Issue #8
Aug. 19th 2002
The Meditations of Zara Yacob Pt.3 (Finale)
...selected by Menelyk
"I was born in the land of the priests of Aksum. But I am the son of a poor farmer in the district of Aksum; the day of my birth is 25th of Nahase 1592 A.D., the third year of the year of [King] Yaquob. By Christian baptism I was named Zara Yacob, but people called me Warqye. When I grew up, my father sent me to school in view of my instruction. And after I had read the psalms of David my teacher said to my father: "This young son of yours is clever and has the patience to learn; if you send him to a [higher] school, he will be a master and a doctor." After hearing this, my father sent me to study zema. But my voice was coarse and my throat was grating; so my schoolmaster used to laugh at me and to tease me. I stayed there for three months, until I overcame my sadness and went to another master who taught qane and sawsaw. God gave me the talent to learn faster than my companions and thus compensated me for my previous disappointment; I stayed there 4 years. During those days, God as it were snatched me from the claws of death, for as I was playing with my friends I fell into a ravine, and I do not know how I was saved except by a miracle from God. After I was saved I measured the depth of the ravine with a long rope and found it to be twenty-five fathoms and one palm [deep]. Thanking God for saving me, I went to the house of my master. After this I left for another school to study the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. I remained ten years in this type of study; I learned the interpretations of the Ferangi [foreigners] and of our own scholars. Oftentimes their interpretation did not agree with my reason; but I withheld my opinion and hid in my heart all the thoughts of my mind. Having returned to my native Aksum, I taught for four years. But this period was not peaceful: for in the XIX of king Susanyos, while afons, a Frang, was Abuna, two years [after his arrival] a great persecution spread over all Ethiopia. The king accepted the faith of the Ferangi, and from that time on persecuted all those who did not accept it."
III. On Obligations
The fundamental obligation of humans is toward God. That is the first wisdom, the beginning of all knowledge. God created humans and endowed them with superior intelligence, with the hope that humans would use the endowment for the service of knowing God. As the philosopher put it, " God created us intelligent so that we may meditate on his greatness, praise him and pray to him in order to obtain the needs of our body and soul".(16) It is after we imbibe God, the symbol of reason, that we put ourselves in the condition of his willingness to be obligated toward all "others." Thus, the first foundational obligation of human beings is to love others as you would yourself, and not to do to others what you would not do to yourself. It is reason, God's gift to us, which commands absolutely to love others as we love ourselves. Our obligations to ourselves are expressed in the secular form of meditations or the holy form of prayers.
Prayers are perhaps the deepest modalities of thinking (or if you like a fancier modernistic term ) of Philosophizing. The Ethiopian Philosophers' prayers are deeply steeped in the mastery of David's psalms. It is via these intimate prayers that the relations among human beings are illuminated; it is out of these prayers that an original mode of African philosophy is born.
The persecuted philosopher was very worried about the presence of other jealous and often vicious local religious competitors . He was intensely sensitive to the watchful eyes of the Frang with whom he was at odds. While he was self-exiled in the cave, he tells us, "... I have learnt more while living alone in a cave than when I was living with scholars. What I wrote in this book is very little; but in my cave I have meditated on many other such things"(17) Zara Yacob's breakthroughs in the world of philosophy are chiefly his few powerful pages, filled with the hermeneutic interrogation of the self via an entire surrendering to God or Reason if you prefer. His meditations or prayers originated in solitude, away from the influence of derivative books. His only reference is the Bible. He meditated in a way that cannot be captured by formal language. His thoughts seemed to have been enraptured by feelings which demand a great deal of respect and attention by a resistant and arrogant modern reader. His meditations, like Descartes, were courageously radical. He used his intelligence to delve into the complexities, ambiguities, and plenitude of the meanings of the psalms. When the psalms of David did not agree with him no fear of authority would detain his resolute mind from striking on its own. In this medieval philosopher, we sense the presence of a fiercely independent mind.
Consider for example some of his prayers:
Save me from the violence of men...
Do not withhold your kindness from me...
May your love and faithfulness constantly preserve me...
Do not let me be disgraced...
Turn to me and pity me...
Guide me and lead me...
Rescue me from my persecutors..
Let me hear your joy and exaltation...
Do not take away my hope...
Give me each day what I need to satisfy the necessities of life...
Save me from the hands and tongue of men, from bodily sickness and sorrow of the soul...
After his two years stay in the cave, he learned that the only everlasting value in the human world is the knowledge of God. Everything else is perishable, and that human things are essentially vain and contemptible, and inferior to the Reason that the creator gave us, so that we may know, (a) how and what to think (b) guide ourselves to the knowledge of human nature and finally we attain profound understanding of our obligations to ourselves and others.
His greatest prayer reads, "I am little and poor in your sight, O Lord, make me understand what I should know about you, that I may admire your greatness and praise you everyday with a new praise.(18)
ETHIOPIA TIMES Vol.1
