Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/375

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342
HERESIES

desire of wife and child, of hearth and home. He feels that he cannot liberate himself from the unbearable yoke of these strong passions, unless he flees from the world to some solitary place where joys and sorrows cannot reach him. Life, such a one thinks, is a fleeting illusion. It cannot give him enduring calm. Accordingly, he breaks his family ties, shuns society, becomes a hermit, and lives a life of complete quiescence. He courts negation.

Zoroastrianism stands for controlling and regulating bodily desires, but not for suppressing and killing them. The antithesis of body and soul, flesh and spirit, is not unknown to the Pahlavi writers. But the body in itself is not evil. According to Zoroastrianism, matter is not inherently evil, and life in the flesh is not necessarily death in the spirit. Zarathushtra legislates for the material as well as the spiritual side of our nature. A healthy body alone can nurture a healthy mind, and it is through the agency of these two prime factors that the spirit can work out her destiny. Man can act righteousness and assail wickedness only with a sound body. The faithful craves for a long life in the body in this world, before he is allotted an eternal life of spirit in heaven. Bodily life in this world is sacred, it is a pledge. Ormazd has confided this most precious of his gifts to man that he may join with his Heavenly Father in securing the ultimate triumph of good over evil and thus usher the divine Kingdom of Righteousness into the world. The soul rules over the body as a householder rules over a family or a rider rides his horse.[1] It is the stubborn slave of the soul, and with the exercise of self-control it is to be converted into an obedient servant always ready to carry out the mandates of its master.[2] The body is an indispensable vehicle of the soul and the saintly soul drives in it on the path of righteousness. It is only in the case of the wicked, in whom the flesh gains victory over the spirit, that it becomes a heavy burden, its wheels refuse to move, sticking in the quagmire of sin. But then the fault lies with the driver. It is only when the individual lives solely for the body, feasts his lustful eyes on the vices of the flesh, and is a willing slave to the bodily passions, that the body turns out to be the grave of the soul.[3] Whoso lives in this world for the body

  1. ↑ Dk., vol. 6, p. 353, 380, 381.
  2. ↑ Dk., vol. 1, p. 56.
  3. ↑ Dk., vol. 8, p. 469.
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