During our week four class, Professor Hamid gave us a lecture on ‘Eastern Ethics.’ Here we learned about the ethics in Persia, japan and China. Based on the lecture, around 6000 BC a prophet emerged in Persia who name was Zoroaster. Later on they moved to India. Currently Persia is also known as Iran, we can see Persian as Parsi in different part of India. Persia then had three ethical principles of Zarathustra, good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. Similarly, Chinese ethics dates back to the time of the Confucius (551-479 BCE), the Confucius ethical teaching was emphasized on self-cultivation. I learned about behaviour and life style of Confusion and Confucius. The Chinese ethical theory deals with moral status of an action or a policy or practices and theory about good and bad.
All though I enjoyed the entire lecture but I found Japanese ethics is so interesting and attribution of Dr.Hamid’s life experience and his story during his stay in japan made us easier to understand and feel how Japan really is. After the lecture I seriously feel like to go to japan and felt that life could be more meaningful and peaceful if all people are able to follow Japanese ethical behaviour. Japanese people have a positive attitude towards any activity they perform; they take any task seriously and give it their best because of their hard working nature.
One more thing still hovering in my mind is that we all students were asked by lecture that why Japan is modern, highly developed with traditional ethics? Most of my friends answered that after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan made a point to maintain peace, avoid fighting so and so over. I disagree with my friends thought because I think they were highly influence by the teaching of their religion (Buddhism and Shintoism) rather than just praying to God as most of people around the world do and fail to practice in real life that what made them unique in this world. For an example they never cheat others and they focus on hard work. If they fail to achieve their goal they accept as failure. I do not mean that rest of the people in the world like to cheat and they do not believe in hard work, of course they also think like Japanese but very rarely apply in real life that leads them backward. So, because of all this reason Japan now rules the world with its electronics.
In the same way we continue this topic in our tutorial class. In this class we learnt the ethical behaviour of all religion such as: Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Bhaism , etc. We had a short discussion about all these religions and I chose one among them which is totally new to me for my reflection paper and it is ‘ Bhaisim ‘
Bahaism – religion founded in Iran in the mid-19th century by Mirza Hoseyn ‘Ali Nuri, who is known as Baha` Ullah (Arabic: “Glory of God”). The cornerstone of Baha`i belief is the conviction that Baha` Ullah and his forerunner, who was known as the Bab, were manifestations of God, who in his essence is unknowable. The principal Baha`i tenets are the essential unity of all religions and the unity of humanity. Baha`is believe that all the founders of the world’s great religions have been manifestations of God and agents of a progressive divine plan for the education of the human race. Despite their apparent differences, the world’s great religions, according to the Baha`is, teach an identical truth. Baha` Ullah’s peculiar function was to overcome the disunity of religions and establish a universal faith.
Currently we can find Bhai community as minority in different country like Iran, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan etc. The biggest Bhai temple is in New Delhi, India it is also known as Lotus temple which is open for each and every people in this planet regardless of race, religion, caste, gender etc.
Lastly, all religion has their own ethical values and principles and it our responsibility to respect all religion equally because God has never ranked and levelled any religion whether it has majority or minority followers.
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