Dancing around Ahura Mazda

Dear Parviz

I actually don't go back and forth on the issue of Ahura Mazda.
I rather go around the issue (dance around the issue) since it is not yet fully developed (by anybody) and since I also believe this is the best way to understand the concept and make it ours, emotionally and credibly.
So I believe that "the going-around" and the constant debate on the issue of Ahura Mazda is the most fruitful way to understand the concept, identify with it, live it and breathe it. Reducing such an important concept to dogma is almost like killing it.
What is clear is that Ahura Mazda has two components: One describing Existence or the Universe as a whole, the other pointing out and giving value to that which has substance in this universe (which to us as Mazdayasni is that which we consider "mind"). In classic philosophy this would be the combination of Being and Becoming, stability and movement, cosmos and chaos, eternity and change etc. Hegel would indeed have loved this combination, this dialectical relationship WITHIN the divinity. This is what Hegel himself referred to as "Spirit".
It is clear that what Zarathushtra was aiming at was an all-encompassing concept of divinity and sacredness so that he could radically remove or make all other separate divinities redundant.
I believe you would agree with me on the issue, right?

Ushta
Alexander

2008/9/20 Parviz Varjavand

Dear Alex,

I would like to hear once and for all your final view of Ahoora Mazda.
You seem to go back and forth on this and please give me your final take.

Parviz

--- On Fri, 9/19/08, Alexander Bard wrote:

From: Alexander Bard
Subject: Re: [Ushta] Any good book about Spinoza?
To: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, September 19, 2008, 1:59 PM


Deleuze actually wrote two books on Spinoza, they are both brilliant!!!
Deleuze is the modern philosopher who understood and respected Spinoza the most.
And Spinoza is the best way for westerners to understand Zarathushtra.
Even though I must admit that there is a lot of Zarathushtra in Hegel and Nietzsche too.
Especially the concept of Ahura Mazda would have thrilled Hegel, had he known about it.
Ushta
Alexander