I'm looking at paragraphs 9 and 10 together for a fairly simple reason. The first tells Muhammad-Taqi how to pray the prayer, and the second gives him the prayer to pray. And Baha'u'llah is remarkably specific about how he should approach it.
“They whose sight is keen, whose ears are retentive, whose hearts are enlightened, and whose breasts are dilated,” He says, can “recognize both truth and falsehood, and distinguish the one from the other.”
That seems an appropriate place to begin when speaking to Muhammad-Taqi. As a religious scholar, distinguishing truth from falsehood is presumably something he believes himself quite capable of doing. And yet Baha'u'llah doesn't point here to scholarship, learning or religious authority as the qualities that make this possible. He mentions keen sight, retentive ears, an enlightened heart and a dilated breast.
Only a few paragraphs ago Muhammad-Taqi was told to “Give ear”, and then reminded what his ear had been created for. Now we learn something more about that ear. It isn't enough for it simply to hear. It needs to be retentive. It needs to hold on to what it hears.
And then Baha'u'llah tells him what to do:
“Recite thou this prayer that hath flowed from the tongue of this Wronged One, and ponder thereon with a heart rid of all attachment, and with ears that are pure and sanctified, be attentive to its meaning...”
There's quite a sequence there.
Recite these words. Ponder them with a heart rid of attachment. Listen carefully to them, presumably with those retentive ears so that the words stay with you. Pay attention to their meaning.
And then:
“that haply thou mayest inhale the breath of detachment and have pity upon thyself and upon others”.
Haply.
I love that word. With luck. Maybe. Perchance.
Baha'u'llah doesn't say that if Muhammad-Taqi follows these instructions he will necessarily become detached. He doesn't say that he will inevitably become more compassionate towards himself and others. He tells him what to do, how to approach the prayer, what to listen for, and what may result. But then there is that little word, haply. There is still something required of Muhammad-Taqi himself.
And I think we should probably take Baha'u'llah's instructions seriously as we move into the next paragraph. I'm going to presume that you, dear Reader, are taking care of the reciting, pondering, detachment and careful listening. I'm going to focus on the meaning.
The prayer begins, “My God, the Object of my adoration, the Goal of my desire”. That word “Goal” catches my attention because Baha'u'llah has already given us a goal for this prayer. He hopes that, haply, Muhammad-Taqi will “inhale the breath of detachment and have pity upon thyself and upon others”. Presumably that compassion is not separate from approaching God, the Goal of his desire, but part of what happens as he moves towards Him.
The prayer then reminds Muhammad-Taqi just how precarious his own position is. Whoever God "exaltest is raised above the angels”, while whoever God abases is made “lower than dust, nay, less than nothing”. It would be very easy for a man in Muhammad-Taqi's position to look down upon those he regarded as beneath him.
But if it is God Who exalts and abases, then the person who has fallen could just as easily have been me. And if I can see that, perhaps it becomes a little easier to have pity upon others.
But Baha'u'llah goes even further. “Though wicked, sinful, and intemperate, we still seek from Thee a ‘seat of truth’.” We. Not they. Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to include himself among those who are wicked and sinful, while still asking God for something far beyond anything they might deserve. He isn't being allowed to stand apart from everyone else and judge them. He is standing among them, asking God for mercy.
And then we come to what almost sounds like a correction. “Everything Thou doest is pure justice, nay, the very essence of grace.” Justice, nay, grace. Justice is important, of course. Baha'u'llah speaks elsewhere about reward and punishment as two pillars upon which the stability of the world depends. But if none of us is truly worthy before God, then I'm not sure I want to stand too firmly on the side of demanding justice. Grace is something else. Grace is mercy and compassion shown to us even though we don't deserve it. And if Muhammad-Taqi is being asked to recognise the grace that God has shown him, perhaps that might help evoke similar feelings in him towards others.
The prayer continues by asking God to “Vouchsafe Thy strength, O Almighty One, unto Thy weak creatures”. That must be an interesting thing for a powerful man to pray. Muhammad-Taqi was not one of the weak members of his society. He was a religious leader whose words carried influence and whose actions had consequences for others. But if he is sincerely praying that the weak be strengthened, what does that prayer demand of a powerful person who encounters them? It becomes rather difficult to pray for their strengthening while using your own strength to crush them.
And then we're back to the voice again.
“Should the fragrance of Thy praise be shed abroad by any of the divers tongues of the world, out of the East or out of the West, it would, verily, be prized and greatly cherished.”
Only a couple of paragraphs ago Baha'u'llah said that God “hath given a voice unto all things, that they may praise and glorify Him”. Now that purpose is given another image. Praise has a fragrance, and any tongue in the world, whether from East or West, that gives off that fragrance is to be prized and cherished.
But then comes the other side of it.
“If such tongues, however, be deprived of that fragrance, they assuredly would be unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought.”
Wow. Not even worthy of being thought about? Whew.
If we don't fulfill the purpose for which our voice was given, then we, or at least our tongue, are “unworthy of any mention, in word or yet in thought”.
And think what that means for Muhammad-Taqi. His tongue is one of the principal instruments of his position. He teaches. He argues. He gives religious opinions. People listen to what he says. The issue isn't simply whether his arguments against Baha'u'llah are clever, learned, technically defensible, or even sincerely believed. Baha'u'llah has established a much more fundamental criterion.
What is your tongue for?
And once again Baha'u'llah isn't merely telling Muhammad-Taqi this. He has put the lesson into his own mouth. Muhammad-Taqi has been told to recite a prayer in which he himself declares that the value of a tongue lies in whether it carries the fragrance of the praise of God. The very tongue that has been used to speak against Baha'u'llah and His followers is being given very different words to speak.
Then, after all of this, the prayer ends:
“We beg of Thee, O Providence, to show Thy way unto all men, and to guide them aright.”
All men.
I find myself thinking back to the reason Baha'u'llah gave for this exercise in the first place. Recite the prayer. Ponder it with a heart free from attachment. Listen carefully. Pay attention to its meaning. And haply, perhaps, perchance, you may “inhale the breath of detachment and have pity upon thyself and upon others”.
Muhammad-Taqi has been made to acknowledge that his own position depends upon God, to place himself among the sinful, to move from thinking about God's justice to recognising His grace, to pray that the weak might receive strength, and to declare that the worth of his own tongue depends upon what he does with it.
And then he is made to pray for everyone. Not for himself. Not for the people who agree with him. Not for those he considers righteous. All men.
Perhaps that's how the prayer can teach him to have pity upon himself and upon others. It seems almost to widen, to dilate, as it goes, from “My God”, to “we”, to the weak, to the tongues of East and West, and finally to “all men”. It makes it increasingly difficult for Muhammad-Taqi to stand apart from everyone else.
And even after all of that, Baha'u'llah only says “haply”.
The prayer can put the words into Muhammad-Taqi's mouth. It can give him something to ponder. It can give those retentive ears something worth holding onto.
But what happens next is still up to him.
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