The first session of the 55th series of Congress 60 workshops for male companions was held on Thursday February 13, 2026 (Bahman 24. 1404) in Academy branch.
This session was administered by Dr. Amin Dezhakam—the Worldview Dideban (Watcher)—serving as guest speaker, companion Mohammad as the Guardian and companion Kourosh as secretary.
Remarks by Dr. Amin Dezhakam: Firstly, with the holy month approaching, the companions have been preparing Iftar meals for nearly two years. This commendable initiative helps them learn cooking skills. Notably, one of the things that Mr. Dezhakam did was the preparation of Ramadan meals—a tradition that was also observed during Tasu’a and Ashura in the distant past.
I recall the period when Mr. Dezhakam began preparing meals in large volumes. At that time, I had taken my university classmates on a field trip and, upon our return, I simply invited everyone to join us for an Iftar meal. The menu featured Baghali-Polo [an Iranian dish of rice, fava beans and dill] with meat—a rather gourmet dish [in Iran]. Back then, I was the cultural coordinator at the faculty and frequently organized such events.
However, after the students finished their meal, none of them ever returned to Congress 60; that was the last time I saw them. I had sensed something was off with the food, and it later turned out that several factors had lowered its quality: it was too salty, and the meat was undercooked. As time progressed, the Mr. Dezhakam focused on refining this process. Although several Congress members—including those experienced in large-scale communal cooking—offered to help in the kitchen, he insisted on managing the cooking himself. Had the experienced cooks taken over, the educational value would have been lost; the core objective is to transform a practical task into a learning experience that can subsequently be replicated.”
During that period, Mr. Dezhakam called for contributions to bring rice to cook Iftar meal since people tend to donate their surplus items everyone brought their inferior rice, which led to poor cooking results. This combined with the fact that Mr. Dezhakam was just starting out to cook meals; all these matters led to such low-quality food.
From that time on, Mr. Dezhakam continued preparing meals and cooked food in large volumes with the help of Congress 60 members. He emphasized that he himself had to do all cooking [without any help from the chefs]. If the chefs had done the work themselves at that time, the training would have been eliminated. It is important to us that an idea [how to cook] turns into education and it will be replicated anywhere [in Congress 60].
With his unique mindset and worldview, he introduced a number of improvements to cooking practices. For instance, he addressed how to thicken the stews or Ash [an Iranian soup-like dish]—chefs tend to use flour often in Ash-e Reshteh or various stews to thicken them—which tended to cause bloating [he solved this problem with adding minced onions to stew so that the it thickens]. To remove the bad odor of chicken, some people boil the chicken, which is a mistake, because it removes the essence and strength of the chicken. Instead, my mom [Mrs. Anni Dezhakam] soaks the chicken in saltwater for about half an hour before cooking; this method eliminates the odor entirely. This way of removing the bad odor requires neither spices nor any additives; its flavor remains unchanged, even after cooking or reheating. There is also a specific technique for Ash: instead of thickening it with flour, minced onion is added to the stew or soup. Not only does this provide beneficial nutrients and minerals, but it also creates a delicious taste and texture, while helping to prevent ailments like the common cold and heart conditions. Cooking at Congress 60 follows these same principles and maintains a sense of balance; whenever we attempted to prepare a ‘luxury’ meal during [Congress 60 summer] camps [in Balade], we invariably ran into trouble.
The weight of meat we bought was quite high. For example, 60 or 70 kilos or more, for 500 people we would have to buy 80 or 90 kilos of meat—say, 100 kilos of meat. This is where butchers can fall into temptation. Among all that meat, they may mix in inferior meat and, for example, give us lamb. They may mix in meat from sheep that have given birth ten times, old sheep, and even goat meat. They mix all kinds of things together; whatever they can get their hands on, they give us.
We cooked it, and some of it was completely cooked and falling apart, while some of it was so tough that no matter how much we tried to put a fork into it, the fork would not go in. In other words, some of the meat was not cooked at all. But we eventually found a principle of balance: ordinary yet beneficial and nutritious meals, such as Ash Reshteh, Lentil Rice, chicken in rice, or simply bread and cheese, bean stew, or lentil stew enriched with walnuts and dried fruits, which contain many valuable nutrients and minerals.
Mr. Dezhakam prepared these dishes in such a way that they would have three characteristics: they should be delicious, reasonably priced, and beneficial to the body. In other words, food should have these three qualities: good taste, nutritional value, and an affordable price. These dishes were developed with those three qualities in mind, and we are now benefiting from them.
Now, as for the male companions, having reached this point [when their beloved ones have been liberated from addiction], we need to learn the skill of cooking as well. We need to become active and get involved—learn how to cook rice properly and prepare these dishes. Those who have the right circumstances come here. I will speak with the agent and arrange for several people to come and provide practical training for cooking. Learn cooking from the travelers here. If necessary, we will invite them to teach us how to prepare these dishes.
At Hakim Heidji Branch, there was also a meeting to coordinate the guides, and the members wanted to prepare Zereshk Polo [Persian steamed rice, layered and/or topped with barberries]. Whenever we had Zereshk Polo on Congress 60 menu, we would usually prepare “Morgh la Polo” “chicken in rice” instead. We said, “Let’s prepare the Morgh La Polo that the Mr. Dezhakam makes.” We did exactly that, and not only did the food turn out tastier, but also I think we also saved around 10 to 15 million tomans [we had reduction in its expenses].
The reduction in expenses was not stinginess. We were not being miserly. We were reducing costs. One point is that the amount of stew should be coordinated with the amount of rice. How do I recognize people who are focused only on appearance? When they serve stew, they put only a thin layer of stew on top. Or when they prepare a salad, they put only a thin layer of tomatoes and cucumbers on top, while underneath there is a mountain of lettuce. When you mix everything together, you realize that the proportions of the ingridients are not right.
There is a proper ratio between the weight of the stew and the weight of the rice. For example, by weight, they should be approximately equal. Once, one of the members of Congress 60 was telling a story. He said that at Shadabad Branch, they had served stew—it was probably Fesenjan [Persian chicken stew made with slowly cooked chicken, ground toasted walnuts, and pomegranate molasses] or Gheimeh [a Beef and Split Pea Stew]. After they served the food, the stew simply would not run out. No matter how much they served, there was still more stew left. Eventually, they served only stew without rice. He claimed that it was because of Congress 60’s blessings that the stew would not run out.
I told him, “Wait, wait. It is quite possible that this had nothing to do with the blessings of Congress 60. You simply did not put enough stew on the rice [in the beginning]. You served 1,500 portions of plain rice and put only one spoonful of stew on each portion of rice. Of course, you had a lot of stew left over! You thought this was a blessing from Congress 60. No. In reality, it was the result of being stingy.” These are things we need to take into consideration.
There is a story in the Holy Qur’an concerning Abel and Cain. It is also told as a story that can play a very important role in human life. Abel and Cain were brothers, said to be the sons of Adam and Eve. God tells them to offer a sacrifice—to make an offering before God.
Abel was not a farmer; he was a shepherd. Cain was a farmer. Abel goes among his rams and livestock and searches until he finds the biggest and best ram he has. He takes it and presents it as an offering.
Cain takes a large basket of wheat—say, 40 or 50 kilos—and goes to offer it. After walking a little way, he looks at it and thinks, “That is too much.” So he takes some out. He walks a little farther and thinks, “No, this is still too much.” He keeps reducing it, taking some away, taking some away, taking some away. In the end, he takes only a handful and offers it to God, saying, “This is my offering to God.”
Then revelation comes that Abel’s sacrifice has been accepted, but Cain’s has not. It is said that this was the reason they eventually became so upset with one another that Cain killed Abel.
What does this story mean? This story is all of us. It is the story of human beings—of whether what we do is accepted or rejected. Abel searched and searched until he found the very best thing he had. He said, “God has given me these blessings. God has given me my sustenance. God has given me everything. Now, he has asked something of me. Therefore, I must take the best thing I have and offer it.”
Cain took the wheat, but he kept reducing it, reducing it, reducing it, until he finally offered almost nothing. His offering was not accepted. What does that mean? It means that he no longer benefited from goodness. It means that blessings no longer came to him [He was no longer the recipient of mercy]. That is what it means.
Now, this exists in our own lives. This story is our story. Suppose you start a business. You establish an enterprise. You open a food business and want to serve food to people. So, which one are you? Have you opened the restaurant as Abel, or have you opened it as Cain?
What does Abel do? He searches for the best Kermanshahi butter. He searches for Iranian rice. He looks for the best quality and finds it. He searches for fresh, good-quality meat. He finds saffron. He searches and makes an effort to find the best ingredients. He prepares food with them and serves it to people.
How much profit does he make? A small profit. A reasonable profit. You know that McDonald’s has spread all over the world. I went there. I had the opportunity to go to Qatar in 2016 with the Congress 60 national rugby team, and I ate at McDonald’s there. The prices were very reasonable and were not much different from prices in Iran. How much profit does it make? Ten percent? Twenty percent? So what happened? It conquered the world. What does that mean? It means this offering was accepted. Abel’s offering was accepted, and blessings came. Goodness came. It kept growing.
Now Cain wants to open a restaurant. What does he look for instead of saffron? Food coloring; instead of saffron, he finds an essence that smells like saffron but is not saffron. It is merely an artificial essence. He looks for rice that looks like rice but may not actually be rice at all. It may be made from some kind of dough processed by machines, and it is much cheaper. What kind of oil does he look for? He goes out and finds the cheapest, lowest-quality oil available.
And what does he do about the meat? He waits until the meat is beginning to spoil. He knows the price of such meat goes down. For example, meat may have been sitting in a refrigerator for a week, and on the last day, if no one buys it, it gradually begins to spoil. Meat that is approaching spoilage—meaning that it has already lost its quality—is much cheaper than fresh meat. The price of meat from a young sheep is much higher than the price of meat from an old sheep. So he searches for the older meat and buys it. Then he prepares the food with these ingredients.
How much profit does he take? Three hundred percent, four hundred percent. Something that costs him 100,000 tomans, he sells for 400,000 tomans. The other person—the one who uses the best ingredients—how much does his food cost him? It costs him 250,000 tomans. How much does he sell it for? 350,000 tomans. It is not that a Abel-like [decent] person makes no profit. He makes a 30 percent profit. But how much does he sell? A lot. And his enterprise keeps growing. One shop becomes two shops. Two become three. Three become four. This is the difference between Abel and Cain.
These [two characters Abel and Cain] are models. They are not simply two people who lived at some unknown time in some unknown place. How important is it for us if [we know] Abel and Cain were two people who lived at an unknown date in an unknown land? We do not access their birth certificates. We do not know exactly where they lived. We do not know which land they were in. We do not even know how many thousands of years before Christ they lived. Why are these things unspecified? Because these pieces of information are not important. Because such people are always present. Abel and Cain are ourselves, living in this world.
Now, how does Abel look at the matter, and how does Cain look at it? Abel says, “The Iranian rice is expensive, but it is good.” Then Cain says, “That is too much. Pakistani rice is cheaper.” Then he says, “Let’s find something that looks like rice but is not actually rice. It is another 30 or 40 thousand tomans cheaper.”
And so he keeps reducing the quality. What is his justification? He may have all kinds of explanations. “Providing high-quality materials is not profitable. It does not make financial sense.” And so he convinces himself that using low-quality materials is the right thing to do.
Now, this applies to food. It also applies to building and construction too. Suppose someone wants to make cement. Will he make cement like Abel or like Cain? The result will be completely different.
Suppose a person wants to work as a tailor and make a suit. Will Abel make the suit, or will Cain make it? This is our choice when we do anything. Which of these two do we want to be? Do we want to be Abel, or do we want to be Cain?
Now we have to make a decision to act like Abel or Cain. Whichever of these options we select will create a path. If you choose Abel, divine mercy and blessings are on your path. You may face difficulties, but within these difficulties something else is embedded, which LOVE.
If you love someone, do you give them the garbage from your house? Do you give them the worst things you have? Do you give them poisoned food? Do you give them half-spoiled food? Do you give them half-spoiled meat? Would you do that to someone you love?
Someone who has love and affection for other human beings, someone who has love for existence, someone who loves God never does something like these. If such a person sees that something is not profitable, he says, “Fine. I will not do it.” This person does not do it. This person can never prepare spoiled food, rotten food, or low-quality food and give it to other people.
The difference between societies lies precisely here: Does a society have more Abels or more Cains? If we learn these things, we can understand where society is heading. These are very simple principles.
Success in business and success in our work depend, more than we may think, not on talent, ability, intelligence, success courses, or things of that sort, but on implementing the right principles—the right human principles and the right ethical principles.
Go and look around. The success of any country is not accidental. If Switzerland, for example, has a very good income, and if Sweden has a good income, there is a reason for it. There is a certain characteristic there.
One of the members once said that they had gone to Sweden or a country like that. He said, “We went to a factory. We arrived; for example, the factory was supposed to start at 8:00 a.m., and we arrived at 7:00.” He said, “I saw someone park his car two kilometers away from the factory.” I asked, “Why are you parking here? We still have another two kilometers to walk before we reach the factory.”
He said, “No. The spaces close to the factory are for someone who arrives at 8:00, for someone who is late. We have plenty of time. We are parking here now, and we have an hour, so we will walk the remaining two kilometers.”
“The nearby parking spaces are for someone who arrives later. Perhaps something happened to him and he could not arrive early. If he has to park two kilometers farther away as well, his problem becomes even greater. He would have to walk a long distance to reach the factory.” This is the kind of thinking Abel has. It means wanting the best thing for someone else who is coming.
Where does this kind of thinking come from? It comes from the same Fourteenth Valley. You put the best ingredients and the best food in front of someone you love. I have seen this many times. If someone dislikes another person, they may even give that person poison so that they will eat it and die. When a person is angry with another, upset with them, and they give them garbage so that they will become poisoned and end up in the hospital. Isn't that so?
So, people who do these things—who give poisoned food to others, who give inferior food to others—what else can it mean except that, inside themselves, they have negative feelings toward those people? What else can it mean except that they have greed and selfishness within them? What else can it mean except that they have hatred? What else can it mean except that they have hostility? What else can it mean except that there is darkness within them? Darkness creates darkness. It is very simple.
So, if we implement these principles, we can achieve truly remarkable results. I remember that it was around 2003, I think. I had finished university. I have told this story many times. At that time, no matter how many times I took the university entrance exam, I could not pass.
The reason I wanted to pass the entrance exam was that I wanted to get into a master’s degree program so that I could show everyone what I was capable of and get back at them. That was my main objective. Since my aim was to revenge [on them] and show my capabilities, I could not reach what I wanted.
If I had reached that goal, I would have gone astray from my real path. I would have been misled. Because when a person has ill intentions or negative feelings and attracts that kind of energy [energy coming from achieving one’s goals], it can become disastrous. At that point, things can go terribly wrong.
It is like giving a gun to an angry person. People try to take even a brick away from an angry person because people know that the angry person may use it to cause harm. Now imagine that you are filled with anger, resentment, and hatred, and then someone puts a machine gun in your hands. At a moment when you have lost your balance, you can destroy everyone.
Although I tried hard to pass the university exam, I could not achieve it, but it was actually good for me. Then it became 2009. A person wanted to take the university entrance exam, and I had personally taught him for his bachelor’s degree. He was a high-school student, and I had been his teacher. I taught him so that he could get into university for his bachelor’s degree.
At the time I was teaching him, I had already received my own bachelor’s degree. Then I saw that he [my pupil] wanted to move ahead and take the master’s entrance exam, while I was still stuck behind the M.A. entrance exam myself.
Now I had to make a choice. What was I going to do with him? Was I going to show him the right path? Or was I going to put a stone in his way so that he would fall behind a little while I moved ahead? Which of these things should I do?
I said [to myself], “Let me not be mean. My own fuel has already run out [to pursue my studies]; at least let this person move forward [and succeed].” So I came and spent time helping him. I explained everything to him carefully and told him what to do. I could not tell him exactly what to do to pass the university exam, because if I knew that, I would have passed myself. But I could tell him the points leading to his failure. I explained to him that if he studied at home, he would fail; if he did a certain thing, he would fail, and so on.
A few days before the entrance exam that year, an advertisement appeared saying, “Come and take the entrance exam.” One of the members of Congress 60 took me to an institute that provided entrance-exam study materials. He knew that I had been interested in the entrance exam for several years.
They said, “If you buy these books, you will also receive two free practice exams.” One of those exams had already taken place. There was one exam left, and they said I could come and take it. The exam was administered in Sharif University. I went to take the test. Everyone had already left the practice-exam session, but I was still sitting there trying to solve the questions.
One of the counselors came over and said, “Sir, get up and go. Time is up.”
I said, “What should I do to succeed?” He said, “Do these things. Maybe you’ll pass.”
I said, “Look at this. I have been going around in circles for six years and I still have not passed. I have not even opened a book for the past two years.” Three weeks before the actual entrance exam, the results of the practice test came out. I saw that, for example, a thousand people had taken the exam and I was among the top fifty.
Suppose one out of every ten people had a chance of being admitted. I saw that I was above the line for admission. My chances were good. When I saw that my ranking was good, I suddenly gained energy. I started studying from morning until night for twelve or fourteen days. I went and took the actual entrance exam. I had also arrived late for the exam, I only had time to answer only two English questions. I answered two English questions and then erased them. I said, “I answered them too quickly, therefore, these are probably wrong”, that is why I erased the answers.
The exam results came out. I saw that the two questions I had answered and then erased were actually correct. The computer had read my answers and given me the points for them, and I became the last person admitted to Khajeh Nasir Toosi University of Technology.
If the computer had not read those two answers, I would not have been admitted. K. N. Toosi University was behind our house. It was the closest university on Earth to our house. That was the point at which I had chosen a different path. This is how goodness and blessing work.
We always assume that blessing means money must come, dollars must come, and so on. No. In every matter, there is its own form of goodness and blessing.
When I wanted to guide that guy, I said, “It is okay if I do not pass. Let someone else pass. Until you let go of yourself, you will not reach your Self”.
The person I had advised did not pass the university entrance exam, but I did. That was when the light turned green for me. When I changed my mind and decided to help that guy, I could move forward and pass through.
The same thing happens in every story. If a person is Abel and offers the best thing he has… I do not mean that you should sacrifice yourself, I do not mean that you should give away everything you have, I myself did not destroy myself; however, I simply placed the best things I had at another person’s disposal.
The cook who buys the best rice does not destroy himself. It is not about sacrificing and annihilating yourself. That is not the meaning. The point is that he wants the best for others. It means putting yourself in another person’s place. As it says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
If you do this, goodness and blessing will come. Sooner or later, it will happen. It will come to pass. These are a set of divine laws. We may say, “No. I have to work for seven years before I can achieve the result.”
No. When the time is right, a door may open for you in such a miraculous way that, if you had tried to open that door yourself, it would have taken you five years. It depends on that inner sensation and feeling and on how you act.
The story of Abel and Cain is our own story. It does not matter that Abel was a shepherd. If Abel had taken a sick, dying lamb that was about to die and offered it as his sacrifice, while Cain had brought his best wheat, Cain’s offering would have been accepted.
The nature of your product is not the important thing. What matters is how you want to offer it and in what way you want to present it.
The truth is that we are lonely beings, and we are living among other human beings. The same applies at home. It applies to those close to you. It applies to your friends.
Give them the best that you can provide, without sacrificing yourself. Give them your best time. Give them proper guidance. Help them. Help people get things done.
Sometimes you have the ability to help someone with something very easily. If you have the means, and if that person deserves it, do it.
Then that circle expands and its form changes, because people understand. People understand whether you genuinely want what is good for them or what is harmful. They will definitely understand.
Even people who may not be particularly intelligent will sooner or later understand. Their inner sensation and feeling tell them whether you wanted good for them or wanted to harm them.
Whatever you do, you do to yourself, whether you do good or evil.
https://congress60.org/News/481955/%D8%A8%D8%AE%D8%B4%D8%B4
Translated by Elahe
