Ruhi Reflections -- Unit 1 -- Section 6
I was experimenting with different things one could do on this site, so I thought I'd start posting reflections on Ruhi questions I personally get kinda stuck on:
5. There are many things to which we can be attached besides material possessions. To what would you be attached if you were a person who:
5d. Does not let people know he is a Bahá'í if he thinks they will reject him.
---I think this answer varies a lot from situation to situation. If it's something like in Iran where people know exactly what the Bahá'í Faith is that's one thing. But, when people don't know what the Faith is, I think it's critical not to get caught up in labels. Like, if it comes up not directly asking about the Bahá'í Faith, but, from a staunch atheist asking "are you religious?", the priority should not be boldly answering "Yes. I'm a Bahá'í and I don't care if you're going to reject me for saying so, I must be firm and detached from fear of judgement etc etc etc" , the goal should be to get across "hey, your definition of 'religion', that notion of mindlessly listening to a preacher tell you there's a man in the clouds watching over you who will send you to hell if believe in Science, no I totally don't believe in that stuff either. [although I have a slightly different way of looking at things than you do. maybe a couple weeks from now when we've established how similar our underlying believes really are, we can re-visit what other ways of looking at the word "religion" are out there.]"
It just seems soooo counter productive to get locked into a battle of arguing about labels for things rather than getting to the underlying believes.
5e. Often spends money to go on outings and picnics, but never has money to go to Bahá'í conferences.
---I'm not at all convinced going to a Bahá'í conference is exhibiting any sort of detachment whatsoever -- especially those ones targeted at "young professionals." True detachment would be downloading podcasts of the talks from the conference onto your cellphone, listening to them while driving to the picnic, then sharing the contents of the talk with the people you meet at the picnic.
Not to mention you could attend a heck of a lot of picnics for the cost of airfare and hotel at a Bahá'í conference.
3. Is a person who dedicates practically every hour of his life to his work detached from the things of the world?
---It kinda depends on your motivation for work. If it's money, no. If you're a member of the House, maybe so. If your job just happens to be to make a video game that will unite hundreds of thousands of people by teaching them to communicate with one another, but the one catch is that it requires you to spend a month hunkering down and doing nothing but programming, eating and sleeping non-stop, but you decide it's worth it, I for one would like to think that could still be considered detached =)
5. There are many things to which we can be attached besides material possessions. To what would you be attached if you were a person who:
5d. Does not let people know he is a Bahá'í if he thinks they will reject him.
---I think this answer varies a lot from situation to situation. If it's something like in Iran where people know exactly what the Bahá'í Faith is that's one thing. But, when people don't know what the Faith is, I think it's critical not to get caught up in labels. Like, if it comes up not directly asking about the Bahá'í Faith, but, from a staunch atheist asking "are you religious?", the priority should not be boldly answering "Yes. I'm a Bahá'í and I don't care if you're going to reject me for saying so, I must be firm and detached from fear of judgement etc etc etc" , the goal should be to get across "hey, your definition of 'religion', that notion of mindlessly listening to a preacher tell you there's a man in the clouds watching over you who will send you to hell if believe in Science, no I totally don't believe in that stuff either. [although I have a slightly different way of looking at things than you do. maybe a couple weeks from now when we've established how similar our underlying believes really are, we can re-visit what other ways of looking at the word "religion" are out there.]"
It just seems soooo counter productive to get locked into a battle of arguing about labels for things rather than getting to the underlying believes.
5e. Often spends money to go on outings and picnics, but never has money to go to Bahá'í conferences.
---I'm not at all convinced going to a Bahá'í conference is exhibiting any sort of detachment whatsoever -- especially those ones targeted at "young professionals." True detachment would be downloading podcasts of the talks from the conference onto your cellphone, listening to them while driving to the picnic, then sharing the contents of the talk with the people you meet at the picnic.
Not to mention you could attend a heck of a lot of picnics for the cost of airfare and hotel at a Bahá'í conference.
3. Is a person who dedicates practically every hour of his life to his work detached from the things of the world?
---It kinda depends on your motivation for work. If it's money, no. If you're a member of the House, maybe so. If your job just happens to be to make a video game that will unite hundreds of thousands of people by teaching them to communicate with one another, but the one catch is that it requires you to spend a month hunkering down and doing nothing but programming, eating and sleeping non-stop, but you decide it's worth it, I for one would like to think that could still be considered detached =)
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