Live with it

This is it, folks, this is the life we inherited

Balatarin
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Live with it
by Shahrbanou
04-Jan-2009
 

Dear Friends

The perpetual optimist that I am rumoured to be learned some good lessons in 2008. Yes, bad things happen: Greed and grievances everywhere you look. Civilians pulveralized every day by bombs and guns meant for others. Poverty and disease still reign royally. Jobs are lost by the millions around the world.

We worry about our parents' health and that of parents everywhere. And yes, age is catching up: If we haven't started our Great Universal Novel by now, the probability that it will ever see the light of day is zilch.

Neither prince/princess charming, nor his/her dull distant cousin will eventually show up. We can't run up the stairs anymore (I never could anyway).

But, as long as we are alive (and alas, many are not), and we still have a functioning mind and heart, and good friends to remind us of that, we can still live a worthy life: Simply absorb the meaning of the characters inscribed on the Tsukubai (water basin) behind the Rock Garden in at the Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto (photo above): "I learn to be content".

These five words can be understood in different ways, but when I came across them in January, I realized that we, Iranians, got it all wrong when we followed the carpe diem philosophy of Khayyam, when he claimed, a wine cup in one hand and the tresses of his beloved in the other:

Chon aaghebate kaare jahaan nistist

Engaar ke nisti, cho hasti khosh baash

(a bit of homework for non Farsi speakers to go get the precise translation, but grosso modo: the ultimate end is void, so now that you are here, be happy).

The art is not to be "happy" (khosh boudan), but "content" (as in acceptance, humble satisfaction). This is it, folks, this is the life we inherited. You are what you are and you are not what you are not. Learn to live with it.

If we each did that, maybe the greed will stop, and grievances will diminish as a result too. Maybe peace within will translate in peace without. Maybe. Let's try it for a year, and if it doesn't work, then go back to that futile excercise called striving to be happy.

So, to all my friends all over the world, including in my adopted beloved lands of Iran, France, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, India and the US:

"Have a content 2009".

My best wishes to you and your families

Shahrbanou

Balatarin
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"Dasti be jam e baade o

by Maz2 (not verified) on Tue Jan 06, 2009 07:04 PM PST

"Dasti be jam e baade o dasti be zolf e yaar.........
Raqsi chonin meyaane e maydanam aarezust " from Moulana(Rumi). hope for a better tomorrow.

" Az dey ke gozast hich az o yaad makon
fardaa ke nayamda st faryaad makon
bar naamada o gozashta bonyaad makon
hali khosh baash o omr bar baad makon"
(omar khayyam).

the philosophy of "no tomorrow".


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Flying Solo

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by Flying Solo on Sun Sep 27, 2009 10:40 PM PDT

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Dear Shahrbanou,

by Killjoy (not verified) on Sun Jan 04, 2009 05:48 PM PST

You wrote:

"... I realized that we, Iranians, got it all wrong when we followed the carpe diem philosophy of Khayyam, when he claimed, a wine cup in one hand and the tresses of his beloved in the other."

Reading your analogy/interpretation of Khayyam's Carpe Diem, I thought of his achievements as a man of science who spent most of his life in search of knowledge and worked in so many disciplines and I wondered whether it would be safe to assume that many "Iranians," for whatever reasons, might have been inclined to take Omar Khayyam's poetry at its face value.

Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

"Omar Khayyam was a Persian[1] polymath[2][3], mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and above all[4]poet, who lived in Persia.

He is best known for his poetry, and outside Iran, for the quatrains (rubaiyaas) in Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, popularized through Edward Fitzgerald's re-created translation. His substantial mathematical contributions include his Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, which gives a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle.[6] He also contributed to calendar reform and may have proposed a heliocentric theory well before Copernicus[citation needed]"

Have a wonderful 2009.


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Foundation: Fundementalism Revisited

by Abol Hassan Danesh, Sociologist (not verified) on Sun Jan 04, 2009 03:07 PM PST

>
<
>
Ground Zero

What kind world we live in?
What kind of world...
It has become all materialistic
Devoid of spirit
And in oder to reach the material
Man slit another man's throat
As confrtably as
He cuts cheese for breakfast without thought
Yet the unit of this beloved material
On which he builds his aspiration for wealth and more body
Is spread like dog drops in street
Yet no body bothers to pick it up
To put it back in his piggy bank
For time of emergencey
Then one wonders
Where materialistic folk's ties is
When you don't find them bending
"To pick it up"

Danesh ;)


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