Human Doing, Human Being

By Behzad Dabir-Panah

In the poignant narrative of "Human Doing, Human Being," the reader is invited into the turbulent life journey of a resilient soul, a young boy from Tehran, who, against all odds, transforms adversity into a quest for self-discovery and profound personal growth.
Born into a world that seemed determined to reject him and threaten his life at every corner, the protagonist faces rejection not only from family and friends but also from society itself. The narrative unfolds as a heartbreaking chronicle of a child enduring unimaginable physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, only to find himself abandoned and homeless on the unforgiving streets of Tehran at age 7.
Escaping religious persecutions, the protagonist's journey takes an unexpected turn as he arrives in the United States during his early teens. However, the scars of his past remain, and he is confronted with an entirely new set of crises and challenges. The narrative, both heart-wrenching and hopeful, unveils a profound exploration of the human spirit's resilience in the face of relentless adversity.
As the protagonist grapples with the shadows of his past, the narrative takes a turn toward self-reflection and self-improvement. Tired of running from the haunting echoes of his past, he embarks on a courageous journey to confront his demons head-on. Through the realms of performing arts, life experiences, and spiritual exploration, he seeks to unearth the truth within himself, discovering the profound meaning of authenticity and the pursuit of a more meaningful life.
"Human Doing, Human Being" doesn't merely narrate a personal journey; it serves as a compelling counter-narrative to societal systems. It challenges the very structures that perpetuated rejection and abuse, offering a searing critique of the collective ego, societal norms, and religious persecutions.
Woven throughout this exploration are insightful quotes from luminaries such as Carlos Castaneda, Eckhart Tolle, and Lionel Trilling. These quotes serve as guiding lights, illuminating the path of self-discovery and awareness for both the protagonist and the collective consciousness.
Part memoir, part philosophical exploration, the book is a raw and authentic testament to the author's experiences. Names and events may be altered, but the emotional resonance and the search for truth remain palpable, creating a narrative that transcends individual experiences to resonate with the collective human condition.
"Human Doing, Human Being" is not just a story; it's a transformative journey, an exploration of the human spirit's capacity to endure, evolve, and ultimately, find truth and meaning amidst the chaos of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781684980321

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Biography

Dreaming

Time

Some Questions One May Ask Himself

Nature of Thought!

Searching for Truth

The Art of Not Doing

God

The Soul

The Heart

Conscious and Unconscious

The Limited Human Being

The Limitless Human Being

The Distracting World

How to Break Free from the Prison of Self

The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

The Purpose of Religion and Spiritual Practice

The Daily Struggle

The Choice Between Good and Bad

The Art of Stalking

Proactive Versus Reactive

Showing Strong Versus Being Strong

Internal Dialogue

Attachment

Discipline, Detachment, and Choice

Relationships

The Relationship Between Parents and Children

What are We Teaching Our Children?

Couples and Marriage Relationships

Numbing the Mind

The Being

The Doing

Intellect and Soul

Greed

The Present Moment

Purpose of Religious Practice

The Pain

Commitment Versus Interest

Meaning

The Mind and Technology (The Other Mind)

The Voice in My Head

Power and Its Implications

The Process

Knowledge

Pain and Its Implications

Presence

Possibilities and Limitlessness of Being

Warrior's Path

Unconditionality and Universality

Our Thoughts, Feelings, and Nerves

Equality

Unity of Humanity

About the Author

cover.jpg

Human Doing, Human Being

Behzad Dabir-Panah

Copyright © 2023 Behzad Dabir-Panah

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2023

ISBN 978-1-68498-030-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68498-032-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Chapters:

Perspective:

Icame to the states as a refugee when I was fifteen years old. I've never had a family. Well, that's not exactly true. I had a family once. I was four years old when my parents got separated. After spending a couple of months at my grandparents', my father decided to get remarried, mostly because of the constant pressure by my grandfather to get us out of there, or maybe it was my grandfather's way of pushing his kids to be independent! Either way, it wasn't really my father's decision. My grandfather wanted me and my elder brother out of his house. He didn't want to end up raising me and my brother. He wanted my grandmother to be exclusively caring for him and not raising his grandkids. When my dad was getting remarried, everything seemed fine at first. Even after the marriage, everything seemed fine for the first couple of months.

Biography

And then one day, when my brother and I were playing in the hallway in our apartment, I heard what seemed to be an argument coming from inside the living room. I tried to listen to see what was going on. It was my dad and his wife arguing. She was saying that she was not happy, and she wanted to have her own family. My father was trying to convince her that we were her family and that he and the kids (us) loved her. But she said that she wanted her own kids, and she didn't want to raise us. She said she didn't love us. Then she started yelling my name to go to the room. I opened the door and when I was inside, she pointed to her purse and told me to bring it to her.

I stood there for a moment and then I said, If you don't love us, we don't love you either. She wasn't happy to hear that.

I sometimes think that if I hadn't said that, maybe the course of my life would've been different. After all, I've come to realize that this is how we go through life as people.

I don't if you don't.

After that day, everything changed. I became an outsider. I was always hungry and would get abused or beaten by my stepmother for the smallest things, most often for nothing. I was told that if I told anything to my dad, things would get a heck of a lot worse. So I didn't say anything.

One time I was nearly starving. I hadn't eaten anything for days. I practically begged her for some food. She went into the kitchen and came back after a little while. She told me to close my eyes and then shoved something into my mouth. Then she told me to eat it. I started to chew. As I started chewing, I began to realize I was eating dirt, gravel, salt, and pepper. I gagged everything out. I looked at her with disbelief. She was smiling.

I asked, Why? What did she want me to do for her not to do this?

She looked at me and said, You should kill yourself.

I couldn't believe someone could be so cruel. We lived near a major highway. She said that I should go and jump in front of a car. I thought about it for a second, and then I ran outside and toward the highway. I was so angry—at her, myself, the pain I was feeling, and my situation. I was steps from the highway when the thought I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't let her win came to mind. I stopped by the sidewalk, watching the cars go by, and could not believe the fact that I had no one to go to or to talk to. I was alone.

After that day, my stepmother would hardly let me inside the house. She wouldn't open the door. Later on, when she had kids, she'd tell them not to open the door either. Then my father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). I had to go to the house and check on him and help him take showers and dress up and then leave right before she came home. I spent all my time on the streets. I'd go to school, but the concern about where I was going to sleep or what I was going to eat that day would drive me out of school. Some days, I'd skip school altogether because I hadn't had anything to eat for a couple of days, and I was trying to figure out what to eat. I spent days hustling in the streets, selling anything I could, and I spent nights alone and cold in a staircase of an apartment building where everyone else in that building slept without knowing what I was going through. I didn't know which was worse: the embarrassment of someone seeing me sleeping in the stairways by accident or when I was pleading with my stepmom to open the door and let me in or a neighbor opening the door and seeing me there. Most nights in the winter were so cold that I couldn't sleep in the staircase even if I wanted to. The 3 × 3 pipe room next to every apartment that the pipes ran through was my refuge on those nights. I would often go into one of those pipe rooms and try to get as close as I could to the hot water pipes without getting burned. The space was so small that I could only stand. Sometimes I would fall asleep and burn myself. One time, I fell through the hole where the pipes ran down to the bottom floor. There were a lot of insulations in the pipe room, and by the time I pulled myself out, I was covered in it. Very itchy stuff.

I had a friend Mohammad or Mo, whose father was in prison for robbery. He had uncles who watched out for them. But I guess it wasn't enough. There was a third guy, Javad or Joe, whom I never was quite sure what he did in our group. He came along with us and always waited for a piece of the action, but I didn't really trust him. We hustled to get by. One of the things we did, we held up expensive grocery items, like olive oil, and sold them back to the store owners for a little less than what they usually paid for.

The three of us, were always after making money during the day and hung out till the end of the day. Then they'd go home to their families while I stayed out there in the streets. I didn't want anybody to know that I didn't have a home to go to. I waited till everyone left and then went up the stairways. You know the landing between the floors? The building where my father's home was had twelve floors. The landing between the third and fourth floor was my home. Even during the summers, I couldn't relax. Past the point of being frozen to death out there, and there was always the fear of someone seeing me there. I think most people who lived in the building probably knew. My most shameful/embarrassing times were when I went to children's classes. There were these classes that my father took me once when I was five or six. He'd told me that we had a different religion and that I shouldn't tell anybody about it. I should just go to the classes. The classes were Baha'i children's classes. Baha'i faith is the youngest world religion. It teaches the oneness of God and oneness of humanity.

In fact, it teaches that the purpose of religion is to bring people together, and if it's the cause of disunity, it's better to have no religion.

I was always uncomfortable being there. I was afraid that I didn't fit in, and I didn't.

All the other kids came from nice and decent families. They were all clean and even played some kind of musical instruments or were into some kind of art. I was always afraid that maybe I wasn't clean enough or maybe I smelled bad. After all, I was in the streets all the time. I tried to wash up at a water fountain or something before I went to each class.

The classes happened to be the only good thing in my life as a kid. Also, there was always food or snacks. Although I was in no way fit to embody the teachings of the Baha'i faith, I liked going to the classes. It took away a lot of the imaginary egotistical walls that we as people build that separate us from our true self and ultimately, others.

Now I realize that separating ourselves or thinking that we're separate from others, and not just people, but the whole of creation is a result of our separation and the feelings of indifference within.

The parents of the other kids that I went to children's classes with were always nice. They didn't treat me any different. I don't know if it was because they didn't want to offend me or just didn't want to get involved.

For years, I was a loner. I was uncomfortable with big gatherings. I still am nervous sometimes. I chose acting as a big goal and something I really enjoy. But a lot of the times, I'm nervous when I go in to audition. I know I have so much to offer, but I can't get past the nerves. And the other 10 percent of the times, when I'm good, I'm great.

The other major problem that early on in my childhood I started to realize was that I was looked at differently. Because no matter what, I didn't hold back in saying that I was a Baha'i. Technically, I wasn't old enough to be a Baha'i, but it was the only good thing I had. Plus I didn't have anything to lose. Soon after, when it was known that I was a Baha'i, my friends stopped talking to me. I didn't know what it was at first. It was the worst thing. It wasn't that they stopped talking to me. They started avoiding me and ignoring me altogether. I approached one of them, and he told me that his mother said to avoid me completely and that I was an atheist and was going to hell.

I remember this taboo back there. They said that anything a Baha'i touched was unholy and should not be touched. Also, Baha'is had equal rights as dogs; and I should mention this, unlike in the States, back home, dogs don't have any rights.

This explained why no one ever said or did anything. When I was outside the door pleading and begging to be let inside of my father's home, the neighbors would open the door and sneak a peek at me and then go back in. The MS in my father's body was progressing rapidly, and I needed to be around more to help. My two stepbrothers were too young and too little to be able to shower him or help with other things.

One time, on New Year's Day, there was a fight at home again. The fights were mostly about the same one or two things—property ownership. My stepmom would say to my father that he should put the apartment in her name. My father's answer? If I do that, you'll kick me out too. He had a point.

On that New Year's day, the fight started again. I found myself looking back to try to remember the last time there were no fights at home. No matter how hard I tried to remember, I couldn't. The fights at home would usually end up with me getting kicked out by my stepmom no matter the weather.

Even if the fight had nothing to do with me, usually the fights were about whose name the title of the house should be in, and regardless of what the fight started over, it'd end up with me getting kicked out of the house. The screaming and yelling and fighting and the noise were torture at the time. I could feel it when the fight was about to start and the anxiety would take hold of me. I knew what was coming. I would automatically start to think about what I was going to do and where I was going to go. I would think about where I had to get food. Did I have to steal from the neighborhood's supermarket? I couldn't borrow money from anybody, so that was out of the question. I couldn't go to my dad's family, not because I didn't want to. Believe me! At the time I wanted nothing more. At the time, it seemed like they all had a comfortable life. My aunts had extra room to spare. My uncles had extra room to spare. But nobody wanted the discomfort of having to raise another kid. Based on their reaction and the feeling I got from them every time I showed up was that they didn't want me to stay for long. My pride wouldn't allow me to stay any longer than I could bear their looks of wanting me to leave. I acted like I could go away and I had somewhere to go and that I didn't need them. But this was far from the truth. I had nowhere to go, no one to go to. I mentioned pride. We'd have to come back to this thing we call pride. My father had nothing to offer at that point. The fights and arguments were so exhausting that he just wanted it to end. At first, I was forcefully pushed out of the house, but after a while, I'd leave the apartment myself without putting up a fight because I knew the fights weren't helping my father's illness.

The school was good except that I was always hungry sitting in the class. Back home, they don't serve food in schools. Even after school was over, my problems were real. I had no place to go, with nothing to eat. So for the most part, I had to escape school and hustle in the streets. If you don't understand what I mean, you simply never had your back against the wall. It means you make your money on the streets doing something illegal. I didn't like doing that. I knew it wasn't right because it didn't feel right, not because of what others believed to be right or wrong. I never cared about that. Frankly, I made the point so other people knew it too. I knew doing the wrong thing affects me on a personal level. One time, I even pleaded with God to help me so I don't have to hustle. I asked for help. I didn't eat anything for two days until finally, I had to give up and went back to doing what I had to do.

Sometimes I think I should've not done it even if I ended up starving to death.

Easier said than done but shows character. That's how we build our character, don't we?

Perhaps I didn't know any better, which I didn't. No one ever told me that I needed to build a strong moral character in life. No one told me not to give in to temptations. When you see everyone else around you doing the wrong thing and getting away with it too, it's hard for you to do the right thing unless you have a strong intention; I didn't. My only concern at the time was to stay alive, to avoid letting all the people in the neighborhood know that although my father had a home in that tall building, I had to sleep in the stairways. I didn't have an extra blanket to stay warm, and winters were the worst. Some nights I would curl up with my knees up to my chin and tuck my hands out of my sleeves and close to my body, and yet I was still freezing and really thought I was going to fall asleep from the cold and die in my sleep. The thought of not waking up actually made me happy. I felt like I'd finally be free of all this nonsense. But then I would wake up from the cold again shortly after having to rub my hands together to get some feeling back into them because they were completely numb.

The only good thing in my life at the time was the once-a-week classes I was going to. They were called children's classes. My father introduced me to these classes ever since I was five. He insisted that the classes were Baha'i faith's classes and would teach about the teachings of the faith and that I shouldn't tell anyone. After that, I kept learning that Baha'is are persecuted in Iran and they have no rights. I would hear of Baha'is being killed, imprisoned, and have their homes and possessions confiscated. Through these classes, I learned about the oneness of God—oneness of religion and oneness of humanity. The purpose of the Baha'i faith is the unity of mankind. The concept to me was better than any other ideas or concepts that I was learning from the people around me. I somehow felt the truth of these principles in my being. I continued going to these classes, but my lifestyle was far from living these principles. But for some unknown reason, I kept going to these children's classes. I felt ashamed every time I went to the other kids' homes because I didn't know if I smelled or if my clothes looked dirty. I was also very conscious of how I smelled. I didn't know if I smelled bad or not, but I still went. Also, one interesting fact was that at no point during my childhood or, in fact, all through my life, with all the misfortunes that I went through, did anyone stop me to ask if I was okay. I think deep down I always wondered if there was anything wrong with me.

So by the time I was nine, we'd moved to a new neighborhood, and all the people there knew that there was something wrong with my situation. However, I was pretty determined to act as if everything was normal. My days consisted of going to school, which all the while I had to be concerned about where I was going to go once the school was over and where I was going to get my next meal. I always looked around and down to the ground. There were