What a Mazdayasni LIFE is and should be about

Precisely!!!
This is why I have become allergic to every kind of statement along the lines of "The correct interopretation of this or that quote in this or that book is...".
I DO NOT CARE!!!
What I do care about - what Zarathushtra would care about - is HOW WE LIVE OUR LIVES.
So if a book quote can INSPIRE you to live a worthier and richer life, then all the better. If you can do so without books, then even better. Often an art exhibition or a mediation under a tree is MUCH BETTER than just quoting even more books.
It's just that I don't see in what way any book claiming to be "Zoroastrian" does "Zoroastrianism" any better than any other book does. I much rather read modern science or any good ethics book and PRECISELY THEREBY become a BETTER MAZDAYASNI!
Mazdayasna is NOT, I repeat NOT, an Iranian history club. It is a LIVING and THRIVING WAY OF LIFE.
History is fine, Iran is interesting as a culture, sure. But that is all SECONDARY when it comes to define what a Mazdayasni life IS.
This argument "because our forefathers did things this or that way we have to do like them" is pathetic. Our forefathers did not live in 2010, we live in an entirely different world. For example a world were we KNOW that angels do not exist. So speaking about angels anyway, as if we could pretend that we don't know that they don't exist, is indeed idiotic!
We must be able to do much better than that.
Ushta
Alexander

2010/6/20 Special Kain

Take the worship of moldy books, add what Dostojevskij called "the selfishness of suffering" (which would later heavily influence Nietzsche's criticism of religion), and you end up with Christianity's despicable culture of self-vicitimization and dependence.
Nothing could be further from Zarathushtra's AFFIRMATIVE philosophy! We're ethically obliged to REJOICE and be BRUTALLY HONEST with ourselves and strive for AUTHENTICITY in the face of the relentless disenchantment of reality. This is Spinozist ethics, this is Lacanian ethics, this is neo-existentialist ethics!
So it's never the moldy books that we should worship - there's nothing to be worshipped at all! -, it's what we LEARN from such moldy books that matters, and how they affect our thoughts, words and deeds.

Ushta,
Dino


--- Alexander Bard schrieb am So, 20.6.2010:

Von: Alexander Bard
Betreff: [Ushta] Clarification - indeed!
An: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Datum: Sonntag, 20. Juni, 2010 12:57 Uhr


EXACTLY, dear Brother Dino!

Or to put it buntly:
If our life was meant to be an obsession with OLD BOOKS, then why on earth did Zarathushtra not spend his whole life READING AND QUOTING OLD BOOKS?
Isn't the whole point that we should live our lives as EXAMPLES of how Zarathushtra LIVED?
Books MUST therefore be secondary and NOT primary in the Mazdayasna LIFE!
And Mazdayasna is about LIVING LIFE TO ITS FULLEST, not about degrading Life by not living at all and turn ourselves into book-quoting robots.
I really really wish we once and for all could get that boring ABRAHAMIC MENTALITY out of Zoroastrianism, It is nowhere to be found in The Gathas, so why should we then force it into our beatiful religion and philosophy AFTERWARDS. Zarathushtra deserves much better than by turned into a primitive version of Muhammed.
To me, there is absolutely nothing to envy about Abrahamic religion!

Ushta
Alexander