The 52nd Arabic Hidden Word reads,
O SON OF MAN! Should prosperity befall thee, rejoice not, and should abasement come upon thee, grieve not, for both shall pass away and be no more.
One of my favorite anecdotes from the Dawnbreakers takes place as Vahid was preparing to flee the city of Yazd after it had just poured over into sectarian violence between Babis and Muslims. An essential part of this was abandoning his house. I think it wonderfully illustrates the spiritual themes Baha'u'llah addresses in the above passage from the Hidden Words.
On page 473 Dawnbreakers reads,
That very night, VahÃd bade his companions disperse and exercise the utmost vigilance to secure their safety. He advised his wife to remove, with her children and all their belongings, to the home of her father, and to leave behind whatever was his personal property. “This palatial residence,” he informed her, “I have built with the sole intention that it should be eventually demolished in the path of the Cause, and the stately furnishings with which I have adorned it have been purchased in the hope that one day I shall be able to sacrifice them for the sake of my Beloved. Then will friend and foe alike realise that he who owned this house was endowed with so great and priceless a heritage that an earthly mansion, however sumptuously adorned and magnificently equipped, had no worth in his eyes; that it had sunk, in his estimation, to the state of a heap of bones to which only the dogs of the earth could feel attracted. Would that such compelling evidence of the spirit of renunciation were able to open the eyes of this perverse people, and to stir in them the desire to follow in the steps of him who showed that spirit!”
For Vahid, recognition of the impermanence and vulnerability of earthly wealth is inscribed into his desire for such wealth. The pleasure in gaining is the pleasure in losing. In the binary between gain and loss, Vahid's desire is situated in both.
And now for something completely different, and relatively unrelated to the above passage from the Hidden Words.
In this anecdote from the Dawnbreakers renunciation (and by implication martyrdom) is in no way passive. Instead it is a lively spectacle of Vahid's power. He gave up a comfortable lifestyle of influence, wealth, and fame for death as a Babi. Here, he makes a spectacle of this contrast by heightening the violence against himself. Rather than cowering away with whatever material possessions he could salvage he rushes headlong into his persecution, not just to make a name for himself, but to make a name for the cause he espoused. By suffering heroically, Vahid hopes others will arise to serve the faith of the Bab. Thus, his personal sacrifice becomes a political statement which in a way is a sort of threat against those who seek to stamp out the Babis.
The historical backdrop of this incident is a national polarization between the emerging Babi community and established elites among the Shia clergy and the Shah's government. As was the case in Khurasan with the Babi Jihad at the Shrine of Shaykh Tabarsi and now with violence in the streets of Yazd this struggle had become an increasingly bloody one. In this context to leave behind his belongings is a political show of force inasmuch as 1) he has the discipline to do such an act 2) that he regards the faith of the Bab as worthy of exercising such intense discipline. There is a certain worldliness then to this act of renunciation, not in any way as a sort of hypocrisy, but rather that his renunciation was intended to have profound influence on worldly affairs and to upset the status quo of Iran in his day.
So what's the lesson here? The aggressiveness of such renunciation could be used to "shake things up," and give a reason for people to speculate why somebody would be willing to make such profound sacrifice for a given cause. It would serve to make public the intense feelings of commitment that might be forced into privacy by the apathy or hostility of a dominant culture.
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5 comments:
There is a definite parallel with Thoreau in the way you end this entry. I'm thinking specifically of the way you construct renunciation. It's much like the night Thoreau spent in jail because he refused to pay taxes that would finance the Mexican-American War. He wrote that he was not really imprisoned at all, but free - free from the injustice of society, whereas everyone else who did pay that tax was the prisoner of a system that forced them to financially aid in the perpetration of injustice. Thus prison simply happened to be the physical location of his body and nothing more.
Abdu'l Baha said more or less the same thing a few decades later, regarding his own imprisonment. But I never really thought of connecting those two moments.
I guess freedom then would be the the exercise of one's spiritual discipline rather than a status before the law of the oppressor.
Cool!
reminds me also of something Simone Weil wrote about anguish~ the martyr is not anguished, for he has given up loneliness and attachment for a love of his cause. he is no longer attached to the world, nor is he lonely, for he is accompanied by a love of God's cause, whether in prison or facing death.
It's interesting that you bring up loneliness.
One idea I've been throwing around is that the loneliness/solitude of the martyr is a manifestation of divine unity, and thus of divine sovereignty as well. The martyr, just like God, is excluded from the world in a way. And this exclusion elevates him or her to a higher spiritual station than that which is transcended. This would square with Baha'u'llah's teaching in the Kitab-i-Iqan that the sovereignty of the Manifestation is always that of God over creation as such rather than a political relationship between creatures.
But one problem that comes up with this vision of martyrdom is that it does not take adequate account of the martyr's relationship to his or her upbringing, especially with regards to a faith community. A person is never alone inasmuch as they speak a language that has been given them by their peers. Their presence is always there by way of language. Solitude is thus impossible.
But this works a whole lot better when we think of the martyr as alone with one's love for the cause. In fact, I think it's adequate to call that love for the cause constitutive of their very being, especially inasmuch as it becomes "all that they have." Solitude in this sense is not absolute, which is impossible anyway in a world characterized by plurality. But it is a manifestation of that affection that binds the isolated One with His cause.
That might be clear.
hmm. kind of like "God's cause is present in all places and manifest through me (but not because of me as i have submitted self to God's will), so i am not alone, nor do i die"? at the same time one is dying to the world and in the world's eyes, whether one is shot, hanged, etc. one leaves behind other believers, too, in that sense. which could lead to an interesting meditation on the true difference between "self" and "other" as they relate to martyrdom and faith, to one's executioner and to the fellow believers who survive. i am reminded of Mona, who kissed her executioner's hand before dying, and blessed him.
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