For our intention to become our own “hallowed tree”, it needs to be nurtured and that begins with words. The first stages of what Bahram Elahi calls in vivo practice, i.e. fighting against the imperious self and concretely putting into practice human virtues in everyday life and in contact with others, have to do with our words. The extraordinary thing about words is, precisely, that they are ordinary. Every minute of our lives in the most ordinary circumstances, we can do an act of humanity by choosing to speak or, on the contrary, not to speak.

This third article of reflection on the “Quintessence of Religions” is the last in a series dedicated to Ostad Elahi’s poem. After the question of “God” and that of “evil”, Leili Anvar’s commentary now invites us to reflect on the notion of the “good”. To give a “quintessential idea” of what the good is, Ostad Elahi reformulates here the two phases of the Golden Rule that determine what the theologian and philosopher Olivier du Roy defines as the “ethics of the reciprocity and fundamental intersubjectivity of man”.

This is the second – in vivo – stage of practical work introduced in December (see An antidote to anger (1): analysis): going deeper into what triggers anger, reframing our relations to others as central to our practice and making kindness the active ingredient in the struggle against anger. Literature review: I started reading up about anger in books on child psychology. I was initially looking for passages on parental anger, but what I mostly found in the end were studies on anger in children, and they helped me understand a lot.