What White Teeth It Has

A retelling based on Mahmúd's Diary by Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald), from the entry for 1 November 1912. The narrative is retold in our own words; the short lines in quotation marks are verbatim from the diary. Read the full text for the original entry.

On the first of November, 1912, in Chicago, a man from Russia came to meet 'Abdu'l-Bahá for the first time. He arrived carrying a grievance. He began, almost at once, to complain — about his homeland, about its troubles, about all that was wrong and all that had wronged him.

'Abdu'l-Bahá did not take up the argument. He did not debate whether the man's complaints were just. Instead, gently, He turned the visitor's gaze in an entirely different direction: away from grievance and toward goodwill. Put away dark thoughts, He counselled him; return good to friend and foe alike; be at peace with everyone.

And then, to make the lesson live, He told a small story about Christ.

One day, the tale goes, Jesus passed by the carcass of a dead dog lying in the road. Those who were with Him recoiled in disgust at the wretched, repulsive sight. But Christ looked at the same poor carcass and found something to praise. He said only:

What white teeth it has!

That was the whole teaching, folded into a single sentence. Where others saw nothing but corruption and ugliness, the eye trained by love found the one thing still beautiful — the gleaming white teeth — and spoke of that. It is always possible, the little story says, to look for the good; the question is only whether we will train our eyes to do it.

Something in the Russian visitor broke open. The complaint he had carried in fell away, and he declared, with deep feeling, that he had found salvation. And 'Abdu'l-Bahá, ever pointing beyond the present moment to the long road ahead, encouraged him with a promise:

If you follow these teachings you will see things greater than this.

The man had come to talk about everything that was wrong. He left having been handed the simplest and most demanding of disciplines — to seek, in every person and every circumstance, the white teeth: the trace of beauty that love alone is patient enough to find.

This account is retold for the Bahai Story Library; it is a paraphrase, not the original text. The quoted lines are verbatim from Mahmúd's Diary (Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, George Ronald). See the source for the original entry.

Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, M.. (1998). *Mahmúd's Diary*. George Ronald. https://bahai-library.com/zarqani_mahmuds_diary