Sunday, November 22, 2020

THE VISIONS OF ARDA-VIRAF


Therefore, O Arda Viraf! Walk yourself in the ways of righteousness, and teach others also to do so. Recollect that your body will return to dust, but your soul, if rich in good works, will mount to immortality, and partake of the happiness you have already witnessed. Take less care of your body and more of your soul; the pains and aches of the body are easily cured, but who can minister the diseases of the soul?
When you set out on a journey in the lower world, you provide yourselves and take with you, money, clothes, provisions, and are prepared against all the exigencies of the road, but what do you provide yourselves with for your last journey of the soul from the lower to the upper world, and whose friendship have you to assist you on the way?
Hear O Arda-Viraf! And I will describe to you the provisions requisite for the voyage to eternal life.
In the first place the friend who will assist you is God; but to attain his friendship you must walk in his ways and place in him the firmest reliance. The provisions must be faith and hope, and the remembrance of your good works. The body, O Arda-Viraf! May be likened to a horse, and the Soul to its rider, and the provisions requisite for the support of both are good actions; but as with a feeble rider, the horse is ill-managed, so with a feeble horse the rider is but ill-accomodated. Care ought to be taken that both are kept in order; so in a spiritual sense, the soul and body must be kept in order by a succession of good actions. Even in the world the multitude would sneer at a man who took care of his horse more than himself; for this reason a man ought to take more care of his soul than his body. God, O Arda-Viraf! Requires only two things of the sons of men: the first, that they should not sin; the next that they should be greatful of the many blessings he is continually bestowing on them.
(The Teachings of Zoroaster)





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