Hero #152: Zoroaster … (01/02/16)
Zoroaster (also known as Zarathustra) was an ancient Persian prophet whose teachings and innovations on the religious traditions of ancient Iranian-speaking peoples developed into the religion of Zoroastrianism, which by some accounts was the world’s very first major religion.
Zoroaster saw the human condition as being the mental struggle between aša (truth) and druj (falsehood), which thereafter manifested a similar struggle between Love and fear. So it is that humankind’s essential purpose is to nourish and maintain aša. For humankind, according to Zoroaster, this occurs through active participation in life and the exercise of constructive thoughts, words and deeds. Zoroaster emphasized the freedom of the individual to choose right or wrong, as well as stressing an individual’s responsibility for his or her deeds. This personal choice to enliven aša and thereby shun druj (ignorance and chaos) is one’s own decision and never a mandate from any other political or religious authority.
It is also worthy of note that Zoroaster’s influence extended well beyond Persia. Indeed, Zoroastrian philosophy has been shown to have influenced the development of both Judaism (and as such, indirectly, Christianity) and Platonic thought, and has been identified as one of the key early events in the development of Western philosophy in general (with the 2005 Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy ranking Zarathustra first in its chronology of philosophers). In addition, among the classic Greek philosophers, Heraclitus and Pythagoras are often referred to as having been inspired by Zoroaster and his “love of wisdom.”
“One good deed is worth a thousand prayers … Taking the first footstep with a good thought, the second with a good word, and the third with a good deed, I entered paradise … Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy … Always meet petulance with gentleness and perverseness with kindness. A gentle hand can lead even en elephant by a hair. Reply to thine enemy with gentleness … By my love and hope I beseech you – do not forsake the Hero currently residing in your Soul!” ~ via Zoroaster
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