Zoroastrianism is Philosophy as Religion

Very elegantly put!
Philosophy AS religion = The celebration or worship of Philosophy.
That is what Mazdayasna, Zarathushtra's thought system, is all about.
Ushta
Alexander

2011/8/17 Special Kain

Asha is "that which truly exists". Ahura is "that which is divine". Mazda is "wisdom" (as in "having a wise mind"). Therefore Ahura Mazda means "the sacredness of wisdom" or "to have a wise mind is something sacred and divine". In other words, we hold wisdom and intelligence to be sacred. We take philosophy far more seriously than the Greeks did!

Ushta,
Dino

Von: Alexander Bard
An: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Gesendet: 18:30 Dienstag, 16.August 2011
Betreff: Re: [Ushta] Asha vs Druj compared to Chaos vs Order

Correct!
Except I would add that for Ahura to be SACREDNESS it is actually Ahura WITH Mazda.
Ahura is what Asha becomes WHEN VIEWED THROUGH Mazda.
Ushta
Alexander

2011/8/16 Special Kain

Alexander is right.
Asha is that which exists and how it has come into existence (how things work properly), Ahura is the SACREDNESS of existence, druj is that which isn't real. Charles Darwin vs. ignorant creationists!

Ushta,
Dino

Von: Alexander Bard
An: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Gesendet: 15:05 Dienstag, 16.August 2011
Betreff: [Ushta] Asha vs Druj compared to Chaos vs Order

Chaos and order are GREEK and not Iranian concepts.
I'm not interested in chaos or order, they don't exist as such but are rather just fantasies of our imagination.
Everything is chaos. Chaos only becomes order when we decide to make it order.
Zarathushtra's opposites are instead "that which has existence" versus "that which does not exist". Just like Nietzsche and Heidegger, actually, philosophers who were also against Plato's distinctions of chaos and order.
Ushta
Alexander

2011/8/16 Behnaz Larsen
Yes, Alexander, however I have a question about this nothingness: chaos versus order, where do they fit in? If druj is "nothing", and "the lack of" etc then chaos could not be categorised under druj. It has been said that in every chaotic situation there is beauty and order. Obviously these people have not seen my kitchen, so I think you are right not to translate these from one language to the next, since words keep failing us.
Behnaz

On Aug 16, 2011, at 2:46 PM, Alexander Bard wrote:
Two things:
1. The Oxford Dictionary has a VERY DIFFERENT understanding of real from Gilles Deleuze. Daniel mixes the two up, please don't.
2. The proper English word for druj outside of our minds is "nothingness". It is the LACK OF EXISTENCE which is druj in its purest sense in the Avestan language. In this sense "Asha" is "Something" or "Substance" or "How Things work" whereas Druj is "Nothingness" or "Lack of substance" or "Illusions of how things actually don't work".
Ushta
Alexander

2011/8/15 Daniel Samani

Great! Then lie is a good translation to the Avestan concept druj, I guess that depends what aspect one empathise. People use the English language with different styles. Some more inflated by vitalism and absolutism then others. If one make the statement that the definition of a lie is that it's not true - it weight heavily on what one mean by truth (that can be coloured heavily on abramitic thought).

I am confident that we will reach an agreement on this matter. This will occur when I have grasped what you have a long time ago. ;) Too me the concept real in itself is confusing this is what Oxford says: "The term is most straightforwardly used when qualifying another adjective: a real x may be contrasted with a fake x, a failed x, a near x, and so on. To treat something as real, without qualification, is to suppose it to be part of the actual world. To
reify
something is to suppose that we are committed by some doctrine to treating it as a thing. The central error in thinking of reality and existence is to think of the unreal as a separate domain of things, perhaps unfairly deprived of the benefits of existence."

At least one thing I agree 100% with, asha is a rather complex concept.

Ushta
Daniel