Our first meeting

It was our first discussion group meeting. Shortly before our meeting, Mobad Noshir Hormozyar gave a talk about the history of Zoroastrianism and its tenets. Though he simplified the religion to mere rational approaches towards a good life, still lots needs to be said about the simple ideas which seems very rational and indeed common sense. He said Iranian were famous for teaching their children three skills: horseback riding, shooting an arrow, and telling the truth. While the first two skills could be mastered with some degree of discipline and practice, the third has proven to be not so easy. Telling the truth, to judge by its scarcity, seems not only out of fashion, but indeed a difficult skill to learn. However, one wonders if the difficulty lies on the strenuousness of telling the truth or the easiness of lying or just the blurry line between them. It is just this narrow line which would be the center of our discussion, to examine the nature of this line lest we cross it.
In reporting our discussions for the time being, I initiate the dialogue with a question and answer session. Q stands for what I said, since I’m the moderator; A stands for all the responses or even questions by the participants. We may change the format of the presentations later on as to identify the participants by their initials. voila!

I raised the question by referring to a phrase in many of our prayers “I turn away from the lie.” Our prayers make a clear distinction between lying and other wrongdoing by using two distinct verbs forbidding our engagements in them all. We “run away or turn away” from lying, while we suffice it to “regret” bad words and bad thoughts and bad deeds. Obviously there is a categorical difference between lying and other wrongdoing.
Q: How could we define “lie” so we could tell our children that this is the sin you should avoid?
A: Whatever which is not the truth.
Q: Do you mean truth and falsity could be verified either by some sort of experience or the laws governing the relation of ideas? The door is closed is a lie if door is open, and 2×2=5 is a lie since mathematical laws make it equal 4.
A: Well, something like that, but I mean something like a car accident; if one runs over the other and we as a witness testify the opposite.
Q: But doesn’t it fall in the category of false testimony rather than lying?
A: We have to know why we should not lie. If we know that, then we can avoid that end.
A: Whatever is intentional and we benefit from, i.e. if we distort the facts just to make it fit our interest.
Q: So it is OK to tell a lie when we do not receive any benefit from it, such as the lies that someone else or some other group, beside ourselves, benefit from?
(No answer.)
Q: And regarding the correspondence to fact and the relation of ideas, where do we fit fiction stories? Are they considered lies? My father did.
A: No, they are not lies; they are just the works of the imagination.
Q: All lies I know require some sort of imagination.
A. But lying is the distortion of truth. It is the reversing or changing of what has happened, but fiction is about something which never happened. It makes something out of nothing.
A: But most of fictions are based on a grain of truth and then are extended either by exaggeration or complete distortion. Let’s take the Shahnameh’s stories; well, they are lies after all.
A: Not really, if we do not take them as historical documents and just read them as stories.
Q: The same could be said about when children lie about fictitious friends etc. How should we take them?
A: Just as an act of the imagination. There is no limit to that, and we should not limit it.
A: Well, the other day my daughter came home from school and said she had won a competition. I knew it may not be true, so I asked her if it is the truth. “Did it really happen?” She laughed and said: “No, it is not true and did not happen.” What did I do? Did I stop the progress of her imagination or teach her to be truthful? What if I would not have noticed it at all and would have believed her in the first place?
A: Well, she should know that next time she tells you something, you won’t believe it.
Q: But it is exactly the point. You are the one who said these are not lies and just acts of the imagination. Where and how we draw a line?
A: Again, if we know why we should not lie we would know what a lie is and what is not!
A: That will lead to a sort of thing like “lies of convenience” practiced in Shiite Islam.
Q: Two of our participants hold pragmatic view on lying, i.e. the end would not only justify the means but also define it. While adhering to this theory is very useful and indeed would be considered rational in social justice issues, it remains to be seen if it withstands the challenge morally and ethically.
We ended our discussion inconclusively at this point and will continue it next time when, hopefully, we will have a full hour, with not only more participants, but also further progress into the dept of the notion of lying.
To our online participants: please feel free to leave your comments.

WELCOME! خوش آمدید

Dear friends,

I welcome you all to participate in this discussion group.

My long-standing idea for this group was reinforced when in my last trip to Iran I visited the shrine of Pir-e Sabz in Yazd in the Spring of 2005. I recall that when I returned to Tehran, I called Evan, my husband, in New York and cried. I had a hard time describing my feelings, it was just like visiting a group of children who had lost their parents in a disaster and were now abandoned, waiting for the grace of God to help them. The only difference was that there had been no disaster and the orphans were not waiting, they just thought that is the way it is, life is being orphans. I did not know which caused me to cry, the orphans I met, or the orphans who thought that life means being orphans...

Last fall the article in the New York Times about the shrinking of the Zoroastrian community shrank my heart. I receive so many calls from my non-Zoroastrian friends urging us to do something! I remember when with a friend, Cyrus, we ran to Shirin Khosravi in the Asian Society, my friend pleaded with her to “please so something.”

And finally here we are, hopefully doing something which is long overdue, to find out about the religion which so many hearts throb after.

I am extremely pleased that my suggestion was met with agreement and I hope we develop and extend these discussions to those outside our community and outside our faith.

The format I have in mind is a discussion on a specific topic to take place in Arbab Rostam-e Guive Darb-e Mehr, on the second Sunday of every month at 2:00 pm (after Persian classes). I will post the content of our discussion in this blog which I have set up specifically for this purpose right after the meetings. Everyone can participate in the discussion and leave a comment on the blog. The participants can review the comments and respond to them either as a comment or as a posting on the blog.

I would like to urge the participants to forward the blog to the people on their mailing lists and help me set a mailing list for our blog.

Our blog has room for links on Zoroastrianism to which I would encourage you all to contribute.

The topics will be selected from among the tenets of the religion and of course any relevant subject would be welcomed. The first topic we will start with is “lying,” which I expect will go for a while.

Once more, I am thankful to the members of Iranian Zoroastrian Association and particularly to Shirin Khosravi , our president, who very gallantly encouraged me in this regard.