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Tanna: Temple in the Heart of the Ocean
The secular and religious powers of his time bent every energy to silence Baha’u’llah and prevent his teachings reaching humanity. It did not concern Baha’u’llah. He wrote: Should they attempt to conceal His light on the continent, He will assuredly rear His head in the midmost heart of the ocean and, raising His voice, proclaim: ‘I am the lifegiver of the world!’[1] The Pacific is the greatest ocean of the planet. It is also the place where the highest proportion of Baha’is are found. Places like Nauru, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea are the most responsive places in the world to the Baha’i Faith. Tanna, an island of Vanuatu is one of the…
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Human Nature and the Temple at the Dawn of Time: Gobekli Tepe
In the last twenty or so years archeologists have excavated a temple that was built so long ago that no human being had yet thought of planting a crop. It was built so long ago that only stones and bones were used to create it and the many works of art that adorn it. The temple was built before the wheel, before animal husbandry and before the creation of pottery. It precedes large scale government. It precedes the invention of armies, cities and empires. It was created by people who hunted and gathered to collect their food. The temple’s scale forces us to rethink everything we thought we knew about…
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Right Livelihood: The Case of Thomas Breakwell
Buddhism has a beautiful way of summarising “the good life”. It is symbolised by an eight-spoked wheel. Each spoke of the wheel represents a right way of being – qualities such as “right speech”, “right conduct” and “right mindfulness”. Among the spokes is “right livelihood” and this is where we pick up the story of Thomas Breakwell, for the principle concerns him. Thomas Breakwell became a Baha’i in 1901, one of the earliest westerners to enter the Baha’i Faith. He was a young man aged only 30. He was born in 1872, the son of an ironmonger. He was raised a Methodist and later his family had emigrated to the…
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Abdu’l Baha’s Work Day
Abdu’l Baha‘s life was full of achievement. The eldest son of Baha’u’llah, he transcended a lifetime of exile and imprisonment and took the Baha’i Faith out of its homelands to a wider world. If all Abdu’l Baha had done was to undertake his teaching trips throughout Europe and North America, it would be more than most of us achieve in a lifetime. The following is Robert Stockman’s description of just Abdu’l Baha’s time in North America. “This was not the visit of a sixty-seven-year-old foreign tourist bent on seeing new places or a religious teacher hoping to cement his fortune and reputation; rather, it was the effort of an almost…
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Workers’ Rights
As we have seen in previous articles, Bahá’u’lláh was concerned with the extremes of wealth and poverty he saw in society. He was concerned when the governors of society “reared palaces for themselves” at the cost of the poverty of their people. We has seen how, in freeing slaves he inherited with his family estate, Baha’u’llah affirmed the essential dignity and equality of all human beings. He was concerned also that workers’ received their proper due for work they performed. The people of Bahá should not deny any soul the reward due to him, should treat craftsmen with deference, and, unlike the people aforetime, should not defile their tongues with abuse.[1] Abdu’l…
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The Miracle of Baghdad
If we look in the Gospels or in the Quran we find ample evidence of the opposition of the religious hierarchies of the day to Jesus and Muhammad respectively. Again it was so in Bahá’u’lláh’s day. As we have seen before it is a tragic pattern of history that when the truth of a new prophet comes – very few are able to recognise it and those most concerned with religion are the most determined to “put out the light”. In Baghdad, some of the religious scholars (ulama) were continually agitating to cause some harm to Bahá’u’lláh. At one point they threatened jihad, at another they pressed upon the Governor…
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The Valley of Knowledge
The Seven Valleys is Bahá’u’lláh’s presentation of an ancient literary metaphor for the journey of the soul. He wrote the Seven Valleys around 1860 after he had returned from two years of withdrawal from the world in the mountains of Kurdistan. The Seven Valleys are (in sequence): the Valley of Search, the Valley of Love, the Valley of Knowledge, the Valley of Unity, the Valley of Contentment, the Valley of Wonderment and the Valley of True Poverty and Absolute Nothingness. As a whole the Seven Valleys is a work which challenges comprehension. Of course it is not meant to be – nor can it be – read as a rule book.…
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Exile Over Snowbound Mountains
Bahá’u’lláh was the son of a wealthy noble family. His family had extensive estates in their ancestral province of Nur. The transformation that Bahá’u’lláh’s life underwent from the day he was imprisoned in the Siyah-Chal is captured in the following passage from Bahá’u’lláh’s writings. My God, My Master, My Desire!… Thou hast created this atom of dust through the consummate power of Thy might, and nurtured Him with Thine hands which none can chain up.… Thou hast destined for Him trials and tribulations which no tongue can describe, nor any of Thy Tablets adequately recount. The throat Thou didst accustom to the touch of silk Thou hast, in the end, clasped with strong…
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A Stronger Thought of Peace
When a thought of war comes oppose it with a stronger thought of peace. It is such a striking statement that it often comes to mind. It appears in a talk given by Abdu’l Baha in Paris in 1911. I charge you all that each one of you concentrate all the thoughts of your heart on love and unity. When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love. Thoughts of war bring destruction to all harmony, well-being, restfulness and content. Thoughts of love are constructive of brotherhood, peace, friendship, and happiness.[1] Often Abdu’l Baha’s words have a simplicity and clarity that bely their depth. It is a…
