nwrwiex hir rMg rMgo ]
naaraaein har rung rungo
Dye yourself in the color of the Lord’s Love.
jip ijhvw hir eyk mMgo ]1] rhwau ]
jap jihuvaa har eaek mungo
Chant the Name of the One Lord with your tongue, and ask for Him alone. ||1||Pause||
YB Teachings
January 26, 2003
It appears that we have a lot of work, a lot of thinking, a lot of house-holding to do. We think about the earth too much! If your thoughts are 9/10th about the heavens, and only 1/10th towards the earth, we will understand the micro and macro-consciousness of both. That combination will deliver you respect, liberty, and freedom from a lot of fear and thoughts which make you poor. Man is not poor in wealth. Man is poor by thoughts. If your thinking is fearful, and you’re always thinking, “If I lose this…” then whatever you gain comes with a fear of loss, and you absolutely cannot understand what tomorrow is. Mark your life, and your destiny, attitude, and altitude of life will decide your perfection. And that perfection is very clear. Learn giving, learn bearing, learn inspiring, learn sharing, learn shaking the hands of others, and if you cannot give anything else, at least give a smile. Be humorous about things. Make somebody’s day. Posted by fr1nkl3 | Mizc | | No Comments Yet
Profiled with Pride: I Am Not a Muslim, But I Am Honored To Be Mistaken For One!
from Sikhnet News Archives
Profiled with Pride
| Date: 09/20/2006 |
- m Not a Muslim, But I Am Honored To Be Mistaken For One!by Fateh Singh-Tarney
My long-standing curiosity about Eastern philosophies and religions, and developed a deep interest in the Sikh religion that originated in northern India about 500 years ago. I was attracted to the Sikhs’ reputation for brave resistance to injustice and oppression. I also liked the core values of the Sikhs: belief in one universal God; respect for all religions; honest work; full equality between men and women; community service to all mankind.
When I first told my mother of my conversion to an Asian religion, it dawned on me that I was saying something quite ridiculous. All, not just some or even most, of the major religions of the world began in Asia. Is this a coincidence or is it something more? I am not sure. In the world: Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism (the religion of the Parsi people of India), Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and the Bahai faith – all began in Asia. Christianity, of course, Europeanized rapidly as it spread from the Hebrews to the Greco-Roman world. We should not forget, however, that God existed before any of these religions came into existence.
After having considered myself a Sikh for the last 15 years, it was just two weeks before 9-11-2001 that I decided to be a more “complete” Sikh by not cutting my hair and by wearing a turban. The timing could have been better! The post-9-11 prejudice against anyone with a Middle Eastern appearance affected me greatly and immediately. People, especially men, with any sort of “Middle Eastern” look, became targets of American anger and frustration.
A Sikh, a cousin of a very dear friend, was murdered in cold blood in Arizona days after 9-11. He was neither a Muslim nor an Arab. Wherever I went — restaurants, shopping malls, city parks, and even college campuses (the so-called bastions of liberalism), I would hear things like “Hey, Osama!”, “Down with the Taliban!” and “Go back to Arabia!” I happen to have been born in New York City. At my part-time job in a bookstore, I was called Gunga Din and Swami by customers.
Should one ignore these verbal barbs, or try to educate the perpetrators? But where does one begin to educate given the narrow-mindedness of many Americans about cultures other than their own? Whether I ignored the verbal attacks, or tried to explain that I am not a Muslim, I regretted it afterwards. Nothing seemed adequate. Thank God, I have never been physically abused or assaulted by anyone, but this may simply be a matter of time and luck.
As these verbal assaults were happening, the President and his advisors were trying to convince the entire world that America has the best interests of Muslims at heart. We would bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, but we would also respect Islam and other cultural traditions of the East. There is a clear disconnect between our rhetoric and the reality of our actions.
Many Sikhs, myself included, have great respect and admiration for Islam. Call me a terrorist and you insult me – call me a Muslim and you honor me! The closest friend of our first Guru, Nanak Dev Ji (1469-1539 CE), was Bhai Mardana (1459-1534 CE) – a Muslim minstrel. One of the closest friends and associates of the fifth Sikh Guru, Arjan Dev Ji (1581-1606 CE), was Mir Mohammed Muayyinul Islam (1550-1635 CE), popularly known as Mian Mir, a famous Muslim Sufi saint who resided in Lahore in present day Pakistan. Not only did Mian Mir lay the foundation stone for the most significant Sikh house of worship, known commonly as the Golden Temple, but he also used his knowledge of the Qur’an to help organize the Sikh holy text, the Adi Granth. In our holy book, we use many different names for God, including about a dozen of Islamic origin, including Allah.
Several Muslim intellectuals and clerics have made the very good point that Germany, France, and the U.S., for example, have more in common than do Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco. Yet, we do not refer to the former as parts of the Christian world, but we do refer to the latter as parts of the Islamic world. A parallel blindness exists in terms of generalizations about India. There is no country more racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse than India. An appreciation of this reality is in the best interest of the Sikh minority there and elsewhere.
Again, we are neither Muslims nor Hindus, but we respect Islam and Hinduism. Although Sikhs are closely associated with the Indian armed forces, a young Sikh was recently commissioned an officer in the Pakistani Army.
America’s strength comes from its tolerance and diversity. The great danger to our democracy and our way of life is an ethnocentrism that denigrates non-Western traditions. This prejudice, of course, predates 9/11. Many Americans can neither see nor understand the gulf between our country’s noble principles and the reality of the appalling behavior toward Middle-Eastern-looking people in the post-9/11 era. Thank God, however, many Americans are genuinely friendly and go out of their way to make one feel comfortable despite one’s religious appearance. Yes, there are Americans who take the First Amendment provision for freedom of religious expression seriously.
In high school, I read John Howard Griffin’s book “Black like Me” (Signet; 35th anniv. Ed., 1996), the white reporter’s experiences traveling in the Deep South during segregation. Griffin, who had his skin darkened to look like a black man, became a direct victim of racial hostility. I never thought that almost 50 years later, I would tell a similar story. In a forward of the recent Griffin Estate Edition of this book, Studs Terkel wrote, “Regardless of how much progress has been made in eliminating outright racism from American life, ‘Black Like Me’ endures as a great human – and humanitarian – document. In our era, when ‘international’ terrorism is most often defined in terms of a single ethnic designation and a single religion, we need to be reminded that America has been blinded by fear and racial intolerance before.”
Sikhism has taught me that of all the virtues, three are most important: love, humility, and forgiveness. The greatest of these is forgiveness, which is also the most difficult to put into practice. I am a work in progress. I shall never forget that it was American freedom that enabled me to explore Eastern ideas in the first place. This is why this remains my country and why I still think it is great. However, like me, it is also a work in progress.
Fateh Singh-Tarney, 62, a Vietnam War veteran and a retired history teacher, enjoys writing and is involved in interfaith programs in Florida.
from:
The American Scene
Profiled with Pride
I Am Not a Muslim, But I Am Honored To Be Mistaken For One!
Islamic Horizons Magazine September/October 2006
“Falling into prayer is the same thing as falling in Love.
It is an infinite fall.
You can never come out of it.
And in all of human existence these two experiences are the highest.”
-Yogi Bhajan
The Color Of Devotion – Museum Exhibit at the Rubin Museum of Art, NY
The Color Of Devotion
Museums
By LANCE ESPLUND
September 21, 2006
If the Rubin Museum of Art has ever produced a sub-par exhibition, I have yet to see it, and I have been frequenting the museum since it opened two years ago. Housed in the former Barneys department store at the corner of 17th Street and Seventh Avenue, the RMA is one of New York’s latest treasures. From its central spiral staircase to its impeccably installed exhibitions and its mandala-inspired logo designed by Milton Glaser, the museum is a gem among gems.
Devoted to Himalayan art from the 12th century onward, the RMA has brought us colorfully lush, culturally rich, and scholarly exhibitions such as “Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas,” “Paradise and Plumage: Chinese Connections in Tibetan Arhat Painting,” and (one of my favorites) “Demonic Divine.” Now it has mounted the beautiful show, “I See No Stranger: Early Sikh Art and Devotion.”
A one-floor gathering of approximately 100 artworks from the 16th through the 19th centuries, “I See No Stranger” is dense, spare, and heady. Comprising dozens of illuminated manuscript leaves, silk and cotton embroidered textiles, a pair of wood sandals, copper water pots (including one in the form of Shiva’s running mount: the bull Nandi), a gold token, and an ornate, Y-shaped brass armrest, the varied exhibition is as luxuriant as a hothouse and as delicate as a morning breeze.
Not as large or elaborate as some previous exhibitions at the museum, “I See No Stranger,” organized by B.N. Goswamy and Caron Smith, is a concentrated look at the art of Sikhism, the world’s fifth-largest organized religion. Sikhism was founded in northern India at the end of the 15th century by a Hindu named Nanak. Though rooted in Indian thought and history — much of the show’s manuscript leaves are in the style of Indian and Islamic figurative miniatures — Sikhism is a pluralist, multicultural religion that is distinct from Hinduism and Islam. The radical, fundamental tenets of Sikhism, a religion that was conceived originally as open to everyone, are: “God is One,” “No one is a Hindu, no one a Muslim,” and “No one is a stranger.”
Guru Nanak (1469–1539), as he came to be known, is the mystical ascetic, philosopher, and miracle worker who wandered the Mughal Empire from Mecca to Baghdad to Kabul to Delhi to Dhubri to Sri Lanka accompanied by a musician, spreading Sikhism, or what he thought of as “a light moving across time.” In Sikhism, the “light” is the spiritual message that “there is but One God, and by the Guru’s grace he is obtained.” Therefore, mankind’s divisions — faith, caste, gender, race, and station — were all meaningless.
Divided into five sections, “I See No Stranger” centers on the life, teachings, travels, and miraculous deeds of Guru Nanak; but his nine successors, or vessels of the “light” — the last of which was Guru Gobind Singh — also figure prominently in the exhibition. Guru Singh (d.1708) decreed that no individual would succeed him as guru. Instead, the “Adi Granth” (Primal Text), a compilation of sacred writings and teachings of the Sikh gurus and poets, and known as “Guru Granth Sahib,” would be regarded hence as the last and eternal living guru. The “Guru Granth Sahib,” a text so sacred that to exhibit it in a museum would be sacrilegious, is not on view in the exhibition, although a video screen displays pages from the book. However, an elaborate stack of silken fabrics and cushions, the throne on which the text would rest in a temple, has been reconstructed in the show.
The high points of “I See No Stranger” are in the small illuminated manuscript leaves, which, painted with opaque watercolor, are often filled with a warm, tender light; and in the textiles, which fill the gallery with large abstract swaths of patterned lozenges, diamonds, and stylized animals in vibrant pinks, oranges, hot reds, and lime greens.
Some of the manuscript illustrations combine illusionistic Western space with flat, active, decorative pattern; yet, like the poetry, songs, and beliefs of Sikhism itself, most of the images are fluid, airy, and open. Subtle and simply stated, they allow for easy entrance and movement. The exhibition also includes, paired with the watercolors, gorgeous workshop line drawings that acted as templates for the fully worked out paintings. Some of these (or, often, individual elements — trees, figures, horses) actually outshine the finished works.
A few of the manuscripts illustrate the lineage from guru to guru. Others are portraits of Nanak or of his nine successors, spreading the word. Guru Gobind Singh, seen largely as a warrior, is often depicted on a dignified blackand-white horse, whose full, swelling curves give volume to pattern or to the barren landscape. “Guru Nanak With a Group of Sadhua (Hindu Holy Men)” (late 18th century), is soft and dreamy. Divided into distinct levels, from river to landscape to figures to trees to sky, the picture shows Nanak seated and teaching the Sadhua, while monkeys, rocks, and trees worthy of Henri Rousseau punctuate the landscape. “Guru Nanak With the Other Nine Gurus” (1882) depicts Nanak, slightly larger than the others, seated on a red field at the top center of the oval grouping. Here, as in most of the other pictures, he is old and rotund, seemingly filled with the spirit.
In one beautiful picture from the late 19th century, Guru Nanak is dressed in a robe that is inscribed in Arabic characters with verses from the Koran, and with Nanak’s own teachings. Literally “wrapped” in holy text from different faiths, Nanak is an amalgam of religions. He is older, wiser, and easily recognizable by his signature fluffy white beard. Sitting on a rug, meditating on the “Formless One,” Nanak is a serene, haloed balloon, lifting off, but halfheartedly attempting to keep himself grounded. The sacred calligraphy racing across his robe runs into, and merges with, the pattern on an oblong pillow, which seems to bisect Nanak’s body. The pillow, rather than offer support to the Guru, like everything else in the painting, only helps him to ascend. Nanak, floating on spirituality — his hand and foot grasping at the rug for grounding — cannot keep himself from levitating on his own thoughts.Nanak is drifting on his faith; he is taken — as was I by much of the art in “I See No Stranger” — higher and higher.
Until January 29 (150 W. 17th St. at Seventh Avenue, 212-620-5000).
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