Sacred Text · The Avesta

Good thoughts, good words, good deeds

Yasna Haptanghaiti (the Seven Chapters) · Yasna 35.2 · L. H. Mills

“We are praisers of good thoughts, of good words, and of good actions, of those now and those hereafter. We implant them (with our homage, and we do this) the more, and yet the more since we are (praisers) of the good (from whom they spring).”
Yasna 35.2 (Yasna Haptanghaiti) · L. H. Mills, SBE XXXI

Translation: Lawrence H. Mills (1887), The Zend-Avesta, Part III (The Yasna, Visparad, Afrinagan, Gahs and Miscellaneous Fragments), Sacred Books of the East vol. XXXI, public domain, via the Internet Archive (item zendavesta03darm). Reproduced in context; Mills’ round and square brackets are his own clarifying insertions, and embedded footnote marks in the scanned text were removed. Chapter and verse follow the standard Yasna numbering.

Christian comparison

How this connects to Jesus

This is the heart of Zoroastrian ethics, the threefold path of humata, hukhta, huvarshta: good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. Jesus joined the same three into one whole life: out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34), and let your light shine before others by your good works (Matthew 5:16). The Gospel treasures this triad and adds a gift the Gathas do not name, that God gives a new heart, so that good thought, word, and deed flow from grace, and not from our effort alone (Ezekiel 36:26).

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