A Gathering of Love and Vitality | Ali Reza Panahian

A Gathering of Love and Vitality

The world is a world of brands and advertising. In such a world, some people spend billions to make a brand name. Then, they trade with that brand. We don’t have a good packaging industry for our cultural products. We don’t know how to introduce them.

We have an extremely superb, delicate, and beautiful humane event, which is crying due to love. The people of the world wish for a moment of the times, which you easily have in your hands and are drowned in, to be able to experience it for a moment. If they can affect people with a movie or TV show for a moment, like the moments when you easily cry in the religious meetings, and they make people cry, that movie will become universal.

It is easy to make people laugh. But, making people cry, especially due to love, can’t be easily found. It can’t be found in the world. “What are they doing?” The people of the world don’t believe that you can cry due to enjoying, due to an epic, and due to very deep feelings of affection. This is a cultural and humane product. We are unable to introduce this. No one is aware of it.

Such that, you have definitely seen it, a religious leader in the west in a very large amphitheatre starts chanting and reading a recitation. He tells everyone, “Stand up and beat your chests as I read.” The custom that you have, the truth that exists, the event that occurs, the harmony that exists in a crowd and they all become a chorus, and they all do the same thing, is so attractive in the world.

An action like beating the chest, which you do in religious gatherings, is sweet and attractive for the people of the world. Don’t think they even have one percent of this. No, no. Your chest beating is very different to what happens there.

I went to Canada. Some young, intelligent, Iranian students said, “Sir, we really need an ethics class here.” I said, “Actually it is not like that at all. If you want an ethics class, go near their dance parties on Sundays. See how tired, depressed and forlorn they are when they come out. Then, remember in Iran how cheerful people are when they come out of religious meetings. Compare these two, and see what is going on where.”

The people of the world wish for a moment of the times, which you easily have in your hands and are drowned in, to be able to experience it for a moment. Your chest beating is very different to what happens there.