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My journey from “good Parsi Zarthosti” boy to an atheist took many years; most of them largely spent wandering the empty spaces of agnosticism. As a boy, I recited my prayers, knew their meanings and questioned a hell of a lot. I was also fascinated by my name, which (insert modest smile here) means “worthy of worship” and is the first of 101 names of Ahura Mazda.

The problem was that most of the times I was unsatisfied with the answers. Well, maybe the relevant priest or religious scholar might not know, but as I kept asking I realized that most often there was no answer to some of my questions. Thus began my quest to look for “God” beyond the boundaries of religion. That story another day.

My memory was tickled while reading a forward sent by a friend on a religious question and it’s answer. The question is on whether a Zoroastrian can donate eyes / kidneys etc after death. Here’s an excerpt from the answer.

Suppose a well-meaning gentleman wills that his eyes be donated immediately after his death. “ if some poor crippled person gets new eyes, I will get the blessings” he murmurs to himself as he puts his signature on his Last Will and Testament. What guarantee is there that the donee of the cornea will not misuse the new power of sight he has been bestowed with? And does the donor and all those who think and act like him realize what kind of a ‘crime’ they commit in Nature’s set-up? When a low humdrum mortal virtually defies Nature and causes disturbance and disorder in her scheme of things, severe retribution in the hereafter for that individual is absolutely inevitable.

If, however, we give the benefit of the doubt to the donee of the eye and assume that he will not misuse his new-found gift, we are confronted with the second point about the Law of Karma.

Blindness in a person could be congenital or caused by accident or disease later in life. In both these cases, there is no denying that its cause lies directly in that individual’s fate, his Qisas. In the past, at one time, he himself has generated a karmic cause and so now has to suffer a karmic penalty. If any organism is misused in one life, it has to result in an appropriate retribution, arising from that organism in a succeeding life. The famous "Sleeping Prophet" of America, Edgar Cayce, once admonished a person who was deaf: "Then do not close your ears again to those who plead for aid". And so with eyes, kidneys, limbs etc. The field of operation may be different but the score remains unaffected.

Those who get ultra-emotional and without considering the various issues at stake deem as real charity to donate their organs after death, pitiably forget that their action is not going to wipe off the ‘crime’ committed by the donee in the eyes of Nature, where the Laws of Limit and Justice function inexorably every second. What’s more, the donor himself is guilty of disturbing the process of dispensation of justice by Nature.

All errors and emphases in the original. This excerpt is from the book Dini Avaz: 100 Question Answers. Page 12, Question 4.

All I can do is grimace as I was once a member of this club and most of my family still profess the “faith.”