Ziraat is our Antidote to Falsehood

By Ata’allah Bill Meacham

Deceit pervades our world today. That’s worrisome, but our practices and especially our community can help us discern truth amidst the miasma of falsehood that surrounds us.

Case in point: so-called artificial intelligence. (I say “so-called” because although it’s certainly artificial, it’s not intelligent.) Chatbots act like they are human, but they’re not. I recently asked Google, which now relies on AI, about philosopher David Hume’s theory of truth. After presenting a cogent summary, it asked if I wanted more information about some related topics and cheerily concluded “Let me know how you'd like to proceed!” That response makes it sound as if it were a helpful person rather than what it really is, a massive computer complex trained to speak like one.

There are numerous examples of AI chatbots misleading their users with false medical advice, fraudulent legal citations, dangerous validation of delusions and the like. (Just ask Google to tell you about chatbots misleading people.) It has gotten to the point that even deepfake experts can’t tell whether an image is real or generated by AI. (See the New York Times article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/us/ai-deepfake-hany-farid.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4lA.AwPP.yGQ7z_uchIRn&smid=url-share.)

The prophet Zoroaster taught us that conflict between truth and falsehood forms the very foundation of existence. Asha, truth and order, is the ultimate organizing principle of reality. Its opposite, Druj, falsehood and deception, is a distortion of reality and the erosion of order. On that view we are increasingly living in a world of evil.

One of the ill effects of living in a world of lies is that we come to doubt our own intuition and start to believe the lies, or at least question our ability to detect them. Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan likens such doubts and false beliefs to old roots, stones and pebbles in a field we want to use for growing nourishing crops. We need to clear the field of such obstacles before the crops can grow successfully. Symbolically, that field is our mind, and the unwanted roots and pebbles are the tendencies to succumb to falsehood. He says,

These pebbles are the hardened feelings, feelings of prejudice, of malice, revenge, antagonism, and they must be taken away from the ground in order to make it ready for sowing. And there are little roots to be found there that signify undesirable thoughts which still remain in the ground after it is ploughed. They must be taken out that they not remain as obstacles to sowing. (Ziraat Teachings, “The Symbology of the Harrow.”)

What’s hopeful for our time is that we have practices that help us focus on the unity that underlies both the torments and the ecstasies of life. And we have a community of people to aid us on our spiritual journey toward realization of that unity. The ceremony of the Ziraat Lodge brings us together in explicit recognition that we have work to do to overcome the lies and that we are not alone in doing the work.

We all need to get together with others of our kind. It’s in our nature as a species. The Ziraat Lodge is a container or form within which that can happen. The Lodge fosters a sense of community. Being with real people rather than artificial constructs counteracts the insidious atmosphere of deceit that envelopes us. When we meet in person we touch and hug and share food and laugh and go deeply within while in each other’s company and together enjoy the blissful afterglow. What we experience is quite obviously real, not an AI deepfake. Good old analog human contact keeps us sane.

The Buddhists advise us to take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha: the teacher, the teachings and the community of practitioners. The Ziraat Lodge is our sangha. In it we strengthen our practice and support each other on our journey toward the One.

-- Ata’allah Bill Meacham (Austin, Texas USA)