Homage Unto Ahura Mazda

By Dastur Dr. M. N. Dhalla

Chapter I

Thou art all in all to me, Ahura Mazda

Thou art the foundation of my life. Thou art the lord of my body and mind and soul. I commend myself into thy hands. I give my all in thy keeping, I will consecrate my mind to thee, I will pour out my heart to thee, I will surrender my soul to thee. Thou art my creator and nourisher, my guardian and protector, my guide and friend. With thee for me, I am wise and virtuous, strong and courageous, rich and safe, happy and hopeful. Unto thee be praise and glorification now and for ever, Ahura Mazda.

I long to live in thy presence and walk in thy presence, with not a shadow between. I seek fellowship with thee and friendship with thee. I love thee with passionate devotion, my loving father.

Thou dost live in the highest heaven, they say. However high my soul scales the heights of heaven in thy search, a further height it finds that seems beyond its reach. Like a lark thirsting for the drops of rain and a fish dying for water, I am a thirst for the refreshing waters of thy love. Assuage my thirst, O Fountain of the life-giving waters of life.

Down in my heart, I will raise thee a sanctuary. There will I seek thee and find thee and greet thee in solemn silence. There will I lift my heart unto thee. There will my soul commune with thee. Grant that I may meet thee alone for the enrichment of my spiritual life.

The world grows radiant in thy presence. Thy peace descends upon my soul, my eyes are alight with it, and my face is bathed in it, when, in moments of rapturous ecstasy, I am lifted out of myself towards thee. My heart pulsates with unspeakable joy, when thou dost take me for thy friend and dost pour down thy joy into my soul and life into my life.

My life of the spirit is impoverished, when I neglect communing with thee. A tense silence holds between me and thee when I cease to meet thee and confer with thee. My spiritual vision is blurred. I cannot feel thy presence, I cannot see thy radiant face. Ill do I requit thy gratitude, when I desert thee and go over to Angra Mainyu, the Evil Spirit, and live for him. My footsteps slide on the path of wrong. Like a land bird that finds no solid object to alight upon, when it is out to sea, I am lost when I leave thee and find no place of safety for my misguided soul. Every door is slammed in my face. There is no hope unless, thou in thy infinite mercy, dost forgive my folly and guide back my faltering footsteps to thee. Quicken and strengthen my faith in thee.

Let me faithfully and steadfastly range myself on thy side. Let me be steady in the performance of the task that thou dost assign me to do. Let me not swerve a hair's breadth from the path of my duty. Let me wear out my soul in thy service, even as the candle burns itself before it gives light.

My life is wrapped up in thee and in thy protecting love. Hold me by my hands and guide me and I will follow thee wherever thou dost lead me. I will serve thee to the end of my life, till thou dost call me back from my earthly sojourn to my final rest and repose in thee. May I always find favour in thy eyes. May thy thought pervade my mind and heart. Thou art the goal of my thoughts and desires. My longing is for thee. May my heart rest in thee. I will bring to thee songs of praise and invocation. I will pray unto thee and adore thee and praise thee and invoke thee and worship thee with all my mind and all my heart and all my soul, O thou that art my all in all, Ahura Mazda.

Thy name is above all names, Ahura Mazda

Thy name is above all names, the most majestic and the most sublime. The sound of thy name is the sweetest that human ear can hear. Countless persons call thee simultaneously by thy name and thou dost hear them all and respond to them all at one and the same moment. Thou art the same one God, but men give thee many names, Ahura Mazda. Many a million time more is thy august name pronounced between morn and eve in the seven zones of the earth than any other name, human or divine.

When I am in low spirits and the sorrows of life bear heavily on me, the invocation of thy name cheers me and lightens the load of my sorrow. When danger threatens me and strikes terror in my heart, when trouble chases me on my pilgrimage through the thorny path of life and fear strikes me mute, the remembrance of thy holy name lends me courage to fight my way boldly to safety. My thoughts are filled with thy image and devotion surges up in my heart, when I meditate upon thy name, Ahura Mazda.

I shall wake in the dawn with thy name on my lips, I shall begin my day's work in thy name, and I shall glorify thy name by my deeds during the day. At night-fall I shall offer my thanksgiving prayer unto thee for all thy guidance and help in my working hours and retire to sleep with thy name on my lips. When I have run my course upon earth and my life is done, vouchsafe, Ahura Mazda, that I may sink into death with thy name on my lips.

Thou art the creator of all, Ahura Mazda

Creation is the free act of thy divine goodness, Ahura Mazda. When nothing was, thou alone didst live in thy sublime self-sufficiency. Thou art the father of the Amesha Spentas and the Yazatas, and the Fravashis are thine.

Thou didst clothe the heavenly realms with light and thou didst create the earth and waters and the plants and the animals and men. Thou didst determine the course of the sun and the moon and the stars and the seasons. Thou dost uphold the earth and the firmament from falling. Thou dost make the moon wax and wane and the tides to ebb and flow. Thou dost yoke swiftness to wind and clouds. Thou hast created the corporeal world and the spiritual, O Creator of all that breathes and breathes not.

Thou didst create man and breathe life in his body. Thou hast endowed him with the power of thinking and the freedom of will. Man, thou hast said, is the greatest and the best in thy creation, the redeemer of the world of imperfection with thy guidance and thy help.

Thou art the father and lord of creation and with unfailing and undivided care and protection thou dost look after the welfare of us all with the tender care of a loving father. Homage and adoration, praise and glorification be unto thee, O Heavenly Father.

Thou art our nearest and dearest, Ahura Mazda

Thou art enthroned on the highest heights, thou art seated in the deepest depths, Ahura Mazda. Thou art in the immensity of space and thou art in the millionth part of the point of a needle. The world is not large enough to hold thee, the grain of sand is not small to seat thee. Thou dost swim on the waters of Vourukasha, as thou dost float on the expanse of a dewdrop. The contents of thy being are in the largest of the large and the smallest of the small, O thou that art beyond all bounds.

Thou hast thy celestial mansions in the highest heavens. Thou dost dwell upon the vast expanse of the earth and thou dost abide in the hearts of the righteous persons. Thou art transcendent and thou art infinitely more sublime and great than thy creatures. Yet art thou not so remote and ineffable as not to be approached and addressed and greeted by thy ardent worshippers. Thou art not the remote spectator of the world thou hast created. Thou art immanent and man can enter into close and loving relations with thee and own thee as his father and brother and friend.

Thou art all-pervading. There is no conceivable place where thou art not. Closer than the eyes are to the ears, or the ears are to the mouth, art thou to all that which the corporeal world thinks and speaks and does.

I need not call thee, or need I enquire where thou mayest be, for thou, my ever present companion, art with me even before I think of thee, Ahura Mazda.

Thou art all-good, Ahura Mazda

Thou art the fountain of goodness, Ahura Mazda, and whatever is good in the world proceeds from thee. Thy goodness extends to the good and evil alike, for thy desire is all-beneficent. Through thy perfect goodness, dost thou take infinite care of our protection, preservation, and guidance. Discipline my soul, O Lord, to trust in thy unfailing goodness and lean upon thy goodness in weal or woe.

Thy goodness transcends my power to recount it in words. A hundred, hundred thousand years are not enough to tell the story of thy infinite goodness, O ineffable Lord. Words are but feeble expression of the grateful feelings that fill my heart. With the deep gratitude of my heart and soul. I thank thee on my knees with my whole heart and with my whole soul, O God of goodness.

When I recall the countless benefits of life that thou, in thy manifold goodness, dost confer upon me, my heart glows with devotion for thee. Let goodness be a part of my being, my very nature. Let it grow in me from day unto day. Let my goodness be habitual and instinctive. Let me think goodness, speak goodness, and do goodness. Let me hunger and thirst after goodness.

Help me to be good, but help me, my Heavenly Father, to make others good. Help me to play my part, however humble, in the diffusion of goodness. Let my prayer in deeds of goodness to others ever follow my prayer in words to thee.

I pray unto thee to make me good before I ask thee to make me great. If I cannot court greatness, my God, let me not go without goodness. Help me to be great in goodness, even though lowly I be in greatness. Mortal are greatness and glory on earth, but goodness is immortal, and goodness alone at death, will accompany my soul to heaven, Ahura Mazda.

Though invisible thyself, thou art all-seeing,
Ahura Mazda

Thou art invisible and none can see thee. Invisibility is the chief characteristic of thy spirituality, Ahura Mazda. Though present everywhere, thou art unseen anywhere. Thy invisibility hides thee from all eyes, human and divine. The Amesha Spentas and Yazatas, thy archangels and angels, see thee not. The souls of the righteous dead behold thee not. In his celestial conference with thee, Zarathushtra saw thee not and Viraf, in his beatific vision, saw but the sovereign light in thy ineffable presence.

Unseen by all, thou dost see all, O All-seeing One. Nothing is hid from thee. Thou dost see my mind through and through. Though dost search the deepest depths of my heart. Thy searching eyes are ever upon me. Thou dost survey my secret thoughts. I hide them from those that are nearest to me, but I cannot hide them from thee, though thou livest farthest on high. Thou art at once remotest and closest to me, thou that livest in all space and beholdest all in both thy worlds, this and that.

Thou, Ahura Mazda, didst say unto Zarathushtra that to see a righteous person was like seeing thee. I will then strive to see thee in the righteousness of righteous persons around me. But I pray unto thee for more. Inspire me to act righteousness and own righteousness and be righteousness that, steeped in righteousness and righteousness myself, I can see thee in my righteous self.

And thou didst also say, Ahura Mazda, unto thy holy prophet that thou wert light and seeing light was to see thee. I will then piously endeavour to see and discern thee in the light that shines in the yonder heavens and down upon earth. But lighten my heart, I beseech thee, with thy illuminating presence, that prayerful of heart and upright of conduct, I may behold thee within me, without going without.

Thou art light, Ahura Mazda

Thou art light, Ahura Mazda. Where thou art, there is light. Void of thee all is darkness. In thy resplendence thou dost live in thy heavenly realms and wear the starspangled heaven as thy garment. In the realm of the endless light, thou dost hold the council of thy angels and archangels, arrayed in robes of light. The august Fravashis and the souls of the righteous dead dwell in this thy all-shining, happy abode.

Thou didst create light and bathe the heavens in the light of the sun. Thou didst fill the earth with light, thou didst cover the sky with thy light and thou didst illumine the world with numberless silvern lamps at night.

The earth trembles when the sun darkens, for then from the filth and stench, dirt and damp, there are born beyond number germs and microbes, insects and mosquitoes, flies and fleas, the hideous emissaries of disease and death. These, nicknamed the daevas or demons of Angra Mainyu, invade all the seven zones of the earth to plague and to kill the creation of thy Good Spirit, Spenta Mainyu.

Then when the morn does break and the sun warms with its light and the sun-light gives warmth, there stand the spiritual Yazatas, a hundred and a thousand, to gather together and distribute the light upon the earth made by Ahura. The flaming darts of the swift-horsed Hvare Khshaeta scorch and burn the Daevas, the shafts of his sunshine fall upon the skulls of the demons, the radiant rays of the rising sun stream downward upon earth and the morning light dispels the darkness and gloom of the night.

Physical as is thy light, mental and moral and spiritual light is also thine, Ahura Mazda. Knowledge is the light of the mind, as truth is thy moral light and, righteousness the light of the spirit. Light is life, when darkness is death and life is heaven, as darkness is hell. Everything good is light. I pray for light and more light and light again for my whole being from thee, O thou Fountain of light divine.

Thou art the same from age to age, Ahura Mazda

Changeless art thou, Ahura Mazda, the same now and for ever. Thou art the transcendent being moving all yet moved by none. Thou alone dost remain changeless and unaffected in the midst of the manifold changes. Everything all around waxes to wane, grows to decay, is born to die and everywhere is witnessed the ever-changing phenomena. Thou alone art never changing, O immutable Lord.

After the day the night, after the spring the summer, after the storm the calm, after health the sickness, after prosperity the adversity, after youth the old age, after life the death.

Name and fame, greatness and glory, shine but a While and fade; castles and palaces, turrets and towers raise their heads to heaven to totter and topple; thrones and empires glory in their rise, but to fall to dust forgotten.

Changeless amid changes, art thou. Unmoved mover of all art thou. The same from age to age art thou, the same to endless time art thou, the same for ever and aye shalt thou be, O immovable Ahura Mazda.

Thou art Ageless, Ahura Mazda

Thou art the beginning and thou art the end of all, Ahura Mazda. Thou hadst no beginning and thou shalt know no end. Long, long ages ago, ere creation came into being through thy creative will, thou didst live in sublime solitude. When Yazatas were not, and Amesha Spentas were not and the Fravashis existed as the contents of thy divine mind, when heaven was not, and earth was not, when waters and plants were unknown, and animals and men were unheard of, thou alone wert, O thou above and beyond time.

The age of the earths and suns and moons and stars and planets on earth and of angels and archangels in heaven can be counted. Thou alone art ageless. In vain does man dream of measuring thy age. Human thought cannot reach it. Thou alone can comprehend it.

At the dawn of creation, there was rejoicing and happiness in thy divine household, for it was the birthday, the first of all birthdays, human or divine, of Vohu Manah, the first in thy creation. The angels and archangels above and men and women below, have ever since made their birthdays auspicious occasions for thanksgiving and joy. Thou art the only being who has no birthday, for there is no day of thy birth, O Giver of universal births.

Thine is Zrvan Akarana, the Boundless Time the hungerless and thirstless, ageless and deathless. Thine alone is eternity and neither the Yazatas nor the Amesha Spentas share it with thee. Born in time, they will live everlastingly. Man, born in time, has to die his bodily death before he too will live for ever.

Boundless is the ocean of eternity, bounded neither by shore nor horizon. Righteous in life and righteous in death, I long for the grand and glorious day when, breaking the mooring of the earthly life, my immortal soul will embark upon the exhilarating voyage on the waters of thy Boundless Time, Ahura Mazda.

Thy will is the pole star of my life, Ahura Mazda

Work thy sovereign will and rule over all as thou willest, Ahura Mazda. Rule at thy will in sublime felicity over the waters and over the plants and over the entire creation of righteousness. I will make thy will the pole star of my life and will think and speak and do as it is thy will that I should.

I will not claim my will as mine, for wayward and erring is my will. My will functions best when it is thine. I will not will what is not thy will. I will resign my will to conform with thine.

I will not own my will as mine. It is thine to do what thou wouldst. I surrender my will to thine. I submit to thy will, mind and heart, body and soul. Direct me where thou willest and as thou willest.

Help me to know thy will and inspire me to follow thy will. Prepare me for thy will that I may do it dutifully. Let thy will abide in my heart and rule my movements from within, that I may be one at heart with thee. Zarathushtra attuned his will to thine and I will aim at doing, what he did, that my will may repose and rest in thee, Ahura Mazda.

My heart longs for thee, Ahura Mazda

I need thee, only thee. I cannot do without thee, Ahura Mazda. Be thou ever near me and with me. Grant that I may live in thee and thou in me. I have everything when I have thee. Everything is mine when thou art mine. With thee by my side, I am rich in the midst of poverty, strong in my weakness, and happy in my misery. Be with me when I live and be by my side when I die, my God.

Thou dost never fail me. Help me never to stray from thee. Guide me, in thy mercy, to the straight path when, in ignorance, I lose my track and wander far from thee. Take me back into thee, kindly Lord, for I have no refuge for me other than thee.

Life is unbearable without thee, O Life of my life. I feel the void of my heart when thou art lost to me. Forlorn I feel when thou art not near me. In losing thee I lose the sweetness and joy and happiness of life. As life is dismal to the unhappy widow, bereft of her loving lord, so life turns desolate for me when thou dost leave me. As the earth is dark and dreary, when the sun refuses to light her, so lost in darkness and gloom, I roam when thou dost not shed thy light on my life.

Let me not falter in my devotion to thee. Help me to stand steadfast as rock in my loyalty to thee. Vouchsafe that I may grow from within my heart in loving likeness to thee and be holy and righteous like thee. Strengthen my resolve to think and speak and work for thee, live for thee, die for thee, thine in life and thine in death and thine in eternity, O thou Eternal One.

I offer thee my life, Ahura Mazda

With homage and adoration, praise and glorification, I lay my offerings at thy feet, and dedicate my all to thee, Ahura Mazda.

What I bring unto thee and call mine is in truth thine own, for all I own is of thy rich bounty, O thou Lord of bountiful gifts. The offerings and oblations that I offer unto thee are of thy own giving, O giver of all. Thou givest them freely to me and I approach thee humbly with a handful from thy abundance as a token of my gratefulness to thee. All I have I owe thee and all I bring to thee is then thine. Yet large-heartedly thou dost delight to acknowledge it as mine. I am ever thy debtor, O benevolent Lord.

Thou dost not look for rich repasts and costly libations, preaches Zarathushtra. The innocent heart of the pious poor and the contrite heart of the sinner, he teaches, is the best offering that wins thy favour. Thou dost come sooner to the poor who lays his good thoughts, good words, and good deeds in tribute at thy altar, than to the rich who labours to greet thee with costly rituals and elaborate sacrifices. I will sacrifice truth and righteousness to thee, O righteous God.

I will give myself, body and soul, to thee. I will give thee my heart in grateful thanksgiving for thy unfailing kindness to me. I will give thee what is nearest and dearest to me, my life, even as holy Zarathushtra gave the life of his own body as an offering unto thee, Ahura Mazda.

Thou dost bury me under the burden of thy gifts, Ahura Mazda

From day unto day will I lift my heart in thanksgiving unto thee when I take my daily meals, O Creator, Nourisher, and Sustainer of the world.

Thou dost feed me and clothe me and provide me with all my needs. Thou, my maker, knowest my wants and freely dost thou bestow them upon me every morn. Thou dost daily fill my life with the rich blessings that I enjoy. With the deep gratitude of my grateful heart I thank thee for all that thou doest for me.

From morn to eve dost thou bury me under the burden of a hundred and one of thy precious gifts that embellish my bodily life and I am satiated with them. Feed, likewise, my soul that hungers for the food of the spirit. Moisten my soul, dry as a parched land, that thirsts for the life-giving waters of thy divinity.

I have my daily bread and I have my health and I have everything that makes my life happy on earth. I have but one longing and one aspiration now and I pray unto thee to make me worthy of it. Verily my yearning is to gain the giver of the gifts himself for me, to get thee for myself, to make thee mine, mine own, O Mazda.

The Amesha Spentas

Homage unto the Amesha Spentas, the lordly and shining, the Holy Immortals, that are seven with thee, their father and creator, O Ahura Mazda. These, thy archangels sublime, are the rulers and overseers and protectors of thy creation in both the worlds. May they descend from their celestial heights to lead and guide the erring mankind.

The Amesha Spentas, sing the sacred texts, are all of one thought and one word and one deed. They the seven think and speak and do as but one and see one another's soul. May we be like unto them of one mind to think good thoughts and speak good words and do good deeds. May we be of one heart to live in concord and peace.

The exalted heavenly lords are spirits sublime. Spirit with spirit, they can commune and converse and in one accord they can work in unbroken concord. We thy mortals, thou Spirit of Spirit, are matter and spirit welded into one. Thou hast built us each a beautiful bodily mansion and loaned it for life to the spirit to live its earthly life. The mansion has windows and doors, but the spirit, through senses, sees only what senses can show. The spirit yearns to see the spirit, but the flesh veils the spirit and hides another's spirit from sight. Death will one day break upon the house of clay and, spirit disembodied, will then see the spirit. But grant, O Gracious God, that with Asha Vahishta's blazing fire of righteousness we may scorch and burn the fleshy veil, that the spirit with spirit may meet even while alive.

The flesh, with its numberless forms and colours, divides and keeps man from man apart and aloof. But the spirit is one and the same in us all. May the spirit of men and women and children that inhabit the seven zones of the earth abide in thee and live in fellowship with thee, even as the Amesha Spentas do, O thou the first and father of the seven Holy Immortals.

And now we praise and invoke you, the exalted and shining Holy Immortals of Ahura Mazda. We beseech you to come down from the highest heights of the heavens to our abodes and accept our offerings of the good thoughts of our minds and good words of our mouths and good deeds of our hands. Protect us and guide us and help us to tread, with steady steps, the steep and rugged path of life. With devotion we approach you and with love we lay before you our earthly possessions and our bodies and the very life of our bodies and our souls and all that we call our own in this world. These are our sacrificial offerings unto you, Amesha Spentas. Shed your blessings on our heads, illumine our minds with your light, fill our hearts with your joy, inflame our spirits with your love, ye Archangels of Ahura Mazda. 

The Yazatas

Ahura Mazda. Behind a multitude of thy Yazatas, thou dost stand the Yazataman Yazata, the Most Worshipful One. These thy angels, holy and beneficent, mighty and glorious, work in the domain assigned to them by thee. Thou dost govern through their medium. Thou hast committed the superintendence of thy universe to them. They exercise providence over thy creation. They watch over us, they guide us. They help us in steering and saving the ship of life when it is tossed on the tempestuous sea and vicious waves lash it. They lead us to the straight paths when we grow remiss in the performance of our duties.

The Yazatas, Ahura Mazda, are indicative of thy goodness and wisdom and truth and righteousness and Justice and mercy and power and perfection and of all thy thoughts and ideas and ideals.

Thou hast endowed man with the ability and power to bring the ideals to fruition. It is thy supreme gift to man. Thou hast ordained that man can rise to the heights of the angels and can become an Yazata. Help me then in my efforts to realize thy ideals. May the ideals and virtues they represent dwell in me. As the rays of the sun woo the rose to open its petals, so may they arouse emulation in me and move my heart and inspire my life and unfold my soul to their inspiration and fire me with the burning desire to be good and do good and do it from the depth of a religious impulse, Ahura Mazda.

Sraosha, the ever-watchful Guardian

Thy word incarnate, Ahura Mazda, is Sraosha, the impersonation of thy religious lore. He is the celestial teacher of the Mazda-worshipping religion, even as Zarathushtra is the terrestrial. He, the wakeful and watchful, has not rested by day or by night since Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu, thy Spirits twain, the Good and the Evil, created the world. Sleep has forsaken him and his eyes have not slumbered ever since the beginning of life.

Thou hast made Sraosha a mansion supported by a thousand pillars, self-lighted from within, star-spangled from without. From the wide portals of this his heavenly abode, he, the holy and victorious, well-shapen and world-increasing, the strongest, the sturdiest, and the swiftest, drives forth after sunset in his heavenly chariot, drawn by four white shining horses, fleeter than the winds, fleeter than the rain, fleeter than the winged birds, fleeter than the well-darted arrow, overtaking all and overtaken by none, towards the land of the seven rivers, Hapta Hindu.

When the shadows of the evening cover the earth and the gathering darkness proclaims the approach of the night, Sraosha, with loins girt up and with an uplifted club in his hand, guards the sleeping world against the onslaught of Aeshma, the demon of Wrath and the forces of evil.

Sraosha comes unto him whom thou Ahura Mazda dost will. May he then come unto us who long to live under his constant guardianship. Vanish from the house and the clan and the town and the country, evil of all kind, wherein Sraosha is welcomed by the righteous as a friendly, beloved, and an honoured guest. With good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, we pray, Ahura Mazda, that thy Sraosha may enter our abodes and live in our midst for our guidance and protection.

Sraosha in life, Sraosha in death

Death upon earth is birth in heaven, first said he who is Zarathushtra, O giver of both life and death, Ahura Mazda. The disembodied soul is born anew in heaven. As childbirth is attended by travail and pang and the loving mother goes through suffering at delivery of the child she brings forth into the world, so is the severance of the soul from the body fraught with painful labour and agony. As a midwife lightens the suffering of the mother by her skill, even so does thy Sraosha help when earthly life's work is done, the end is nearing, life begins to wane like the passing winter and death leads the dead to the deathless life of heaven.

May kindly Sraosha, then, be near me when I sleep my last sleep upon earth, and may he gently and tenderly wake me in thy resplendent heaven. Dreary and dreadful is the way of death I have to go, and fear and anxiety fill my soul, when I embark upon my journey and know not whither to go. May Sraosha hold my hand and guide my footsteps to the unknown world.

Sraosha in life and Sraosha at death, Sraosha in this world and Sraosha in the next world, Sraosha a judge at the Bridge of Judgment and Sraosha, they say, a collaborator with thee, O Ahura Mazda, at thy final Renovation-Sraosha, thus is everywhere and everywhen. Then make me worthy through constant and conscientious observance of thy religious ordinances, of the help and guidance and protection of Sraosha, thy celestial teacher and preacher of religion, the Zaota, the sacrificing priest on high, O Gracious God.

The Fravashis watch our course with vigilance

At the time of the Hamaspathmaedaya festival, when the snow begins to melt and the rivers begin to flow and the trees begin to grow and the birds begin to fly, the august, glorious and efficacious Fravashis, the Guardian Spirits of the righteous dead, wing their flight earthward from the heavenly regions. Eager and solicitous are they to know who among the living remember them and think of them, and love them and invoke them by their names and pray for their blessings.

The Fravashis represent thee, Ahura Mazda, and keep the living united with the dead. The dead are past our company, they are not past our remembrance. The Fravashis bring to us from heaven the united blessing of the dead and take our thanksgivings heavenward in turn. They live with thee and thy heavenly denizens. They want us to be righteous like them and to be one with them in the life of goodness. We commemorate the Fravashis of the righteous dead from the time of Gaya Maretan, the first man, to the time of Saoshyant, the last man. We commemorate the fravashis of men and women of all times, who, in their days, have worked for the furtherance of righteousness and have fought against wickedness.

May the Fravashis come to our abodes, girt with the blessings of righteousness, as wide as the earth, as long as the rivers, and as high as the sun. May they come to the sacrificial repast we prepare in their honour. May they be propitiated with our offerings of good thoughts and good words and good deeds and walk satisfied in our abodes and never depart offended from there. May they bless us with knowledge and health and virtuous offspring of innate wisdom and long life. May they keep watch and ward about our abodes. May they always protect us with the strength that a thousand men would use in protecting one man.

Nearer in time to Zarathushtra than we are, they have set us the pattern of our conduct. They have led exemplary lives for the emulation of their descendants of succeeding times. They have laid the foundation upon which our communal greatness is built. They have left us a priceless heritage and we cannot fully repay the debt of gratitude to our glorious ancestors. With reverence and affection, let us so live that our living may be an honour to our departed dead.

Lead us, Ahura Mazda, not to rest with glorifying the Fravashis of our ancestral dead with words of praise, but to propitiate them with an offering of our deeds of goodness and righteousness. Help us to walk in the light of their virtue, but help us still more to shine by the nobility of the character and virtues of our own.

The Birth of Zarathushtra

Glorious springtime had come and wide awake was the earth from its wintry sleep. Fields and forests that seemed deadened winter long, were now blooming. Green grass carpeted the earth and warbling birds and flocks and herds made merry on the grassy ground. Blades and ears bloomed into corn and golden corn waved in fair fields. Smiling flowers shed their fragrance all around and the air was laden with the perfume of flowers. The song of birds and the whistlings of the wind in elm and oak, plane and pomegranate, walnut and mulberry trees, and the murmur of water running swiftly over the pebbles caressed the souls of the young and old.

In Airyana Vaeja, the stem-land of the Aryans, on a beauteous morn of an auspicious day, the swift-horsed sun had scattered the clouds and was shining in great splendour. The earth was bathed in his morning light. Then in a village, nestling by the river Darejya, blossomed a life divine in human flesh. A boy babe was born unto Pourushaspa of the family of the Spitamas. Ahura Mazda’s light and peace descended on the happy home.

The holy child was named Zarathushtra. Light radiated from the infant prophet of God with divine effulgence. His countenance bore the impress of divinity. Righteousness was imprinted on his face. Gentle as lamb and sweet as nightingale and pure as dove and brave as lion was he, the like of whom no eye had seen, no ear had heard. Pure in body and pure in mind and pure in heart and pure in spirit, he was Mazda's incomparable gift to mankind.

Nature donned a festive garb, the sun shone with a brighter glory, trees strewed flowers on the ground, roses bloomed in luxuriant profusion, flowers and leaves and grass scented the air with sweet fragrance, creepers climbed the hedges in riotous luxuriance, the birds carolled in the air, myriads of tiny drops of the morning dew shone like pearls upon the leaves and branches of the trees, the clouds floated merrily in heaven, the winds made music in the lofty trees, joy filled the air, and the trees with their leafy tongues and the blades of grass and the grains of sand and birds and beasts and men and everything everywhere in joyous unison sang: "Hail, for to us is born the Athravan, Spitama Zarathushtra."

The hearts of men and women and children thrilled with joy and their souls were filled with rapture, and, singing jubilant songs they hastened to the house where the light of the world was now shining. The bells in the temples rang and their sound floated on the air. When there was joy and merriment all over the world of man, the world of angels fell not behind. The heavenly hosts there joined in universal rejoicings and Ahura Mazda's Abode of Song rang with the divine music of ecstasy.

Zarathushtra, thy prophet, Ahura Mazda, mirrors thee in his righteous self. He reveals thy divine image in his holy person. Thou art completely and perfectly reflected in him. May his sublime teachings enter into my life and transform me into his likeness. Enable me to make conscientious efforts to be like him and to reproduce his virtues in my own character. Teach me to live after Zarathushtra's ideals and help me to carry on his plan of life, that I may live in conscious association with him and conform my life to his ideal life, O Giver of life.

Temptation of Zarathushtra

In his empire of evil, Angra Mainyu, the Evil Spirit, laid a wager that whoso of the host of hell successfully tempted Zarathushtra to his fall would be raised high in rank in the region of darkness. Buiti, the adept in the art of luring man to apostasy, took it. With a hundred devices and mischievous machinations he endeavoured to lure Zarathushtra from his constancy, but failed ignominiously. The prophet of Ahura Mazda frightened him out of his wits. Foiled in his mission, howling in terror did Buiti flee from the blessed one and precipitately took to his heels towards hell.

Burning with wrath and jealousy, Angra Mainyu resolved to wreak vengeance upon the messenger of Mazda. With sweet and beguiling voice of temptation, he accosted Zarathushtra and told him, with cunning smile on his lips, that a mere man was he, born of human parents and hopelessly incapable of withstanding his onslaughts. He, on his part, would award him with wealth that defied calculation and give him the sovereignty of the world if, in his turn, he renounced the faith of Ahura Mazda. Unto him did retort Zarathushtra that neither for the riches of the world, nor for the love of his life, nor if his breath were torn away, would he desist from the good Mazdayasnian religion.

The king of the world of wickedness, thereupon, let loose his legions of demons to assail Zarathushtra, but found him to be an impregnable rock, not to be moved. The holy one humbled them all in the dust and scattered them in flight. Howling and weeping, headlong to hell did they huddle.

Zarathushtra stupefied Angra Mainyu. The Evil Spirit groveled before Zarathushtra and crouched in abject servility to him. With heart-rending agony he bewailed and cried that Zarathushtra accomplished what all the heavenly Yazatas together were unable to do. He alone of all men, though earthy of earth, baffled him and his infernal crew.

Life, my Lord, is struggle with temptation. Temptation rages all around me and all throughout my life. Temptation compels me not. Victim of my weakness and ignorance willingly I succumb to its beguilement and allow it to drag me down from the pedestal of honor to the degradation of shame.

Let me not yield to temptation, Ahura Mazda. Let not the mettle of my heart melt before the fire of temptation. Let not my power of resistance to temptation be weakened. Let not temptation corrupt my morals. Let it not overcome me. Strengthen me to control and subdue my unruly passions that I may not fall an easy prey to temptation. Enable me to steel myself to fight temptation. When temptation assails me, give me courage, Ahura Mazda, to fight it and vanquish it and tread it beneath my feet, even as was done in his day by Zarathushtra.

Zarathushtra is Lord of Mankind

Thou, Ahura Mazda, hast made Zarathushtra the lord and overseer over mankind. Like unto the radiant and glorious Tishtrya he is the beacon-light on the horizon of life and lights our path leading to thee. He is the embodiment of truth, righteousness and goodness on earth.

Zarathushtra is the polar star of man's searchings. He is the light of man's life. He is constant radiating source of ennobling influence. He radiates the atmosphere of peace and joy, hope and life all around by his immortal teachings. He is like a rock to which man can cling in the shipwreck of his life. He is the consummation in this world of righteousness that is shadowed by wickedness. He is the realized ideal of perfection in this world of imperfection. He is the fulfillment and complement of creation, the beginning and end of life. He is mankind's supremest and sublimest standard and norm for all time.

To see Zarathushtra in spirit is to see thee, Ahura Mazda. To know him is to know thee. To understand him is to understand thee. To follow him is to follow thee. To be like him is to be like thee.

I will assimilate Zarathushtra's teachings into my life. I will live devoted to him. I will make him my example in life. I will keep his sublime image engraved upon my mind. With Zarathushtra as my guiding spirit, sustaining energy, and driving will, fearlessly and courageously will I face whatever befalls and betides me. Manfully onward will I march under his banner, without flinching or faltering from stage to stage on my life's journey. In his steps will I plant my footmarks and walk the ground over which walked his blessed feet. I will live after him. I will make him my constant companion, that he, Zarathushtra, my prophet, my friend, my guardian, my guide, may be my hope, my light, my life, Ahura Mazda.

The passing away of Zarathushtra

With the weight of seven and seventy years on his hoary head, Zarathushtra was seated in his oratory one summer morn, communing and conversing with his father in heaven, when the fell hand of Bratraresh fell upon his sacred person and he received his martyrdom by the sword of the Turanian.

The sepulchral silence of desolation and death descended on earth and rested, forsooth, on Airyana Vaeja, where the blessed one breathed his last. Nature now donned the dark funeral garb. Trees dropped their leaves as though untimely autumn had superseded summer. Flowers faded and withered like weeds and the sweet rose faded before it bloomed. The nightingale neglected wooing the rose and cared not to drink its sweet perfume. Listlessly lowing, the cattle crouched with tears running over their chins. The wind sobbed and sighed, moaned and wailed in sullen silence through the woods. Thus passed the dreary day.

Hvare Khshaeta's sinking sun shed his fiery tears on the horizon and died his daily death. The shades of the eventide deepened. The dark mantle of the night fell over the earth. The stars were invisible, for dismal and dark clouds had swallowed them. Darkness in hell that Viraf beheld was such as could be grasped by hand, he says. Such dense darkness now fell upon the unhappy earth.

Then, on a sudden, the weeping nature flung aside her brooding silence and the elements declared war upon man. The angels of earth and wind and water and fire expressed their wrath in thunder and lightning. They spoke through spears of Vazishta's lightning and thundered through the black, breaking clouds of Tishtrya. The storm that was sullenly brewing now broke in all its fury. The sky was overcast and the earth groaned and grumbled. The winds of Vayu howled and hissed and uprooted and rivened giant trees. Aloud did roar the thunder in the sky and onward it rolled. The rumble of the rain clouds convulsed the earth and the dark and disconsolate clouds wept bitter torrential tears and deluged the earth.

The angel hosts of Ahura Mazda sounded the trumpet call and Vayu's storm abated. The watchman of the night on high kindled a million myriad silvery candles in the sky. Then in the midst of the brilliance of the starlit sky came the bright and beautiful dawn flying on the white wings of peace and rest. A gentle wind from the regions of the south blew with fragrant perfumes. The sublime soul of the messenger of Mazda now winged its way to Garonmana to sit enthroned in the celestial council of the divine Judge.

Zarathushtra is deathless in death. He lives. When the men and women of birth and rank and valour of his day will be forgotten, when the names of his revilers and persecutors will be lost in oblivion, Zarathushtra's holy name will be revered and remembered with devotion and love till time without end. When everything all around will be dust and ashes, Zarathushtra's words will live.

Zarathushtra is even the same to us as was to our ancestors. He is our ideal today as he was to our fathers of old and as he will be to our children. He moulded the lives of our fathers and so may he mould and make our lives today and make our dear community patterned after his sublime life, Ahura Mazda.

Fire is the Symbol of Ahura Mazda

Fire is the purest, grandest, and noblest emblem of thy divinity, Ahura Mazda. It is the sublimest symbol of the faith or Zarathushtra. Fire is the image made by divine hands, incomparably more sublime than any image graven by human hands. It is unsurpassed and unequalled by any in the language of symbology.

Fire is the visible sign of thee that art invisible, the flaming form of thee that art formless. It is the physical manifestation of thy spirituality, the emblem that clothes thy divinity, the representation of thy divine substance, the symbolic presentation of thyself to us.

Fire best explains thee to our mind, it shows thy semblance to our eyes. It is thy nearest substitute and most suitable object through which we can comprehend thee, that art incomprehensible. Fire expresses thy likeness, it reflects thy reality to us, and recalls thee to us when we pray.

In fire as the sublime symbol of my faith, I glory, O glorious Lord. Thou art the reality and fire is thy replica. When I bow before the fire, I worship not the fire but thee alone, Ahura Mazda. Fire is but a sacred symbol that stands for thee and reminds me of thee. I will fix my wandering thoughts on thy fire, I will concentrate my mind upon it, I will meditate daily on it. In the enlightenment of the fire I will see thee, in its inspiration, I will know thee. Verily it is said that fire is thy son, and through the son, will my soul soar unto thee, the Father.

May thy Fire burn for ever in my house,
Ahura Mazda

Fire in its various manifestations, whether as the fire of the hearth on earth, or the fiery substance in the bowels of the earth, or as the genial glow of the sun in the azure vault of heaven, or the silvery sheen of the crescent moon in the sky, or the flickering brilliancy of the stars in the firmament, or in the form of the life-giving energy distributed in the entire creation, is emblematic of thee, Ahura Mazda.

The fire-temple is the symbol in stone of the Mazdayasnian religion and the athravan, the firepriest, feeds the consecrated fire with fresh fuel at every watch of the day and night. I shall raise an altar unto thy divine fire burning in my heart and make it sanctuary. My own athravan will I be and I tend the holy fire within, O thou, the supremest Athravan.

When the fire of the hearth in my house calls me to rise on the third part of the night, and exhorts me to cleanse my body and bring fuel to the fire that it may burn bright, dutifully will I do it and more I will do. With the purity of my mind and the cleanliness of my heart, will I burn incense of the good thoughts of Vohu Manah and the righteousness of Asha, with the full-hearted devotion of Armaiti, on the sacred fire flickering on the altar of my heart and kindle it into a blazing flame. May my soul rise upward unto thee, Ahura Mazda, as the flame on the altar leaps heavenward.

Thy face is hid from my sight. But thou hast said to Zarathushtra that whosoever, with pious intent, sees thy light, can see thee. I shall then keep the portals of my inner temple ajar that thou mayest step in when thou dost think me worthy of the vision of the radiance and glory of thy face. As fire consumes incense, devotion melts my heart in my adoration for thee and I am buoyed up by the hope that through thy fire and in thy fire will I see thee, with the eyes of faith, Ahura Mazda.

The Inner Light

Thou art eternal light, Ahura Mazda. Thy very nature is light. Be thou my light, O Lord of light. I grope in the dark; scatter the darkness. Shed thy guiding light on my darkened path and lead me onward on my way to thy abode of eternal light. Let thy radiance fall upon me that I may live in thy light.

Like the owl that shuns the light, the sinner sees not thy light and, seeing not thy light, he sees not thee. Man veils his eyes when he looks in the face of the brilliant sun. Immeasurably brighter is thy spiritual light than the physical light of the sun. As the rose unfolds its petals to the light of the sun, so help me, Ahura Mazda, to unfold my heart to thy light by my faithful adherence to Asha's righteousness.

On the deep dark ocean of life is the barque of my life moving. Be thou by my side at the helm, I pray. Keep watch over it and guide me to steer the vessel on the waves of thy divine light to land me secure on the yonder shores of the heavenly regions.

The light that burns within the temple of my heart flickers and burns low through my carelessness. Forgive my negligence and let it not fade from my soul. Replenish it in thy unfailing kindness and inspire me to tend it with devoted care. Let thy physical light shine over me from above and let thy light spiritual dart into my soul and illumine it from within. May thy light flood my mind and my heart and inspire me to live by thy inner light, O Thou that livest in those lights highest of the high, Ahura Mazda.

Asha's Universal Order in the Universe

Life upon earth reveals a smooth and graceful and an all round ordered movement. Nature has its seasonal rhythms. Spring and summer, autumn and winter, with their seasonal succession of changes, take their unvarying course. The tides rise and fall punctually. The dawn and morn and noon and evening and night go their uninterrupted daily round. The dying day gives birth to the night. The night hangs its myriad of silvery lamps to lighten the darkness. The dawn breaks to resurrect the day and the day goes the perennial round of its birth. The heavens and their glittering hosts, the sun and the moon and the stars and the planets march at a regulated pace. Immutable are the laws that govern the movements of nature and preserve its unfailing regularity. A stable order ensures the existence of the universe.

Asha is the upholder of a moral order in the inner world of man. Human life is lived the best when man's relations with his neighbours, his duty towards his fellowmen and towards the heavenly beings are regulated according to Asha's moral order of righteousness.

Help me to establish order in my inner world, Ahura Mazda, thou who art the source of all order and law. May concord and not discord, order and not disorder, righteousness and not wickedness always prevail in my inner world. May Asha Vahishta, Best Righteousness, be the upholder of my life, now and for ever.

The Path of Righteousness

The Path of Asha is the Path of Righteousness. One alone is the path, it is the Path of Righteousness. All other paths are non-paths, says he who is Zarathushtra. Thou dost dwell in the straightest paths, Ahura Mazda, that lead to the paradise of the righteous.

Right is the Path of Righteousness. Wrong is the Path of Wickedness. The one leads to heaven, to hell the other. The Path of Righteousness leads to the life of eternal felicity, deviation from it spells soul's destruction for all time. It is left to man to chose whether he will walk the one and be saved or the other and be lost.

Rough and rugged is the path of life. It is best with difficulties and troubles. Temptation draws man away from the right path and waylays him in the wilderness of wrong. He is lost in the labyrinths of wickedness and is at a loss to find his way of the maze.

Protect me, Ahura Mazda, from being beguiled and led astray through tempting pitfalls and alluring snares of Angra Mainyu, the Evil Spirit. Guide me to thread my way through the by-ways of obscurity and obstacles to the straight and safe Path of Righteousness. Give me firm resolve and strong will, that with sustained efforts I can tread successfully the Path of Righteousness in the footsteps of Zarathushtra and reach the final goal, Garonmana, the abode of the righteous.

Righteousness is the rule of life

Righteousness is the norm that measures the worth of man. When righteousness alights upon a serf he grows greater in worth than his master, if the master is stranger to righteousness. Greatness glories not and knowledge shines not, where righteousness dwells not. When prince and peasant are comrades upon earth in the practice of righteousness, as comrades again after death they enter the shining Garonmana and are ranked as equals in the divine court of the King of Kings of heaven and earth.

Righteousness is the prize open alike to be won by all who may. It is equally in the power of all to make it their own. Righteousness shines in rags in the cottage of the poor and shames the raiments of royalty in the palace, if righteousness dwell not there.

He is not great who is not great in righteousness. He is not rich who is not rich in righteousness. He is not healthy who is not healthy in righteousness. He is not heroic who is not heroic in righteousness. The best man and the greatest man and the noblest man is the righteous man.

Ahura Mazda, thou art the righteous Lord of righteousness. Bless me in thy goodness, with good thoughts of the mind and good words of the tongue and good deeds of the hands, that I may think righteousness, speak righteousness, work righteousness, and be a righteous one in the world of righteousness.

Righteousness is Religion

Righteousness is the pivot around which the ethics of Zarathushtra revolves. Righteous and religious is the man or woman who is saintly and possesses noblest character.

Righteousness is thy will, Ahura Mazda. It is the rule of our duty. The law of righteousness is the norm to which man has to conform his life in this world. Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds form the ethical foundation upon which righteousness rests and the basis upon which the entire structure of the system of Mazdayasnian philosophy is reared. This noble truth, at once so pithy and simple, is accessible to all. It does not appeal to the intellectual few and leave aside the ignorant many, nor does it remain the prerogative of a few thinkers and philosophers; but it reaches all and becomes the cherished possession of the prince and peasant alike. Every child of ours imbibes the triad of good thoughts, goods words, and good deeds at its mother's breast.

Rituals help our spiritual development. They are the accompaniments of religion, but not religion itself. Religion is righteousness It rests on the individual's piety, and not on a scrupulous observance of ceremonials or a practice of elaborate lustrations.

Let rituals then inspire religious fervour and devotional piety and righteous conduct in me. I shall seek all my life to gather a store of righteousness. Its use in this world lessens not its stock and secures salvation for my soul in the next, O righteous Lord of righteousness.

Righteousness exemplified the best in Zarathushtra

Purity of body and mind and spirit makes for righteousness and Zarathushtra is the purest in body and mind and spirit. Good thoughts, Good words, and good deeds strengthen righteousness and Zarathushtra, himself the embodiment of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, best thinks and speaks and acts righteousness.

Zarathushtra lives in the atmosphere of righteousness and radiates it all around him. He is righteousness itself living in flesh for the good of mankind.

When Zarathushtra's great prophetic work is beset with untold difficulties, when he faces opposition on all sides, when friends desert his company and kinsmen abandon his cause, when the rulers of the land look upon him with suspicion and the wicked seek to compass his ruin, when friendless and forsaken, hissed and hooted, ridiculed and persecuted, he roams about the villages and towns of Iran, he turns his eager eyes to thee, Ahura Mazda. Thy help and Asha's righteousness sustain him in his hardships and trials. Reduced to the verge of the direst poverty, he seeks not earthly wealth, but imperishable wealth of the spirit, Asha's righteousness.

Zarathushtra fought for righteousness all along his life and vanquished wickedness. It fled before his consummate righteousness as darkness flees before light. Enable me to do in my humble way what Zarathushtra, did in his magnificent way and now exhorts me to do. Kindle the fire of Asha's righteousness in my heart and burn wickedness within me. Strengthen me to combat it in the world without and vanquish it, Ahura Mazda.

Righteousness is its own reward

Righteousness is good. It is best for man in this world and the next. It is happiness here and felicity beyond. He lives his life best upon earth, who lives in righteousness and for righteousness.

Righteousness is the health of the soul. Cleanliness of body, purity of mind, and sanctity of soul bring bodily, mental, and spiritual health to man.

Righteousness is the purity of the soul. Good thoughts, good words, and good deeds feed righteousness. Successful struggle with evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds strengthen righteousness. A righteous person is a perfect man, a consummate man, a saint, a god in flesh upon earth.

Greatness has but a short life, it is righteousness alone that lives for ever. No memorial raised to man rises to the eminence that a man of goodness builds for himself in the shape of his righteousness. Not a man of birth, nor a man of wealth, nor a man of fame is great. Immeasurably greater than all in God's eyes is the man of righteousness.

I will cover my soul close with the radiant garb of righteousness, even as I put next to my skin my sudrah and kusti, the sacred shirt and girdle, the visible symbols of my faith. I will wed righteousness. I will make it my own, my nearest and dearest possession. I will hunger and thirst for righteousness, live for righteousness, work for righteousness, fight for righteousness, and die for righteousness, as the righteous of yore have done in their days. I will be righteous not for the fear of hell, but I will be righteous for the sake of righteousness, O Asha Vahishta, thou Best Righteousness.

Righteousness is the highest riches

Righteousness is the best riches in the world, that can neither be valued in gold nor in diamond. It is the priceless riches that can neither be exhausted, nor stolen, nor lost. Gold and silver are dross. Man, in the end, mingles with dust and all in the world is dust. Righteousness ends not in dust for it is deathless.

Life leaves the richest at death poor, if he owns not righteousness. There comes a day or there comes a night, say the sages of yore, when the master leaves his cattle and the cattle leave their master, and the soul leaves the body. Righteousness alone, the greatest and best of all riches, accompanies the soul after death.

Fortune and wealth, one cannot have at one's will, nor can one maintain the beauty and form of the body for ever, but everyone can embrace righteousness and make it his own if he wills it.

When a man starts on a journey, with him does he take provisions and stores. Let me, likewise, furnish myself now while there is time, with the store of righteousness for the great journey of my soul, which I shall have one day to undertake and from which I shall never return, Ahura Mazda.

Enable me to learn that the man of riches in reality in this world of mine is the man of righteousness. Help me so to live my life in righteousness, that when death takes me away from my children, I may be able to bequeath to them a legacy of my righteous life for them to emulate, for it will be an inheritance for them, richer and better than any wealth and property. Teach me to be content in my poverty and inspire me to be rich in thy righteousness, O Asha Vahishta.

The coming of the Kingdom of Righteousness

On force, have the mighty kingdoms of the world, ancient and modern, been built. Zarathushtra has laid the foundation of a kingdom that is to be built on the bedrock of righteousness. Zarathushtra teaches men and women how best they can work for placing wickedness in the hands of righteousness. Those who fight wickedness in their own persons and around them in the world, prepare the way for the coming of the Kingdom of Righteousness, which is also the Kingdom of Ahura Mazda.

The Kingdom of Righteousness will come when every individual in his or her own capacity will embrace and act righteousness and will make the world of humanity gravitate towards Asha's righteousness. The happy day of the advent of the wished-for kingdom will dawn over the world, when righteousness will vanquish wickedness, when wickedness will be no more, and righteousness will wholly pervade the universe.

Zarathushtra has laid the foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness and has assigned man the stupendous task of building and establishing and completing it. It is left to man to bring that day near or keep it at a distance. It is in his hands to accomplish it now or keep it long in the coming. Zarathushtra is in earnest and eager to hasten its advent. With repeated emphasis does he assert that the Kingdom of Righteousness is near at hand, if only mankind sets about zealously and strenuously to inaugurate it. Passionately does he exhort all not to waver and not to be staggered by the formidable nature of the task, but to aspire to work and struggle and fight for it with body and mind and heart and soul.

Zarathushtra and the righteous ones of all ages have lived and worked and fought for the furtherance of righteousness and the decrease of wickedness. Help me, Ahura Mazda, to be one of the righteous ones of all time. Strengthen me to work for the active propagation of righteousness and to wage a relentless and successful war against wickedness, that I may prove a worthy worker in the inauguration of thy Kingdom of Righteousness.

Prayer is the heavenward soaring of
the soul on wordy wings

Man has always prayed. He is a praying animal. Prayer was born with Gaya Maretan, the first man, it will live up to the time of Saoshyant, the last man to be born upon earth. It is instinctive and innate. It is the inborn urge in man like breathing and thinking and speaking. It is an inalienable accompaniment of human mind.

Prayer ever grows in depth, in fervour, in devotion, in selflessness, in spirituality. Prayer begins with the magic spells of the savage and ends with the sublime songs of the sage. Prayer outgrows man.

Prayer is the expression in words of the pious feelings of the heart, its devotional overflow. It is the breath of the soul. It is the fellowship and communion with Ahura Mazda. It is the noblest expression of thought in words, sublime speech of the spirit, an audible utterance of the heart, and a verbal expression of noble sentiments and feelings. Righteous thinking is prayer.

Through prayer does man convey his feelings of joy and sorrow, gratitude and love, hope and fear. In his hunger and thirst for the divine grace, man lays down through prayer his grievances before his creator, confesses his guilt, craves for help, and seeks mercy.

Prayer is the great discipline for man. It is a striving, a seeking for something beyond man's weak self, higher than himself, a will, a power, a strength, an ideal which man does not possess, but longs to attain.

Help me, Ahura Mazda, to cultivate the habit of prayer. Enable me to know thy will. I pray, that I may conform my impulses to its demands. I will pray with concentration of my mind and I will pray with all my soul. I will pray to thee in words of devotion with all my heart and I will pray to thee in silence, for thou dost hear my prayer even in thought. Thou dost read my thoughts and measure my feelings and know my aspirations. I will pray, Ahura Mazda, that prayer may lift me to thee, and make me thine.

Teach me to pray, Ahura Mazda

Prayer transforms my inner life, Ahura Mazda. It creates me anew. I rise from my prayer refreshed and strong, active in body and agile of mind, enlivened of heart and quickened in spirit. I rise a better man with a radiant countenance, purified thought, tranquil mind, clear heart and buoyant spirit. I pass into religious exaltation.

Let me not pray amiss and let me not say my prayer perfunctorily. I cannot pray amid the distractions of my mind. Help me to control my mind and bring it back from aimless wanderings and recall it in thy presence and concentrate on thee. Give me strength to pray with a single and an undivided mind.

Incline thy ear unto me, Ahura Mazda, when I pray. Feeble are my words, but they rise spontaneously from my heart. I will pray with devotion swelling up from my heart to my lips. My lips will speak the language of my heart and express with my tongue what is hidden in my heart. My heart and soul go out to thee in prayer.

I shall not neglect my prayers, for it starves my higher nature and spells my spiritual impoverishment. I will begin and end my day with prayer and with devotion behind my prayer. I will pray with a resolve to lead a righteous and a Zoroastrian life, Ahura Mazda.

The Family Prayer

Our fathers have worshipped thee, Ahura Mazda, in this house and we worship thee now and will worship thee as our strength holds out, O Father Eternal.

Unto thee we raise our hearts in praise and adoration, Ahura Mazda. Our devotion for thee animates our hearts. We will open our hearts every morn unto thee, when thy radiant sun shows his shining face and sheds his light upon our house. Lend thy kindly ear to our daily prayer.

In this house may life throb with health and happiness and prosperity and peace and concord and contentment and humility and devotion and piety and purity and truth and righteousness. Give us a long life and a useful life. Help us to diffuse cheer and joy and hope among the young and the old in our house.

May the Fravashis of the righteous keep their nightly vigil over our house. May they enter our house attended by blessings, as wide as the earth, as long as the river, and as high as the sun. May the Amesha Spentas and the Yazatas bless our family with their august presence. And may thou, above all, be with us and near us by night, and we will raise our hands and bend our knees and bow our heads to offer thee prayer of gratitude and worship thee in the citadel of our hearts.

Open our eyes to our daily duties and help us in their loyal performance. Fill our minds with thy thoughts and thy ideals. Elevate our ideals, help us to live up to them and lead us from day unto day to be near their realization, O thou Divine Householder.

Prayer for the Dead

Death of our dear ones destroys the radiant joy of our home and plunges us in deep distress. We look unto thee, Ahura Mazda, for the relief of our grief and comfort of our hearts. Time can soften our sorrow, it cannot efface the loving memory of our dead from our minds. We worship their pious memory and it is the one gleam of sunshine in our lives shadowed by sorrow.

Death has freed them from the material bondage. They have shed their frail earthly clay and departed this life to live hereafter in the realm of the spirit. Their earthly work is done and they have laid down the burden that pressed heavily on them. From the din and dust and storm of life's struggle they have gone to the deathless world of peace and rest where light fades not and happiness fails not. Our beloved have died in body to live in spirit a life higher and nobler than our thoughts can measure and minds can conceive. They rest in everlasting peace and joy with thee.

Though lost to us, our dead have not forsaken us. They cannot forget us, as we do not forget them. Though the seven zones divide us and the boundless space part us, they, the spirits, are above and beyond space. They are near us and with us, and see us through our bodily veil. Death has silenced them. They speak not with tongues. They have cast off the vesture of flesh and their souls hold their communion with our souls. They care for us, they feel for us, and they bless us. They long for us and love us, as we long for them and love them. They are ours, as we are theirs. Death has not dissolved our union.

Thou, Ahura Mazda, has called them to thyself. We commend them into thy hands. Have compassion upon their human infirmities. Absolve them from the errors of their mortal life. If they have sinned in thought and word and deed, spare them in thy mercy. Gather them into thy fold. Admit them in the fellowship of thy blessed dead. Let thy light shine upon them. May they rest in thee in the shining, all-happy paradise of the righteous.

Life is thy greatest gift, Ahura Mazda

Unquenchable is the thirst for life. A myriad of men and women pray unto thee, Ahura Mazda, every moment for happy life and full life and joyful life and long life. Man loves life and he wishes to live a hundred lives and his will is not yet satisfied. An unconquerable urge to live a full and a useful life distinguishes man from animal. This inborn urge drives him to strive for what seems to be beyond his reach and stimulates human progress. It is good and great and glorious indeed to live, O Lord of life.

The longest of life upon earth is but a breath, it is true. But life, though short, has untold possibilities. Life is not fortuitous. It is designed and has a purpose. Let me take life in earnest and let me not while it away. Help me to understand life, that I may be able to live and live as it is thy will, O Ahura Mazda. Help me to throw myself actively and selflessly and strenuously into the thick of life for the furtherance of the world of righteousness and the decrease of the world of wickedness.

Giver of life and giver of the gifts of life, I thank thee for health and happiness and all that makes life livable on earth. None can raise me a memorial equal to the one that I can set up in my lifetime by my life devoted to the service of thee and thine upon earth. Help me so to live, my God, that when death extinguishes my life, I may yet live upon earth in my good thoughts and good words and good deeds when my soul dwells with thee in heaven.

Life is a blend of contradictions

Life were insipid, Creator of the material world, if thou didst give everything for the asking. Life with no zest to achieve, no zeal to strive, no effort to get, no obstacle to overcome, and no hardship to encounter would be dull indeed. Life of all joy and happiness, with never a shadow of sorrow and misery, would be monotonous and would weary us, Ahura Mazda.

Life is kind to us and life is cruel to us, life sits light upon us and life sits heavy upon us, life is sunshine and life is darkness, life is joy and life is sorrow, life blooms and blossoms and withers and fades. Life upon earth, O Lord of life, is a blend of contradictions.

Life and suffering are inseparable and the world is a rough enough place to live. Endow me with undaunted courage to weather the storms of life and to scatter the clouds when they darken the horizon of life. When the barque of my soul, sailing the sea of life, glides not smoothly on the stream, but drifts upon the stormy billows of life and is on the brink of breaking under the tumult of life, thou, O Master Mariner, embolden me to steer it skillfully and patiently to the haven of safety.

When danger confronts me in life, strengthen me to face it bravely. Life is an uphill fight; enable me to fight it valiantly and win through it. When the burden of life weighs heavily upon me, strengthen me to bear the yoke patiently and ungrudgingly. Never unduly elated at triumph and never unduly depressed at failure, never unduly joyful when life smiles upon me and never unduly sorrowful when life frowns at me, help me, Ahura Mazda, ever to live my life with philosophic calm.

Life is Service

Zarathushtra drew the lowly and lonely, the needy and neglected towards him and embraced them in his sympathetic heart. The noblest of men and women have always been willing servants of society. They have given the best of their time and energy and all to serve their fellow human beings. They have thought little of themselves and much of others. With a total disregard of personal comfort and rest, they have worn out their lives in the service of others. Men and women, noble and great, there have always been, who would willingly sacrifice their lives a hundred times over in the service of humanity. They have labored to bring sunshine in the lives of their fellowmen. They have lived and died in the unremitting service of mankind.

Enthuse me, Ahura Mazda, to consecrate myself to a life of service. Inspire me to live my life to sanctify the life of men. Help me to bear the burden of my brethren and relieve their bare needs. Enable me to make any one human life happy by a single hair's breadth between dawn and dusk every day. Strengthen me to bear aloft the light of knowledge, to do ameliorative work to further health, to right the wrongs, to straighten the crooked, to assuage the sufferings, to spread truth, to lessen the sorrow, and gloom of my neighbors, to fight falsehood and injustice, vice and wickedness, disease and death.

Teach me, divine Teacher, to place service before self. Let me wear myself thin in service to thy children, Ahura Mazda. Let my heart go out to all that suffer in thy great and good world. Lead me to deny myself so that my neighbor may not stand in want of anything while I have something I call my own. Let me rejoice in sharing with thy needy what little I have. Let me not live for self alone, but inspire me to live for all. Let my goodness help others to be good. Let me serve with body and mind and heart and soul, for the service of man is thy worship in deeds, Ahura Mazda.

Life is Pleasure

Life is pleasure, they say, who preach that human self is nothing more than the sum total of desires and appetites and passions and the object of life is to attain their gratification. They live well, who derive maximum of pleasure out of life. Let all therefore enjoy as long as life endures.

There are those who find pleasure in the satisfaction of emotional desires, organic impulses, and bestial instincts. Life is a riotous revel of merrymaking, and they experience great joy in its frivolities. The morally degenerate are slaves to unruly passions and sensuous desires, and they seek vulgar gratification in profligate pleasures, in drinking places, gambling houses, and brothels. Pleasure for these consists in the peccadilloes of the prodigal and the joys of sensuality, in sumptuous feasting and reveling in drinking bouts, and in the gratification of instincts uncontrolled by intelligence. The more the vulgar desires and appetites are gratified, the greater is their clamor for more and they plunge deeper and deeper in the mire of moral filth, until they sink down to utter degradation and ruin.

Protect me, O Protector thou, from such a mental disposition which leads man to live on the scale of animals. Insatiable is human appetite for pleasure and no pleasure satisfies man for all time. From pleasure to pleasure man passes, but knows no abiding satisfaction. Assailed by desires and appetites, he cannot meet the demands of all, and his unsatisfied desires and ungratified appetites make his life more miserable. Guide me to see, O thou my Guide, that self-indulgence brings physical exhaustion and leaves no spiritual resources to sustain life. Teach me to discern that neither is pleasure the supreme end of life nor the highest good. Life has loftier purpose than pleasure indeed, I avow, Ahura Mazda.

Life is duty

Religion is duty and life is duty. The sense of duty is ingrained in man. Man owes duty to his creator and the creator's creatures. God's will is man's duty. Life is a pledge to the giver of life to do life's duties.

Let me not neglect or fail to do my duty. Let me not disregard or deviate from my duty. Let me not swerve or shrink from my duty. Let me not shirk the duties that I have to perform in life.

Let me discharge my duty to the best of my ability and power. Let me do my duty as duty demands and dictates. Let me be watchful of my duty. Let me do my duty willingly and cheerfully, justly and faithfully. Let me follow with alacrity where duty leads me. Let me sacrifice my comfort and happiness and my personal considerations to duty. Let me remember that respectful regard to the rights of others is my duty.

I will consecrate my life to duty. Guide me to tread the rough and rugged path of my duty, Ahura Mazda. Show me my duty and help me to do it to the day of my death. Let me die with the happy consciousness that I have done my life's duty and done it well.

The cynic rails at life

Life laughs and jeers at us, says the cynic. Life is a huge hoax, a joke, a mockery, a gamble, an illusion, a blank despair. It is a lottery, he avers, where a hundred thousand draw blanks when one draws a prize. Life is shadowy and ephemeral, a dream overtaken by death on the very heels of its birth. It has neither meaning nor purpose and yet man has to wade his weary way through this miserable world.

Nature makes so many mistakes. She gives us without the least discrimination strong or weak, healthy or diseased bodies, bright or dull minds, and virtuous or vicious souls. God has some grudge against man or else he would not throw him at birth into the whirlpool of life to swim or sink. Men and women are the puppets driven hither and thither by him as his playthings. He stamps vice and sin upon human souls at birth and then punishes them.

The icy wind of death drives before it men and women and children into nothingness like the autumn wind blowing leaves that were green but yesterday and have dried and dropped today. Death turns man into a clod to be trodden by wayfarers. His dust does not rest at one place for the wind blows it all around. Man lauds the worth of his hero to the skies, but the hand of time passes the duster on his writings and they vanish. Time obliterates the memorials that man raises to human vanity.

The cynic sees only the dark side of life, I avow, Ahura Mazda, and gives a merciless expression to it. He vents the bitterness of his morbid mind upon life. His is the melancholy view of life and he preaches its dark despair. Good and great men die not even upon earth. They live in the grateful memory of posterity. The sun sets, it is true, but it rises again. Man dies but in body but lives for ever in spirit. Life is dust in body, but a matchless jewel in spirit. Let not man wail and moan on the miseries of his own creation when life is so full of joy and hope.

It is a boon to live, says Zarathushtra. My prophet teaches me to enliven my mind with sunny cheerfulness, to be gay of heart and buoyant of spirit. Help me, Ahura Mazda, to say Yea to life with overflowing cheerfulness and overplus joy.

The Cynic at war with the world

The cynic harps upon the woeful in life and habitually grumbles and groans that this is the world of vanity and woe. Some unskillful god has created this world, the worst possible of worlds that could have been created.

There is so much of pain and suffering, inequity and wrong, depravity and degradation, baseness and pettiness, malice and envy, hatred and jealousy, crime and sin, they aver, that man is lost in the wilderness of sorrow and sin. The consciousness of their human imperfections, and the existence of physical and social and moral evil heavily press them down. They cannot scatter the dark clouds of melancholy that hang over their heads. Suffering and sorrow shadow all waking hours of their lives, despair of life takes hold of their spirits, and bitterness fills their hearts. Nature, for them, has but one season, and that is autumn. They know no springtime. Life upon earth is a prolonged agony. And now when man is thrown down upon such a world and as there is no escape from it, it is proper that man should face it with courage and get as much out of it as it can give. To enjoy, to be happy, to derive pleasure, even from this world of a thousand woes is wisdom. The real art of living lies in acquiring as much pleasure as could be had, even from the world, which nurses so much evil.

Thus does the existence of evil in the world breed a spirit of defiance and contempt in man of skeptical intellect, nonchalant disposition, and cynical nature. Ever at war with the world, he complains and kicks when death confronts him, and gives up his ghost with curse on his lips upon the world, and unreconciled with thee, its creator.

Save me, Ahura Mazda, from morbid mood and melancholy temperament, that I may not burden my life with futile anxieties and multiply my miseries. Let me not nurse grief and brood over the dark side of life when its bright side preponderates so glaringly over the dark. Thou hast provided joy in abundance and made life livable for all. May I live and die in peace with thee and thy world, is my fervent prayer unto thee, my creator and protector.

Life is hard and honest work

Man is born to work and prosper, not to rest and rust. Ahura Mazda is the eternal worker. He has never known rest. Neither has Sraosha, nor have the Amesha Spentas and the Yazatas and the Fravashis. They will all work till time without end. Animals on land and birds in the air and fishes in the water work and live their lives. Providence does not put morsels in their mouths. Work is the law of life, for the poor and the rich alike.

Man cannot live without eating and drinking and he cannot do without working. Work is his duty and an inevitable accompaniment of his life. Ahura Mazda created the world with its boundless natural resources. Man's work of a millennium and more has developed them and shaped the destiny of the world. Cultures and civilizations are the monuments of man's work.

Work conduces to the vigor and health of the body and the mind. Work done willingly and enthusiastically takes away pain from the toil. Work brings the good things of the world to man. It gives him independence, enhances his self-respect and builds his character.

Blessed is the hand that works and blessed is the mind that wills it. Life is elevated when vigorous and honest work is associated with it.

Give me strength and vigor and endurance, Ahura Mazda, to work with a cheerful heart and a resolute will all life long.

Great is the dignity of work

It is never below the dignity of any one to work by his own hands, Ahura Mazda. There is no shame to put one's hand at the plough, there is no shame to set one's shoulder to the wheel, there is no shame to dig a trench, there is no shame to work as a cook or a servant or a maid or to do any menial work. But there is shame indeed where a stout hand of an able-bodied man or woman is outstretched to accept a dole in the face of the remunerative work waiting for all who may work.

It is humiliating to slumber in sloth and repose and rest, when there is time to work and to toil. It is loss of manhood and womanhood to eat one's bread not earned by one's honest work. Sweeter is the simple bread won by the sweat of one's brow, than the rich bread bestowed upon one by the hand of charity.

Teach me, Ahura Mazda, never to shirk my daily work. Let me not grudge and groan in the face of hard work waiting for me, but enthuse me to do it willingly and whole-heartedly.

The work of the industrious and enterprising of my good co-religionists often supports the idlers and sluggards along with the disabled and the needy. May it never be my misfortune to be one of them, my merciful God. Inspire me to value my independence and self-respect and to strive for their preservation in the midst of my poverty and want, Ahura Mazda.

I glory in activity, Ahura Mazda

"Up with your feet and up with your hands and keep your minds in readiness to do lawful and timely deeds and for the undoing of unlawful and untimely deeds," exhorts us he who is Zarathushtra, thy prophet, Ahura Mazda. Life, he says, is activity. Industry is a priceless virtue. An active life of hard and honest work is the ideal life. Man's nature warrants it; his being demands it. Passivity is weakness; it is deviation from active duty. Everything in a Zoroastrian cries out for action and still more action.

Thought is noble, but action, thought out with caution and done with firmness is nobler. Not thought but action is the final word. To live is to act and. to work. Let me act with purpose and with decision and let me strive to do all that I can and do it with might and main.

The vagrant sports away his life and the aimless one sleeps it away and the idler dreams it away. Ennui becomes intolerable to such persons living lifeless lives. They encumber the earth with their useless lives. Lead them, O Lord, to fight ennui with work and save them from sinking into soul-killing lethargy.

Give me an active mind that is averse to slovenliness. Give me bodily vigor and intellectual. Give me strength to endure my labor and enure me to fatigue and hard toil. Give me energy to work with insatiable activity. Give me industrious habits and make me resolute in action. Let me wear out myself in hard and strenuous activity than rust in indolence, Ahura Mazda.

By activity and industry man rises from obscurity to eminence. Help me, Ahura Mazda, to make my way in the world and work my way upward in life and and make a place for myself and toil up the heights and fight my way to the front ranks by honest industry and effort and grit.

Let me rejoice in my activity, find pleasure in it, and be happy with it. Let me be up and doing and let me work actively and strenuously while yet I may and let me die in harness when it pleases thee to call me back to heaven, Ahura Mazda.

Let me not lack will, O Mazda

The man of character and the man of talents and the man of intellect accomplish great things in the world, but it is the man of resolute and indomitable and energetic will that towers above all and works wonders. He rouses peoples from their lethargy, acquaints them with their latent powers, radiates a hopeful and heroic spirit among the irresolute, inspires confidence in them, instills courage in the timid, and injects burning zeal in them to dare and do great deeds. Eagerly do they flock round his banner and follow him wheresoever he chooses to lead them.

Such a one of irrepressible will walks with an assured air of success in grappling with any difficulty that confronts him. His driving enthusiasm enables him to fight his way unscathed through all trials and tribulations. The unbounded faith in his own capacity emboldens him to move heaven and earth to accomplish with success what seems impossible to his neighbors. With confidence and courage, he successfully drives the world onward on its march.

Let me not be diffident and of wavering will, Ahura Mazda. Let my will be based on truth and rectitude. Let it be swayed by reason and selflessness. Let me cultivate my will-power and be of firm and inflexible will. Let me walk with self-confidence, erect with my head held high. Let me hold fast and look up and Push ahead to overcome hardships. Let me bravely sweep past all obstacles and pave my way to success. Give me strength and vigor and courage and firmness to work my will for the fulfillment of the mission of my life as thou hast willed, Ahura Mazda.

Progress is the Zoroastrian watchword

Progress is the rule of life. Progressive movement is the law of the universe. Life presses on and onward in its incessant march. Life is progress.

Progress is the glorious unfolding of the design of Providence. The world works out its great purpose and moves towards a definite goal.

The history of the world is the history of its progress. Nothing under heaven is complete and perfect. Everything moves towards completion and perfection.

Progress is the prerogative of man alone, Angels, above him, need no progress, for Ahura Mazda has enthroned them on the highest heights of perfection. Animals, below him, know no progress, for the gift to word progress is not vouchsafed unto them.

Onward by day and onward be night moves the human caravan without rest or respite. Ever on the move, strives to reach its destiny. In natural course, progress paces with slow and steady steps. At other times, convulsions and upheavals, physical and social, political and economic, precipitate its forward march. Progress may pause and halt awhile, when arrested and retarded, but ever unfailingly to resume its interrupted journey.

In progress hast thou ingrained, Ahura Mazda, our hope for the betterment of our future. We gather in the present the harvest prepared by the noble efforts of our ancestors in the past. Never can we let die the past. Let not, however, grow in us the habit of always turning back to the past, but guide us ever to look ahead. For when heavily weighs on us the dead hand of the past, it hampers our progress. Lead us to see that hollow is our boast that our forefathers were great and glorious, if in our turn, complacently we, live on past reputation and reap and flourish on past achievements. Inspire us to dare and do what our fathers did in their days. Embolden us to face and fight obstacles and hardships. Enthuse us for hard and strenuous effort to move with the times. Progress is the most salient trait of the Zoroastrian character. Help us to further the progress of our community even by a fraction of a footstep each day that we live upon earth and keep ourselves abreast of progress, Ahura Mazda.

Let me rise early with bright Ushah's dawn

Let me rise with the dawn. Let me cleanse my body with the purifying waters of Ardvi Sura and purify my spirit with prayer and be ready for my daily tasks before the rising sun calls me to duty.

Let me not waste my precious early hours in drowsiness. I turn in my bed a dozen times. Each time I try to leave it, each time, with renewed fondness, I hug it again. In vain then later in the day, I run to overtake the time that is lost. Defeated I return from the chase.

Every morning and evening I pray for long life. But I forget that I have it in my power to win longevity of life for me, if I but rise early instead of sleeping away my priceless early morning hours. Thus can I easily gain a couple of hours a day and live full five and seventy years and more in my life of three scores and ten.

Most splendid are the glories of nature at dawn. And at no hour of the day or night, is nature so charming and sweet, fragrant and refreshing, invigorating and inspiring, as when the shining Ushah, borne in her brilliant chariot drawn by four ruddy steeds comes upon the earth and awakens all.

Let me not shorten the short span of my life by sleeping longer than my physical nature demands. Let me not be in bed when the vigilant watchman of the night is out to put out the dying night's flickering candles hanging' in the sky above. Let me not shame my manhood by lolling and lounging in bed, when the cocks in the neighborhood are crowing to one another, when the wide awake cattle, eager to be let out from their stalls, are lowing, and the birds are filling the air with their sweet carols to proclaim the dawning of the day.

At dawn when the mind is fresh and receptive and troubled not by distractions that the day's diverse duties bring, I shall spend an hour in quiet, alone with thee, and commune with thee and lay out the plan of my work of the day that is dawning, under thy guidance and inspiration, Ahura Mazda.

Give us the sleep of the innocent

Ahura Mazda, Artist Divine, thou didst divide the day into morn and noon, evening and night, and made waiting for active duties of life and sleep for timely repose. Thy Sraosha keep his vigil from dusk to dawn and we rest in his keeping, after the day's labor and work.

Many and marvelous are the bounties thou hast showered upon thy creatures and sweet is the sleep that sustains the beasts and the birds and mankind against fatigue. After the fret and fever of the day, kindly sleep restores our tired limbs, relieves languor, recruits strength, repairs the wastage of the body, and lubricates the cogs and wheels of the bodily machine. It recuperates the brain, refreshes the overwrought mind, distraught with care and anxiety, cures the troubles of the waking hours, confers respite from sorrow and gloom, brings healing to the wounded of heart, gives a soothing draught of forgetfulness of grief and misfortune, and affords a momentary escape from life when its hard realities press heavily upon us. Thus does it prepare us to shoulder the manifold duties of the dawning day.

Nestled like a child in its bed, steeps one the sleep of the innocent. When sleep steals over his body he drops to a heavy sleep the moment his head touches the pillow and sinks into sound sleep without nightmare or dream. Another lies twisting and turning all night in his bed, turning the events of the day in his mind. Anxiety and care chase away his sleep and he sleeps only in snatches. Yet another cannot sleep a wink, for he sleeps the sleep of the guilty. Long and late hours he lolls and lies in his bed to sleep off the effects of night's dissipation.

May thy Sraosha keep his watch over me and protect me while I sleep. May he help me to take my fill of peaceful sleep, that refreshed and anew, I may rise at the first streak of dawn to toil hard and with diligence for the furtherance of thy world of goodness, Mazda mine.

Bushyansta, the slothful

Thou didst ordain, Ahura, the night for all to rest and commissioned thy Sraosha to guard the sleeping world. Peacefully we sleep and peaceful dreams attend us for thy ever-wakeful angel guards us.

At the break of the dawn, Atar, the genius of the fire of the hearth, sounds his warning voice against the stratagem of Bushyansta, the slothful. The enemy of the wakeful world casts her spell over the sleeping world that men and women may sleep inordinately long and lie long in laziness.

Parodarsh, vigilant cock of Sraosha, lifts up his voice and the cocks, all around, crow to each other from house to house exhorting all to wake up.

Sweeter is sleep in the third part of the night than at any other time. Stealthily does Bushyansta come and kiss the eyelids of those that are deep in sleep. Sweetly she sings her tempting song, that time it is not yet to wake and work, and lulls them again to sleep and sleep unduly long. So great is the charm of the sluggish music, that in vain do the bedfellows struggle and strive and yawn, but they cannot fully open their eyes to the break of the dawn. They stretch their hands and they lengthen their legs, they rub their drowsy eyes and they pull the bed sheet again over the face. They grumble and they grieve, they woefully lament the impending death of the night, and lazily mumble and mutter their faltering prayer, that the birth of the day may, a little bit longer, be delayed.

Help me, my God, in my struggle with Bushyansta to shake off my sloth that the precious hours of the morn may not be stolen from me. I shall cleanse my body and with fire, fed with sandalwood, burning before me, I shall open my day by worshipping thee with purity of body and purity of mind and purity of soul. I shall kindle the fire within my heart, that lay flaring and flickering during the night. Bright may it blaze to brighten my mind and quicken my heart and steel my will that, alert and active, I may strenuously take up my rising day's duties, Ahura Mazda.

Man eats to live; He lives not to eat

Man who eats not, has no strength to work for righteousness and fight against wickedness. Man must therefore eat. A healthy and a strong body is indispensable for the soul to live strenuous life upon the earth. Wholesome food is the first essential to prevent the body from languishing and to give it the necessary strength. Fasting forms no part of the faith of Zarathushtra, and the Zoroastrian calendar has no days of fast. It is a sin to fast from food, say the sacred books.

Modern man eats more than he needs. He stocks his tables with delicious courses and sweets and delicacies and luscious wines. He makes a god of his belly and feeds him with heavy and rich offerings to satiety.

Food and drink are for bodily nourishment. Inordinate use of food and drink ruins man's health of the body and impairs the powers of his mind. It is better to leave the dinner table with an appetite not appeased to its fullness, than to overfeed oneself and surfeit the stomach with an excess of food and drink. An intemperate and gluttonous diet breeds grievous infirmities and frightful sicknesses.

Zarathushtra's religion stands not for total abstinence but for rigid temperance. It allows the temperate use of stimulants as an aid to health and for festive occasions and ceremonial purposes. Drink, not evil in itself, becomes evil when man is addicted to heavy indulgence in drinking, drinks to intoxication and loses his reason and wits in his wine cup. Drunkenness, thus, is evil and the drunkard drinks himself to destruction. A gluttonous wine-bibber is as bad as a gluttonous eater. All excess is evil.

Teach me, Ahura Mazda, to make a temperate use of the good things of life that thou hast showered in abundance upon man. Temperance in food and temperance in drink is the guardian and protector of the health of the body and the mind. I will fare on frugal meals and be temperate in what I eat and what I drink, O thou giver of food and drink.

Agriculture is man's noblest profession

Ahura Mazda sent Zarathushtra for the support and care and guidance of the tillers of the land. Agriculture is the staple industry of mankind. Culture and civilization begin when man, attached to the soil, enters into the settled pursuits of agriculture. He furthers human progress and happiness. Life on the fields gives health and vigor to the body. It refreshes the mind and exhilarates the spirit.

The industrious agriculturist who tills the earth by his diligence, reaps the rich fruits of life. He is a watchful, diligent person, sleeping little, the first to leave his cottage at the break of day and last to enter it in the evening, toiling hard from dawn till dark.

Whoso cultivates the land with the left arm and the right, and the right arm and the left, unto him does the earth give corn and fruit and food. The indolent who cultivates not the earth, has to stand begging at the door of persons possessed of profusion of the products of the earth and, into his outstretched hands, do they cast the refuse and the crumbs of the stale bread.

He sows righteousness, who sows corn. He strengthens the religion of Mazda to progress with the feet of a hundred men. The farmer who grows crops and feeds hungry mouths, enables them to lead an active and useful and righteous life. When corn does grow and is pounded and when the flour is kneaded for bread, the demons of sloth and destitution and misery do start and sweat, cough and faint, scorch their jaws, and flee and fly, says Zarathushtra.

The agriculturist lives in brotherhood with nature, He befriends earth and heavens, grass and trees, wind and waters. He lives in company of cows and oxen, goats and sheep, horses and camels, dogs and fowls and birds. He ploughs the land and breaks the clods with his hoe in the furrows. Nature smiles on his field and the seeds sprout and the stalks bear grain. He harvests the corn in sheaves. He beats the grain with flails and winnows it. Mother earth fills his barns and he thrives on her bounty. He thatches his hut with straw and grass and beneath its shelter lives a frugal and contented and happy life with his dear ones.

Nature around him is instinct with pulsating life. Concourse with heaven is not distant and dim. The spirits of the earth and plants and waters and the sun and moon and stars live near him and around him and with him. With the piety of his heart, he prepares a feast in their honor and invokes them to come down to the sacred repast. And willingly they come, accompanied by the Fravashis that are the guardian spirits of the righteous dead. Devoutly does he offer them the first fruits of the harvest. Propitiated and satisfied, invisibly they stand by the young and old of their supplicants and guard them, protect them, comfort them, cheer them, and bless them, they the heavenly beings of Ahura Mazda.

May Tishtrya's rain bring fruition to our fields

Thou, Ahura Mazda, hast created Tishtrya, the radiant, glorious star genius of the rain, the lord of all other stars, for the fertility of the fields and farms and all other lands. Men and beasts and birds and plants and trees and rivers and streams and thirsty earth look eagerly and entreatingly to the rising of the star Tishtrya, that, in gushing torrents, he may send a flood of rain to fertilize their lands and bestow riches upon the earth. The farmer yearns for the refreshing showers of Tishtrya to water his parched fields, the gardener looks for a shower to brighten the foliage. With rich harvests does the land smile, when the rain Yazata favors it with his fertilizing waters. The drops of the rain of Tishtrya are like watery seeds that the benevolent sky scatters over the fields and spreads fertility all around.

Apaosha, the adversary of Tishtrya, struggles to keep back the rain and to hold the earth in clutch through famine and drought. In vain do we pray for the rain. A relentless heaven rains not and the land bears no crops. The desert wind scatters the clouds that look black and frown with angry look. The crashes of thunder and flashing lightnings and storm prevent the rains from coming. Disaster stares us in the face.

Then when in heart-felt humility we pray unto thee, Ahura Mazda, thou hear our supplications and impart renewed strength to Tishtrya in his war against the elements. Up rises the bright and glorious Tishtrya from the sea Vourukasha. The atmosphere absorbs water that evaporates from the seas and the land. Vapors rise above and the wind of Vayu, laden with moisture, blows over the hills and hillocks and mountains that raise their proud heads to the sky. There do the clouds rest on the stony bosoms. As the shepherd-dog drives the woolly sheep, so does the wind of Vayu drive the heavy laden clouds before it. The thick dark clouds bearing water swim in heaven. Tishtrya compresses them even as a man squeezes the sponges fined with water. The clouds now pour heavily in sheets, the silver bars of the torrential rain pelt down on the big-seeded corn fields and the small-seeded pasture field and the orchards and the land everywhere that grow food and fodder for men and beasts.

Hail unto Tishtrya who rains his fertilizing blessings over the earth. The fields do smile and trees do rejoice and the animals are gladdened. To the sound of the patter of raindrops on the leaves of the trees do the birds sing their melodious songs. Let us then sing to the greatness and glory of the lord our God and pray unto him in thankfulness.

Give me bodily health, I pray

Health is happiness. It is the greatest blessing of life. With health, life has everything, without it, it has nothing. Health is the richest possession of man upon earth. Blank and empty is life when it is bereft of health. Dead is the joy in life, where health is lacking. Nor birth, nor wealth, nor rank, nor power, aught avails, if thy Airyaman withholds health from man, Ahura Mazda. Everything is naught, where health is not.

Man appreciates not things that providence showers upon him unsought and in plenty. He values it at its proper worth, when he loses it awhile. When health fails man, and the body fails to do his bidding, life becomes tasteless and tedious to him and depression of spirit hangs over him. Then on his bed of sickness, he curses his existence and yearns for health.

Keep me healthy and sound and strong in body to the day of my death, Ahura Mazda. When old age creeps on me and health begins to fail, I will hourly pray unto thee to give me the soundness and strength of the body that once were mine, even as Rustom, the rider of matchless Rakhsh, prayed unto thee in the hour of his need to give him back the strength, from the surfeit of which he had suffered in his youth and from which thou hadst relieved him at his prayerful request.

Health gives liveliness and cheerfulness, superabundant energy and exuberant optimism. Give me soundness and vigor and agility of body to work strenuously for the furtherance of good and to carry on a vigorous warfare against evil. Give me, I beseech thee, O Giver of health, a healthy body to nurture a healthy mind to enable me to lead an active and industrious Zoroastrian life in the discharge of my life's duties.

Our community

Thirteen long centuries ago, when the Kian Glory fled past our ancestors for ever, when the crown and scepter of the great Sassanian empire fell, when the fame and fortune of the greatest kingdom of the day left them, when friendless and forlorn they stood and knew not where to turn, thou our eternal friend, stood by them in the darkest day of their need, O Ahura Mazda. Thou didst uphold them and take them beneath thy protecting wings and stay with them in the woeful time of their misfortune. Thou didst lead them under thy guiding star to this our land of adoption and become their refuge and their rock of stay.

Fugitives forlorn they came from distant shores and thou didst sustain them in their plight and cheer them and help them to begin life anew amid strange surroundings. Thou didst inspire them to strenuous, hard work and, never faltering, never failing, never despairing, with unbending will, unbounded zeal, and undying hope they strove and struggled, toiled and labored under the scorching sun and malarial swamps, and thou didst crown their active and diligent life with success.

Our fathers have built the noble heritage from age to age by their patient labor, incessant efforts, hazardous adventures. They have worked near and they have worked afar, they have lived lonely lives in far-flung countries, they have sailed distant seas and have enriched our community by wealth they brought by land and sea. They have sown and we reap; they have gathered and we use.

Our fathers struggled with poverty and with honest, hard work amassed riches. Faithfully following the noble precepts of holy Zarathushtra, they gave to the poor and the needy, they gave for the healing of the mind. They gave, and they gave freely to all, counting not caste or creed, and they made the appellation 'Parsi' to mean charity. They have raised us to our present estate and made us what we are today.

Our fathers have done their duty; help us, O Heavenly Father, to do ours. Give us agile bodies, active minds, and quickened hearts to play our part even as they have played theirs. Keep us ever watchful to guard our morals and the glorious edifice of our communal character that we may never besmirch the fair name of our community. With the humility of the mind and devotion of the heart and prayer of the spirit at our command, we commend our community, smallest of small among nations, to thy unfailing care and protection and guidance, Ahura Mazda, now and for ever.

Our communal characteristics

Our racial heritage, our temperamental endowment, and vicissitudes of time have built our communal characteristics, Ahura Mazda.

We take life cheerfully and strive to make the most of it. We are full of life and gay of disposition. We are boisterous and obtrusive, talkative and vivacious, amiable and jovial, lively and impulsive, virile and industrious, loud of laughter and given to light pleasantry, rich in humor and romantic by nature, mercurial of temperament and matter-of-fact people, with little of poetry and much less of philosophy about us.

We are hospitable and generous and kindly and sympathetic to the sufferings of our neighbors. We are free with, our purse and liberal of hand. We are generous and benevolent. Freely do we give vast sums for philanthropic purposes. The virtue of charity, preached by Zarathushtra, has been built into the tissues of every individual's being. We are eager to throw ourselves in the affray of others to assuage their wrongs and sufferings.

Help us to preserve Ahura Mazda, what strengthens and elevates our morale and to eliminate that which weakens and lowers it. Truth and probity, hard and industrious life, ardor of enterprise, and thirst for adventure, hopefulness and helpfulness were the characteristics that made our ancestors great. Inspire us with the zeal to emulate them and to work for the glory of our dear community.

Our culture is exotic

Thou, Ahura Mazda, art the divine artist who hast designed and built and sculptured and painted thy sublime nature that speaks to us and sings to us and inspires us and elevates us. Real greatness of a people consists not in its hoarded wealth or its territorial possessions as in the accumulated treasure of the cultivated qualities of its mind and the virtues of its heart. Culture is the fertile efflorescence of the human mind in the arts and sciences of life. It is man's most matchless achievement.

Our culture is exotic, receptive and imitative. It threatens to atrophy our communal soul. We have lost our country and we have lost our kingdom. Avesta and Pahlavi and Pazend, our ancient languages, are dead and our literature indited in these tongues has mostly perished. In ruin lie at Persepolis and Pasargad and Behistan and around, the marvels of our national monuments that speak of the past greatness and grandeur and glory of our dear fatherland. In the loss of our cultural achievements, we have lost our all, O Lord.

Help us to create anew our indigenous culture under a new sky, that can nourish and invigorate our spirits to noble deeds, refine our nature, ennoble our character, and exalt our communal life. Give us passionate love for literature and arts and sciences. Give us richness of imagination and originality of intellect. Give us minds endowed with the keenest intellect and give us betimes a genius for the artistic creations of the mind. Give us the gift of creating great works of art and poetry, the masterpieces of music and painting. Give us for our sons and daughters, thinkers and writers, poets and artists, painters and musicians, sculptors and scientists who can contribute our community's share to the immortal cultural heritage of humanity, we pray, Ahura Mazda.

Time is life

Thine is Zurvan Akarana, the boundless Time, Ahura Mazda. From it hast thou carved out Zurvan Daregho-khvadhata, the Time of Long Duration of our world. Eons count not in the eternity of time and a millennium is but a moment. The period of man's life in eternity is like a flash of thy lightning that expires the moment it is born. The longest span of human life is a breathing space in time everlasting.

Time is hungerless and thirstless, ageless and deathless. Everything upon earth lives in time and time alone is above and beyond everything. Time is invincible. It wears out everything and conquers all. As the wind and water wear out the strongest edifices, so does time eat the mightiest monuments raised by man. Time devours and destroys all, it reduces all to dust. Nothing can stop it in its remorseless course.

Time moves with hurrying steps. It flies on the swiftest wings and flies faster than the wind. Nothing is faster than the flight of time. Time escapes all and nothing in the world, can overtake it and none can turn it back in its flight.

Time can neither be borrowed nor bought. Misspent time is wasted time. Health and rank and position and anything and everything lost in the world can be restored and regained. Lost time alone can never be recalled and never be made to return.

Time is life and time ill spent is life wasted away. Let me not squander my time. Lead me, Ahura Mazda, to make the best use of the days of my life, that time well spent may lengthen my life, short as it is.

Today is my own, perchance tomorrow may never come

Yesterday is past beyond recall. Today only is mine. Let me make the best use of it as it is my sure possession. Tomorrow has shadowy existence. It may or may not dawn for me. I may be dead and gone before it is born. Let me put procrastination far from me, when it comes with silent steps to steal my time. Let me not put off today's work till tomorrow and let me not leave undone what can be done today.

Time gives birth every morning to the day and the day brings boundless opportunities and boundless potentialities. I can compress all my life work in this one day, and concentrate my whole life in it, if I willed. Let my thoughts and words and deeds of the day be such as they will out-live the day; make the history of my life. This day of mine is my life. Let me utilize every hour and every minute and every second so that I may live a whole life in this one day, that is, today.

Time is more valuable than the costliest thing in the world. Teach me, Ahura Mazda, to make the utmost use of my time between minutes and months, hours and years of my life.

Swiftly flow the waters of the river of time. May the bark of my life glide smoothly on its stream, that I may steer it to the shore of safety. Time leaves furrows on man's face and writes wrinkles on his brow. Each passing day in life hastens death near. Let me not trifle away and waste my today. Help me to live today fully and nobly and selflessly and leave tomorrow to its fate, Ahura Mazda.

Faith works wonders

Faith is the belief in the unknown, as belief is the faith in the known. Faith soars the highest heaven and dives to the deepest depth. Faith knows no bound and breaks through all barriers. Faith reads the secrets of the earth and deciphers the mysteries of heaven. Faith knows all and sees all. Faith asks not for facts, demands not proofs, and seeks no evidence. Faith thinks not, cogitates not and reasons not. Faith believes and believes wholly and unreservedly. Faith knows no "No"; it knows only "Yes". Faith makes the weak strong and the timid brave. Faith heals, faith creates, and faith moves mountains. Faith is power, a talisman that works wonders.

Faith is assertive and aggressive, authoritative and arbitrary, adamantine and unreasonable, static and firm as a rock. Credulity is faith's failing and with credulity for its companion, faith believes what is possible and impossible, credible and incredible, anything and everything.

Omnipotent is faith, but not eternal. Faith is secure when reason is asleep. The child is angelic, for it knows not guilt and is shadowed not by sin. But the child does not always remain the child. With the breaking of the dawn of its mind, it ceases to be child. So is the childlike faith roused by reason and disturbed by doubt. Doubt is active, it seeks and ventures and risks. It lets not faith take everything on trust, it questions it at every turn and lets it not rest in the passivity of belief. Doubt, in its struggle, spells death of faith.

When doubt assails me and faith grows dim and fails me, lead me, Ahura Mazda, from destructive doubt to reasoned faith. Let my faith be wedded to reason and let it be based on conviction. Give me faith and more faith, but not the blind faith. Give me the seeing and discerning faith of thy Armaiti and save me from the weakness of a credulous mind. O Vahishta Manah, Thou Best Mind.

Forlorn is life without faith in thee, Ahura Mazda

Replenish and restore my faith when it grows dim and light, Ahura Mazda, for life loses its luster when it loses its faith. Life is resplendent and rich when the fire on the altar of faith is aflame in my heart.

Make me not wavering and weak in my faith in myself. Let my faith in human nature never be shaken, despite the disappointments and disillusions I court in my dealings with my fellowmen. And above all, let not my faith in thee falter and fail and die, for the death of my faith in thee is the death of the life of my spirit.

Faith rends the veil that hides thee from my sight and opens the heavenly gates for me. Bathed in the light of thy faith, my soul sees its way to thee and flies on the wings of faith to heaven, the highest of the high, Garonmana, where thou dost dwell in thy glory.

My religion rests on my faith in thee and I can pray unto thee when I have my faith in thee. Prayer is lifeless when I lose my faith in thee. In full faith, therefore, will I pray unto thee and with unswerving faith will I serve the days and nights that I live upon earth and faithfully will I commit myself into thy hands to do with me as thou thinkest best, Ahura Mazda.

Youth is the spring of life

When life is young, it is bright and easy and gay. The very atmosphere is full of enthusiasm and energy and youth is crowded with events that shape man's whole life thereafter.

Youth is buoyant and hopeful, cheerful and venturesome, confident and courageous, ambitious and enterprising. Youth is fraught with unlimited potentiality to accomplish great and wonderful things. The lure of life's adventure seems a glowing romance and a sweet, long poem to youthful life. Youth, in its vision, thinks it can grasp the rainbow.

Life is full of sport in the boisterous gaiety of youth. The desire for pleasure is strongest in youth. Festive youth yearns for the full enjoyment of life and in its misguided moments throws itself headlong in the whirling dissipations and wastes itself by riotous indulgence of vice and vulgarity.

Man thinks faded youth as life's paradise lost and grudges not giving a heavy price if he can buy and regain it. Growing age broods over passing youth and longs to live youthful days again. In vain does withering youth labor to prolong its beauty by appliances of art, by padding and painting, trappings and trimmings. Youth, none the less, ages and fades.

Youth thinks the spring of its life will not end and dreams not of its decay and death. Exuberant life swarms in the spring and blooms in a forest of riotous foliage, yet the autumn turns out to be the deathbed of the spring and winter its grave. So does the autumn of life steal slowly with silent steps and heralds the end of its spring. Though nature rejoices in the yearly return of the spring, man knows but one spring and youth, once lost, can never be regained.

Strengthen me, Ahura Mazda, to resist the temptation to give in to the dissipation of youth. Help me so to live my