy can be tapped in such a way that we can recognize its presence everywhere. It streams out of its secret places within us to flood the conscious mind with rapture keener than the sharpest grief and wider than any learning. I have experienced moments and hours when such joy has come to me, sometimes spontaneously and sometimes induced by meditation, for meditation seldom fails—sooner or later—to release the floodgates of joy and focus its dancing light.

In those moments, each one of us is what life tends toward and what being is all about. These times of joy are not emotional quirks or manic moods; they are life supremely being itself, being what it wants to be, in touch with the being that is its true nature.

When this deep joy comes, it is just there, independent of outer events. It is entirely different from being happy about something, like getting a present or completing a successful business deal. It is a pure joy of being that can well up in the most ordinary settings, amid the drudgery of unglamorous work, or while drifting off to sleep, and it can come in meditation, even in a hospital bed or a prison cell.

The authenticity of these moments tells us that the universe, deep down, is joy, for at such times we feel closest to the universe and most a part of its material and spiritual nature. Joy is life realizing what its parent, the universe—God, if you wish—is, always was, and ever shall be.

I have known such joy, and there is certainly nothing about me, no special birth or virtue, that leads me to think I am any different from the rest of humanity. I am firmly convinced that this same joy is latent in all women and men; indeed, in all that is. It is in you!

As the true nature of life, joy can be touched and known by anyone, in whatever circumstances. In some people and places it may be near the surface, in others deeply buried. But if joy is the true stuff of the universe, there can be no place, however terrible, where its last glimmer has irretrievably flickered out.

Joy is the most basic reality of the universe and of ourselves as parts of it: to seek this joy above all else is not a selfish quest. Living for sensual pleasure and ordinary happiness may indeed be selfish if pursued without thought for others, but the joy of the universe operates by very different laws. The more of this joy you have, the more others have, too, for it is inevitably shared. The more joy you give, the more sensitive you are to the blockage of joy in others, and the more you are drawn through love to help them find joy. Ordinary happiness wants to get; joy wants to give.

The primacy of joy is clearly expressed in the world's great spiritual traditions, which promise joy in this life and the life to come for those who live in accordance with the will of God; that is, with the real nature of things. Religions generally portray the saint or enlightened being as a person of supremely deep joy, suggested by the aureole or halo.

For example, the Upanishads, the most philosophical of the Vedic scriptures of ancient India, tell us that Brahman (God) is joy: "For from joy all beings are born, by joy they are sustained, being born, and into joy they enter after death." The same passage tells us that Brahman is also food, energy, mind, and intellect, but the deepest truth is that Brahman is joy. Brahman, though one, is all things, as a single flame takes many different shapes. But it is not Brahman's conditioned existence as the multiplicity of things that is the fullness of joy. Rather, Brahman as infinite reality pours endless depths into each conditioned experience, which makes it possible for all to be flooded with deep joy. As the Upanishads say elsewhere, "Only in the Infinite is there joy." And as a commentator on the Vedas said, "The universe, with everything in it, is only an outward flow and a crystallized form of the unceasingly upwelling joy of Brahman."

Deep deathless joy is the innermost reality of the universe and of ourselves as sons and daughters of that universe, its gods in the making. Joy is our heritage, and we can claim it today.

Some may hold that a gift as exalted as deep joy cannot be forced or claimed; it can come only on its own when the time is right. But this idea represents, I think, a far more passive attitude toward life than we need have. Joy is ours by right and we are empowered to take charge of our lives. Eternity's gifts belong to any and all points in time. The teachings of all religions regarding prayer and meditation indicate that we are to lay hold of divine gifts, not to insult heaven by scorning them.

In time, you may know deep joy on the wonderful level of Illumination. Afterward, if your wisdom deepens with your joy and you learn to let nothing get you down, the passage of the Dark Night of the Soul will take care of itself, and Union will free you to know the deepest secret of the universe, joy.

Robert Ellwood, Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California, is the author of Many Peoples, Many Faiths: An Introduction to the Religious Life of Humankind; Alternative Altars: Unconventional and Eastern Spirituality in America; The Cross and the Grail: Esoteric Christianity for the Twenty-First Century; and Theosophy. This article is abstracted from his new Quest Book, Finding Deep Joy, revised edition, 2001.