Tag Archives: books

nineteen days, book release

We are half way through the Baha’i Fast, where Baha’is abstain from food and drink between sunrise and sunset for 19 days in favour of spiritual nourishment such as meditation or prayer.

For the third year running a group of Baha’i photographers are posting photographs taken at the beginning and end of each fasting day, accompanied with Baha’i quotes and their own thoughts on the website nineteen days.

The site’s authors have also compiled a book to accompany the project, selling as a limited edition run of 250 copies for just US$15.99, it is available from here while stocks last.

 

Rumi

Rumi800 years ago today, on 30th September 1207, the mystical poet Rumi was born. Rumi’s wisdom on spiritual themes was widely referred to in Persian literature and literature from other parts of that region, his poetry has also become famous around the world and has more recently been incorporated into some pop songs, such as Bittersweet by Madonna in 1998. There is an article about Rumi’s birthplace here on the BBC News website.

Rumi is referenced several times in what Shoghi Effendi described as Baha’u’llah’s “greatest mystical composition”, The Seven Valleys, as well as The Four Valleys which is usually published along side The Seven Valleys. Both of these scriptural works offer mystical insights into themes of spiritual search and progress and were written in response to questions posed to Baha’u’llah.

In Memorials of the Faithful, by ‘Abdu’l-Baha, it is recorded that Baha’u’llah wrote down an ode of Rumi’s for a follower called Ustad Isma’il to sing. The ode is transtalted as follows:

I am lost, O Love, possessed and dazed,
Love’s fool am I, in all the earth.
They call me first among the crazed,
Though I once came first for wit and worth.

O Love, who sellest me this wine,
O Love, for whom I burn and bleed,
Love, for whom I cry and pine—
Thou the Piper, I the reed.

If Thou wishest me to live,
Through me blow Thy holy breath.
The touch of Jesus Thou wilt give
To me, who’ve lain an age in death.

Thou, both End and Origin,
Thou without and Thou within—
From every eye Thou hidest well,
And yet in every eye dost dwell.

The Tabernacle of Unity is available online

Tabernacle of UnityThe Tabernacle of Unity, The latest volume of Baha’u’llah’s writings to be translated and published by the Baha’i World Centre, is now available on-line.

The 28 page book contains five letters written by Baha’u’llah to individuals of Zoroastrian background in the 1800s.

The full book can be read on-line here, or downloaded in PDF or Microsoft Word format from this page of the Baha’i Reference Library.

The Baha’i Reference Library is an excellent resource for reading, searching through and downloading Baha’i literature in English, Arabic and Farsi.

Two other great resources for reading and searching through the Baha’i Writings are Ocean and BahaiResearch.com. Ocean is a tool that can be downloaded and used off-line to search through the texts of all the main religions, it also includes many books written about the Central Figures of the Faith (Baha’u’llah, The Bab, ‘Abdu’l-Baha) and it’s history. Ocean enables you to save your own compilations to disk for later use.Bahai Research BahaiResearch.com is an on-line project based on Ocean, allowing for a comprehensive search of sacred texts without downloading any software. Both resources are available in a number of different languages. Another site that allows searching through the Baha’i Writings online is True Seeker, this is more limited in features but, due to its simplicity, will work on systems where BahaiResearch.com might fail. At the time of writing this blog entry the Tabernacle of Unity is not available in the above three tools but it is likely to be available in them soon.

Finally it is worth mentioning that several Baha’i books can be downloaded in mp3 audio format and listened to off-line. These are available from the audio books page of the Baha’i Study Center.

Links:
The Tabernacle of Unity [on-line] [download]
Baha’i Reference Library
Ocean
Baha’iResearch.com
True Seeker
Baha’i Study Center

New Volume of Writings by Baha’u’llah

Source: Baha’i World News Service

A new volume of selected writings by Baha’u’llah, entitled “The Tabernacle of Unity,” has been recently translated and published in English.

This latest publication of the Baha’i World Centre contains five “tablets” – letters – written by Baha’u’llah to individuals of Zoroastrian background in the 1800s. As such, these tablets provide important insights into the interrelatedness of religion.

[…] While portions of these tablets have been previously translated, the volume represents the first time they have been presented in English in full.

For example, the well-known quotation, “Ye are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch,” comes from the second tablet of the book which was addressed to Mirza Abu’l-Fadl, a famous early Baha’i scholar.

For the full story and a photo of the book click here

Book Release: Veiled Souls

Veiled Souls: “Veiled Souls is a Katrin Kassiri’s memoirs by Reza Safarnejad and Katrin Kassiri. In 1976 Iran is a peaceful, prosperous and westernized country. Katrin is an eight-year-old girl growing up in Northern Iran in a family who follows a minority religion known as the Bahai religion. Katrin’s seventeen-year-old sister, Nassrin, commits suicide when Katrin’s father disapproves of Nassrin’s relationship with Hossein, who came from a Moslem family. As the family works through their grief, Iran’s political situation destabilizes when various political factions such as pro-democracy students and Islamic fundamentalists vie to overthrow the government through a violent revolution. The bloody revolution is followed by a full-scale war with Iraq, as Iran’s government cracks down on the civil rights of its citizens and openly discriminates against Bahais. Katrin, who sees no future for herself in Iran, decides to leave for the United States, but she has to brave a trip through the desert of Eastern Iran into Pakistan with the aid of human and drug traffickers.”