The scent of roast chicken and Persian rice filled the basement of the George Sherman Union last night as members of the Boston University Bah·’Ì Club broke a day-long fast, during a 19-day string of religious fasts.
The BU Bahá’í Club, including members from Berkley College of Music and Emerson College, opened its doors to the community in celebration of Naw-Ruz, the coming Bahá’í new year.
“The Bahá’í faith is all about unity and that is what this event is all about as well,” said David Rodriguez, a sophomore in the College of Engineering. The Bahá’í Club broke fast and broke bread with more than 40 students from the Boston area.
“We wanted to have a blow-out celebration for the end of the year and get the campus aware of the Bah·’Ì faith,” said Leila Sanii, a junior in the School of Management. This first annual celebration offered food donated from the Boston Bahá’í community, a short video explaining the history of the religion and a guest speaker from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The fast lasts from sunrise to sunset and demands worshippers to relinquish all forms of food and drink, including water, for the final month of the Bahá’í year.
Rodriguez said the fast is less about the physical pain of fasting and more about the spiritual experience of the holiday.
“Although we do fast, which is physical, it is a more profound, spiritual thing,” Rodriguez said. “It is about leaving our selfish desires behind and letting the soul control the body.”
Like Lent and Ramadan, these 19 days leading to the spring equinox offers the Bahá’ís the chance at purity before the new year, Rodriguez said.
“O God! Leave them not to themselves, but guide their steps by the light of Thy knowledge, and cheer their hearts by Thy love,” Sanii said, as she lead the group in a prayer for unity from a collection of Bahá’u’lláh’s works.
Rodriguez said he was happy with the turnout at the event, despite the snow.
“Considering the weather, I think it went very well,” Rodriguez said.
Approximately 70 percent of the attendees, including Yan Yi, a graduate of the School of Education, were not of the Bahá’í faith. Yan said though she had never been to a Bah·’Ì event before, the break fast was a learning experience.
“I had never heard of Bahá’í before,” said Yan.
She said the experience reinforced her belief that every world religion is unique and special.
“That every religion is like a flower, they all make the world more beautiful,” Yan said.
First-year graduate in Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Amy Sanborn said she too learned a great deal from the experience.
“This event answered a lot of questions and sparked more questions,” Sanborn said. “And the food was great!”
The Bahá’í faith is an independent religion founded in 1863 by Bahá’u’lláh in Persia, or modern day Iran, on the principle that “there is one God who progressively reveals his will to humanity,” according to the Bahá’í International Community website. Bah·’u’ll·h believed himself to be a prophet of the one God – the god of all the world’s religions. This one God granted Bahá’u’lláh the mission of creating the world’s next great religion: Bahá’í.
Although not a branch of any other world religion, Bahá’í follows the teachings of God’s other prophets including Moses, Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus and Muhammad and believes all of their messages to be the same, according to the website.
The Bahá’ís preach the equality of all races, unity of the global community, necessity of universal education and harmony between religion, philosophy, and science, the Bahá’í International Community said.