Barfi n Mithai

So how do you, uh ,uncondition yourself

The first step is enlightening yourself with knowledge on how humans condition themselves and to understand false and true conditioning.

The second step is to be conscious of both conscious and unconscious conditioning. We all have developed false conditioning behaviours in our lives without realising - start thinking about your thoughts and actions and why you have those ideas.

The third is to move from 'thinking' to 'practicing' true conditioning, to live it, to form good habits and to be an example i.e. 'be the change, you wish to see in the world'.

The final step is to teach and educate others. All true conditioning is for sarbat da bhalla i.e. for the goodness of the whole of the human race. So you must make others aware too, engage in conversation, dialogue.

Most people haven't entered the first step of enlightening themselves with the knowledge or accepting or understanding that knowledge so that is your start.

I would like to add that it is a long journey spanning all of life. It is a life time commitment where that knowledge is practised, refined and further deeper knowledge and understanding is developed through life experiences. But it is worth it for personal development and for creating a system that benefits all.

If you seriously want to 'uncondition' or what I would rather call it is - living a life of true conditioning then start off by understanding yourself as a human, how you fit in the system, how the system fits in you. Then take small steps to change old habits and slowly do that to every aspect of your life and you will see the change. You cannot pick and choose when you want to condition yourself to false and when you want to condition yourself to true. You have to work at conditioning everything to the truth to benefit both yourself and others. Its like in japji sahib when it says we use soap to wash the dirt off our bodies - similarly we use naam or true conditioning to clean our thoughts i.e. we automatically get 'polluted' by the world and sometimes we don't realise or see the truth due to unconscious effects but by being aware and alert to these we can change ourselves for the better. Good luck.

There are plenty of amritdhari girls in panjab - have you asked them all?

As for the argument that hair is natural and should be left uncut, that is pure nonsense. We are not born with a rule book in our hands stating what is natural and what isn't.

We do have a rule book - the rehat maryada. It says hair is 'ang. It is not nonsense - what you are saying is nonsense that females should not keep their kesh. Why would the Sikh religion only ask its men to keep their hair. What kind of hypocritical religion would do that. You are clearly brainwashed and conditioned by society because you want women to remove hair. However your opinion does not count - Sikhi has made it clear that all sikhs - males and females must keep all kesh as this is the true human form i.e. saroop of all men and women.

If it is so unnatural to cut hair, Waheguru Ji would have made cutting hair painful or resulting in death. This argument is pure nonsense.

This is the most absurd statement I am yet to read. Firstly hair is natural. The definition of natural is existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind. Our body with our hair is what is the human saroop. Secondly waheguru doesn't cause instant death or punishment if you loose a part of yourself. I am a surgeon and I can cut off your leg and you won't die. Are you trying to say if you loose a part of your body and you do not die that that part of your body was not natural? What about people in car crashes who lose limbs, fingers etc and carrying on living?

Also it is so silly to say - well waheguru should have made it so that when our hair is removed that we die - only then would I accept hair is natural. You don't need to have death or pain to see what is natural. Please speak to the hippy movement as they accepted hair as natural - in fact all of society would say our natural human state is with our hair. Your argument is pure nonsense and it would be so impractical for the human species to die every time their hair fell off accidentally e.g. friction from a fall. Please speak some logic because this is such a tangent point. By the way if you want to experience pain on hair removal – please go and get a bikini wax.

As for the OP stating Gillette has brainwashed the masses, she is obviously quite ignorant to history of mankind and has never heard of 'threading'. As soon as humans found a way to cut their hair, they did it. You can see this in all cultures and has existed hundreds of years.

In the Sikh culture hair is not removed. You are ignorant of the Sikh teachings. Hair was also not widely removed in all cultures until companies like Gillette came around for men facial beard removal. The OP is correct and has mentioned waxing, threading etc. All these practices however are forbidden in Sikhi. Quite frankly we as Sikhs don't care if other cultures remove it - we as Sikhs are taught not to remove it. If you want to copy other cultures then why are you calling yourself a Sikh? By definition a Sikh is someone who follows the teachings of the Sikh faith and quite clearly you don’t or you are a 50/50 person who picks and chooses what they want.

Men and women are naturally attracted to beauty and there is nothing wrong in that nor is it 'shallow'. It is only shallow when that is the ONLY basis when looking for a partner. Those who are arguing that it is 'shallow' or 'unnatural' have a twisted view of reality.

You are conditioned and brainwashed and therefore will never be able to see the truth - just like how the chinese society forced their girls to have small deformed feet for the sake of beauty. Let me help you and give you an example. In the future men will be expected to remove their chest, arm and leg hair and if I came around and said that it was ok to have chest, arm and leg hair and that this was the natural state of a man - Then people like you in the future would say no - that you cannot accept a man with chest, arm and leg hair as it is not beauty. The current issue with female body hair is the same.

I can tell you as much as I want that you are conditioned and that society has made you think something that is not true, however your not going to listen to me. This is because the nonsense that you have been exposed to since birth has become your truth - just like those chinese people who believe that small feet were beautiful. If I had a time machine and went back in time to tell them to stop – then they would not believe me. I believe there is no way that we can get you back - you are now trapped into false conditioning and it is only with Guru's kirpa that one day you might be able to uncondition yourself.

From a psychological standpoint I believe we humans 'need' beauty. That is why we wax/ polish our cars, paint our houses, cut the lawn, iron our clothes...etc, etc. Without beauty, life becomes depressing.

I have written a lengthy piece on conditioning and how we have true conditioning and false conditioning. I also made comments on how conditioning can be unconscious and conscious. There are some things that are true conditioning and then there are others that are false conditioning.

In relation to female hair phobia - this is false conditioning where you have been taught to believe something as being true when it is false. Your current belief is that females do not have facial hair and those that keep facial hair are looking like men. This is false conditioning because all females have hair and those keeping hair are actually looking like what all women should look like. I don’t expect you to understand because you are now trapped like the chinese people wanting small feet.

However Sikhi is very clear - Sikhi accepts the human saroop with hair of both a female and male and states that this is the best and most beautiful saroop. When you get married your life partner will have hair and will also have a ‘bad day’ where she does not remove her hair. When that day comes please tell me whether she suddenly became ugly to you. If she did, then what does that say about your character?

These are just my humble thoughts. Thanks.

There was a lot of sexism in your thoughts especially about women not being able to carry a sword or how you want women to look. Sikhi doesn't say women should look like this or men should look like this. Instead it accepts both female and male saroop with its hair. Currently you have an issue recognising that females have hair on their body including their faces. If you are a singh with a beard then you should stand in front of the mirror and reflect on what a hypocrite you are – why should you want women to accept you in your male human bodily form with all your hair when you cannot accept a woman with all her hair. Singhs like you are hypocrites.

Obviously women back in the day could not wield a sword or fight in battle like men so men were chosen. Since Guruji saw the difference between the 2 genders therefore it is only logical that the requirement for the 5K's for women are not identical to men.

Your statement has so much sexism in it that I don't even know where to start. Women can not wield swords? Women cannot fight in battle? So who was Mai Bhago then??

Also you’re the one who is seeing difference between the two genders. The Guru never said there was ever a difference between the 2 genders. In Sikhi we are described as having a soul in the body of a man or woman and that we must not discriminate or be sexist to that vessel that carries our soul. You are a complete shame of a singh if you think only men carry 5Ks.

With any kind of organization be it religious or social in it's infancy there will be pragmatism. Pragmatism is when one is able to see thing in a balanced manner. In time, dogmatism takes over and rules are applied in a dogmatic way. People who are pragmatic are able to think in multi dimensions whereas dogmatic people think in single dimensions.

Sorry but your the one who is thinking in a single dimension. Also there is no 'grey' area on kesh that we need to sit and work out what was actually meant. The Guru was very clear that all his Sikh (males and females) would keep kesh. In the rehat maryada it is clearly written that all bodilyhair must be kept and at every amrit sanchaar people will say the same. In fact just turn up to your gurdwara and ask them and they will say the same. There is no need to call us dogmatic just because you don't want to accept the sikh teachings. Who in their right mind would say that only men can be Sikhs or only men can be in the panj pyare or that only men can wield swords. only men should keep hair. You are the most sexist, discriminating human being I have ever met.

Lets take the US constitution as an example. The US constitution states the US citizenry has the 'right to bare arms'. This was incorporated into the constitution in order ensure that the citizenry were well armed in case the government became tyrannical. Also back in the day, you were on your own in some distant farmland and times were dangerous. You needed guns to protect yourself

Those who are dogmatic today will say 'I should be able to have any kind of weapon as the constitution said I have the right to bare arms'. 'Thats what the founding fathers said and thats that'. Should the average civilian be allowed to own a bazooka? How about rocket grenade launchers? Drones? Heat seeking missiles? Obviously some sort of pragmatism is needed here.

I am not sure if it registered with you but as Sikhs we don't have a grey area on kesh - we don't need to sit and think about what did the Guru really mean. Our rehat, amrit sanchaar and history has made it very clear and obvious that hair is accepted on both females and males. It would be such a hypocritical religion if it only accepted hair on men and not on women.

You just want to find a way of justifying that only men can keep hair so that you can ask women to remove their hair- however even if I followed your logic and said ok it was only for men - then it begs the question why not women. You say because women are not supposed to have facial hair - well clearly that is not true because all women grow it. Women are supposed to have facial hair. The problem is people like you do not accept that this is the female saroop. In sikhi however we are fully accepting of both the male and female saroop.

Example: calling a Muslim, "Osama"

That can be reported to the UK police and will be investigated. The court will have to then argue it out as to which 'act' it falls under. Either way punishment tends to be based on the context rather than which category it falls under.

ok, I just have 2 more questions, 1. What if somebody converts into Sikhi?

2. Can people freely talk about other religions negatively other than Judaism and Sikhi?

All Sikhs including 'converts' are protected.

Discussions about religions are different from discrimination and racism. It depends on the context of the matter in question so without an example it will be difficult to say exactly.

Yeah Barfi n Mithai just beat me to it with his/her message above this one

Hi, I am a female :biggrin2:

So yes, in the UK Sikhs have unique rights and we should exercise those rights when faced with racism.

I just said that the government shouldn't be restricting too much speech, and we shouldn't have to make everything a legal battle. (Again where I'm from it's not restricted unless it causes violence or is "hate speech" which isn't very specific). And second, Sikh is not a race it's a religion or way of life.

In UK law the Sikhs are considered a race. Here is the court case for that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandla_v_Dowell-Lee

I am not familiar with the USA legal system.

The U.K. seems like a country that really limits free speech, (in America speech is only censored if it may cause violence like hate speech).

Racist speech is not allowed under UK law.

There are many times I have set people straight. I never knew how to do it when I was growing up but as a grown professional if anyone tries it on, then they have chosen the wrong person to mess with - I will get them done for.

Some of my friends cannot be bothered due to the amount of time and effort involved and so they will happily ignore it. However, it is important to stand up for yourself because it sends out a strong message. It is only by sending out messages that you will change societies attitudes. Ignoring people doesn't change anything! I see it as my seva in helping other sikhs that they might go onto targeting.

Just answer the question, would you marry her? Be truthful and stop deflecting. We all know the answer already.

Let's play your game. Why are you cutting your nails then? Let it grow out then. Why take a shower or clean yourself after taking a dump? It's all part of our body right? See how easy that was?

In my opinion kesh IS for identity. This prevented many practicing Hindus to swallow Sikhism and make it a sect of Hinduism. By creating the requirement for keeping long hair and turban, it effectively prevented 'fence sitters' to dictate and claim Sikhism is a sect of Hinduism. It once and for all forces you to choose. There is no grey area. Nobody back then had long hair with turban. Turban maybe but thats it.

The truth is you can argue pretty much anything if you want to argue. But the truth is based on facts and not opinion We all have an opinion on everything. You believe any facial hair removal is bad and others think differently and it's their perogative. Thats fine and dandy however that is your opinion, nothing more. Blindly believing in something based on someones personal opinion is basically creating a set of dogmas.

No need to reply. Thanks.

I already answered your question when I said 'I would 120% marry her'. I have not deflected. Also she is already married!!! I don't think we need to keep asking who wants to marry her when she is happily married and getting along with her life. I also know of her, so be careful.

What I want to emphasise is that her hair pattern is due to disease. Most woman do not grow facial hair like that so she shouldn't be the poster girl for this is what females who keep facial hair look like. It very clearly says in the article that she has a disease contributing to an excess in hair. The article is about someone with excess who had the bravery and strength to keep it, something that is admirable considering females with less hair don't keep it. She brings everyone else to shame and I respect her immensely for that. But it is important to realise that it is not an article about 'this is what females who keep facial hair' will look like.

However woman do grow visible facial hair - side hairs, chin hairs, visible upper lip hair, 'thick, messy' eyebrow hair, yet they remove it.

There are non sikh people who have identified that society has an issue with female body hair. Please see these articles on how society is 'against' female hair on any part of their body that was previously never an issue due to influences from the companies selling hair removal products, media images and porn industry influencing us (males and females) on what we 'expect' to be normal -

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/21/instagram-pubic-hair-censorship-sticks-and-stones_n_6515654.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/10120130/Pubic-hair-taboo-like-it-or-not-we-need-to-break-it.html

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/07/pubic-hair-has-job-stop-shaving

In answer to the nails verses hair debate. Sikhs have 5 kakkars and hair is part of the kakkars and rehat. Nails are not part of the kakkars or part of the rehat. That is because nails are not considered 'ang' and in sikhism we are allowed to remove our nails for the reason of impracticality and cleanliness. In the sikh philosophy hair is not unclean and does not need to be removed. The sikh approach to life is minimalistic and functional. Having nails would not be functional and would be impractical. However having hair is not impractical and is very much considered part of your 'ang' that should not be removed. Thats why it is in the kakkars and the rehat. If I was to simplify the answer to your question in one sentence then that is that, in sikhi, all bodily hair is considered 'ang' but nails are not considered 'ang'.

Your opinion on only head hair being necessary for sikhs is not backed up in rehat or sikh history. Before sikhs were given the identity 'saroop' they did not remove hair anywhere on their bodies. I am sorry to say this but if your keeping only your head hair then you are not practising sikhi properly. Sikhs are forbidden to remove all hair, on any part of their body, and you cannot claim to be following rehat just by keeping head hair. This is a fact and not a opinion. It is backed up by rehat that all hair should be kept and if you go to any amrit sanchar they will say the same.

The issue here is that sikhs are not practising sikhi properly therefore there are 'few' numbers of real sikhs. This is purely a numbers issue where we don't have enough numbers of high quality rehat keeping sikhs.

We as the next generation need to teach our sons and daughters the rehat properly, especially the sikh boys and sikh girls need to be more accepting of the female sikh saroop just like there is a global acceptance of the male sikh saroop.

Who said having hair on the face is a male identity and there is no pressure to look the same. Instead women are pressured fanatically to remove hair from all over the body and who doesn't, isn't seen as a human being. Your stereotyping of women is disgusting.

Those photos are the imagination of an artist and is not an accurate representative of the Gurus or women at that time.

When Mai Bhago Kaur went into battle with a sword in hand did she become a male in that moment. According to you, she did, because she lost her softer side.

Women like you should be ridiculed till you drop your oppressive stereotypes of how every women should be. Have some shame.

You couldn't have said it better -I cannot believe the amount of girls/grown women in denial over the fact that they grow face hair too.

Is there evidence of women keeping facial hair in the times of the gurus? In order to make children there has gone some level of physical attraction & unfortunately I don't think many men will find facial hair attractive in women.

You know this reminds me of when the suffragettes wanted women to have the right to vote so that they could work, have independent finances etc. Sadly at that time there were some women who were against it because, they had the same logic as skaur888 that, they were not men and they were not supposed to do 'manly' things like running a country or having a say in economics etc. The truth however is simran8888 also grows face hair but is in denial that all woman look like this.

Its so sad when other woman will claim that those with hair are being men - when infact all women have hair. This is what false conditioning has done to us. We no longer see the truth, that this is what we as woman are. Also if everyone kept hair it would cancel out this argument of 'attractiveness' because the human conditioning would be altered to a state where you would find acceptance in a female with face hair and instead you would see a face with no hair on it as being abnormal. To put this into todays context it is just like how we see people with no eyebrow hair as being abnormal or looking diseased from cancer. Slowly, mark my words, it will be normal in a couple of years for females to remove their eyebrow hair. I have already seen women removing eyebrow hair and the next thing we will say is that men don't find it attractive that women keep their eyebrow hair. skaur888 let me ask you this - where does this thing stop?

If you read up on the history of human behaviour and conditioning in psychology and sociology then you will start to realise that we have caused attractiveness to be perceived as having no hair. Its like how some people see thongs as being 'sexually' attractive. Actually not a long time ago thongs were unknown and if you showed them to someone they would have no reaction. But whats happened is that we have conditioned thongs or no hair on a female to be a message in our brain. A few centuries ago when there were no hair removal products, females with facial hair were accepted and there was no issue with attractiveness.

This is just like how someone conditions a female wearing make up and perfume to be attractive and 'ready for it' - if you study history you will see that these things just change depending on culture and society. The issue of female facial hair is the same - its actually just the way society has conditioned us and we live in a culture where we are anti female hair. If we lived in another type of culture it might have been different.

The issue is that we are trapped by the culture surrounding us and some of us don't even realise it or those that do realise it cannot escape it. Its like how the Chineese preferred their girls to have small feet because that was seen as attractive and so all girls were put in plaster casts and had deformed feet. Those people at the time linked attractiveness to feet and if you told them feet does not equal attractiveness - they would not see it because it is how they were conditioned. It is like how currently in the western culture the size of your breasts are valued and it would be difficult to convince people otherwise. However I am sure in the amazon rainforest where woman walk around naked all the time exposing their breasts - it does not have the same meaning in their society.

The issue of female facial and bodily hair is the same - we are in a culture that is anti hair female hair. Because we are in that culture we cannot see it is an issue with our minds and our perception. Also it is going to get worse. It will not only affect females but also men - men are already removing chest hair and armpit hair to appear attractive. In the future both men and women will only be attractive if they remove their hair - because the hair removal companies are in charge of your media, they want you to spend money and will tell you that you must groom yourself in this way, and if you don't then you are not attractive. You the new generation will all follow and not know any better.

If in the future men start removing arm and leg hair - If at that time I came along and said its ok for them to keep it and that the 'attractiveness' is in their minds and the minds of their female partners - no one would listen to me because its about conditioning the majority to a certain behaviour. Just wait until you become grandparents and see your grandchildren removing hair from e.g. the back of their necks because they have been told that the head hair should stop at a certain level and so both your girls and boys do a clean shave line at the back of their head where there is supposed to be hair, or the boys start waxing chest and leg hair, or have laser to reduce their hair on their arms and legs. As that age, you will develop an appreciation of how societies values influence your behaviour or thinking. However we must ask ourselves is it the truth?

I have often wondered if society started removing female body hair because traditionally, men used to marry young girls. Therefore girls who had grown into women i.e. who had grown 'older' would remove hair to make themselves appear younger, in order to find a partner. Either way the truth is that having hair is what all women look like. This problem with acceptance of the female saroop is societies attitude towards it and it is very much an issue in the mind about 'attractiveness' based on conditioning. That attitude exists with 'false' conditioning where we have accepted something that is false as being the truth. True conditioning is accepting that all women have hair including upper lip hair.

Mistersingh in relation to your question on my conditioning then there are 2 types of conditioning. False conditioning and true conditioning. The answer is that I choose to condition myself on true conditioning and I will think before forming an opinion and developing a habit. I will only consciously do something if it is true conditioning. Accepting hair is true conditioning according to sikhi and psychology teachings. As sikhs we have to make sure we are linked to true conditioning - hair removal is false conditioning and must be avoided according to rehat. We as Sikhs need to be conscious of false and true conditioning. As humans we are thrown into a system yet we must ask ourselves does this make sense, why are we doing this etc. Please search false and true conditioning on google to read up more on false and true conditioning because once you understand this, then everything I am saying will make sense.

If society accepted female hair then it would be ok for females to not spend hours and days of their lives painfully crying whilst waxing, plucking, threading, lasering, shaving etc. I guarantee if hair was not such a big issue in our culture today then women would not want to remove hair. Who in their right mind would want to cause themselves so much pain? It is only because we have given it an aesthetic value that people do this. Women and now men remove hair because of societies values and reactions towards hair.

However, this amount of hair removal is not good for either male of female skin elasticity. It surprises me that woman will go out and buy the latest cream (not proven to actually work) to look after their skin when they are causing so much micro-trauma and micro-scarring from hair removal (proven to cause micro-scarring and micro-skin trauma).

Oh noji penji I meant I think the man that bullied was a customer but carinder ji can clarify that.

OK I get you - sorry!

In that case you should have reported him straight away to the police and you get staff in the store to give witness statements.

You probably don't know where he lives so its too late now.

l think what would be best is to get witness statements from the staff now anyways and log them all into the police with a description of the 'shopper' person. Then when he comes around the second time to do his shopping - call the police and they will take him away and question him.

Its important to log this event because he can get away and say it was a one off but if you've logged it before and you log it again they have to ask him and that will be his warning. It can also go onto his police record and depending on his profession onto his professional record too. Please log it!

Penji I think he was a customer.

I was a customer too - I was doing my shopping at waitrose and they were racist. As a customer you have rights too and no one in british law is allowed to be racist towards customers. He has every right to file a complaint and I am more than happy to check it and make sure it is a solid case as possible so that the other person is put under watch.

i was bullied today in tesco by white man was picking on me because i am a sikh it not right

This is completely unacceptable behaviour. I would write an email to Tesco head office stating both the time and date and name of the worker in the incident. These things are taken very seriously in the work place and racism is not tolerated under various legal acts. A couple of years ago I received bad treatment from a checkout girl at waitrose. I voiced my concerns to the store manager who fobbed me off, so I went home and looked up the email address of waitrose head office and emailed them and put in the name of the store manager and the checkout girl. It was treated very seriously - I attended a panel and gave a statement and they were both put under 'retraining' and it was added onto their employment records. In my opinion there is no place for racist treatment and you need escalate and tell the head office straight away rather than writing on this forum. After this I was treated very well and I got a voucher to do free shopping at waitrose.

Here is the form for tesco - https://www.tescohelp.com/tesco/forms/cs_form.html

Please email them straight away and I am more than happy to help check your email because they would want accurate statements etc. If you have a witness please add that person to the statement. If you want me to check please PM.

She has a disease called PCOS that has caused that to happen to her so please stop making out that every woman who keeps hair on their face will look like that. There is a spectrum of hair length, quality and type in the human species. Its a gaussian distribution curve. Just like men grow different beard sizes and shapes. Not only that some of my oriental friends do not grow beards, some of my Tibetan girl friends don't grow arm hair. The gene pool is varied and we cannot be rude to people because they are on the edge of that. But its not even about some people having more and some people having less - at the moment there is a hair phobia culture where we expect every tiny bit of hair to be removed off a female face.

It has gorton to the extent that any hair on a face automatically means that person is ugly. For instance this girl is beautiful and instead of seeing that all you can see is her hair - have you looked at her and seen her facial features and her eyes? Now thats what I call beauty without the need for plastic surgery. Do you know how many girls would want to have what she has naturally? I would 120% marry her. If she ever has babies they are going to be very pretty. I have vast amounts of respect for her because there are girls out there with 'normal' female facial hair who remove it and here we have someone who has a disease and decided to keep it.

This negativity to variance is no on. We can apply it to other things e.g. height - midget/dwarf. Should we automatically expect all dwarfs to have leg lengthening operations. Would you want to do this. I think its wrong that we are constantly trying to make everyone 'fit' an average when actually the way you are is best for you. All humans are better off being who they are in their natural state.

The point however that I am making is not about people with different distributions with some having more and others having less. What I am saying is that we live in a society where normal amount of female hair e.g. upper lip is considered abnormal. I fundamentally believe we have a hair phobia culture.

@Barfi

I believe the requirement for keeping a turban, beard...etc, etc is for creating a Sikh identity and eradication of inequality

Kesh ie hair is part of the 5 kakkars. The 5 kakkars are considered to be an 'ang' or limb of your body and must never be removed. Therefore kesh should not be removed because it is who you are naturally as a human being. Let me ask you this - would you remove the hair off your eyelashes. Would you physically sit there and pull out every single eyelash hair because everyone in society is doing it and they are looking at you as if you are abnormal for having long eyelash hair. Of course some people (indians) have longer eye lash hair compared to others (caucasians). But would you remove your eyebrow hair. imagine every time you did it - it hurt, you cried, you got redness, you got blisters and the pain was immense. Not only that - the next month it grew back again. Females across the world who have normal amounts of female facial hair spend money and time on doing exactly this when they remove their facial and bodily hair.

The Kesh is not for creating an identity because then we could wear turbans with our hair cut short. Also hair came first. Our hair is what gives us our identity not our turbans. We sikhs are humans that keep themselves as they are born and are proud of it. Also sikh woman keep their hair uncut under a chunni so it cannot be identity. In conclusion the hair is what gives us our identity - not the other way around.

The eradication of inequality has nothing to do with hair keeping. Inequality is to do with lack of opportunities. The reason sikhs keep their hair is because the 5 kakkars are you and you do not remove them. And woman need to keep facial hair - you wouldn't pluck out the hair on your eyelashes so why are you doing this to your face?

I am busy and cannot reply anymore so please ask the sangat the rest of your questions. Thanks.

You are fixated on one word;singing. There is no need to read Gurbani, if you are going to get fixated on one word and belittle Gurbani by not spending time to contemplate over it f

In your first post to me you called me a pandit by using a Gurbani tuk. Now all of a sudden you have become sensitive? Give me a break you are a person who seeks opportunity to run when the questions get tough. I thought you were brave enough to face the truth, but like many here; you are a coward.

Akalifauj I have said previously that I am on a busy schedule and I would be disengaging with discussions. I also said that I had already answered all your questions and that I would like you to go back and read my posts properly because your saying things that I have never said.

The perfect example of you not reading properly, is in regards to the very same gurbani tuk that you have referred to. I said that you cannot take singing to mean literal singing and that 24 hours doesn't mean literal 24 hours physical praying but rather it is about spiritually being like that in the unconsciousness. Then you write back that I should not take it as literal singing when that was what I had already said to you!

There are many more examples of you doing this but I do not have time to go through them all. I actually don't think your doing it deliberately which is why I asked you if you are from India. That is because I genuinely wonder if its a communication issue especially as I never heard some of the phrases you've used such as 'go and take your yard stick'. I eventually realised you must mean 'danda' and I think speaking like that is common in India.

I would also like to add that I have never called you 'a pandit' but you have called me a number of things like being 'a part time sikh', 'coward', 'sensitive'. It is not about 'winning' and just because someone stops replying it does not mean you have 'won' or that they are a 'coward'. People stop responding for a variety of reasons - in my case I have a busy schedule and do not have time for continuing discussions. I also feel that you don't understand posts properly and don'tt see it effective use of my time to repeat myself. I do wonder if thats because of the communication issue that I've already referred to.

If you have questions please open them up to the sangat. Please do not direct further questions to me because I have not time to read or reply. If you are interested in learning and not 'winning' then open up the questions to the rest of the sangat and ask for their viewpoints. All I wanted to say was that every Sikh should strive to be the best and not view jobs as being 'anti-sikh'. I feel I have done my part strongly in explaining that and will be disengaging now. Thank you.

Nope, not stopping. What you gonna do about it? Why don't you get lost?

Hi Quantavius. We as Sikhs have a code of conduct or a discipline called the rehat maryada. That states that the hair on a human body should not be removed. This applies to both females and males. Also when you take amrit the panj pyare will ask this commitment from both a man and a woman.

From reading your comments I think I can work out what your not understanding. In order to explain this I will need to talk a little bit about hair. We as humans have different types of hair. There is hair called pubic hair - i.e. armpit, private area and beard hair. Then there is hair that we think of as hair i.e. leg hair, arm hair. Then their is head hair - long hair. Each area of our body produces hair with different lengths, different textures, that grows at different speeds and falls out at different rates etc, also some areas have hair concentrated together and other areas have hair spread out. The only area of the human body that does not have hair is the sole of our foot and the palms of our hand i.e. the glabrous areas.

Facial hair exists on a woman - often it is what we call 'lango' hair. Lango means soft, baby hair. I don't know if you've seen a new born baby but it has facial hair that is very soft. Woman have lango facial hair - they remove upper lip hair, side hair and chin hair that is lango hair. They also shape their eyebrows. Woman generally don't have pubic style facial hair - pubic hair counts as a beard - that is because it is thick and coarse. Woman however do grow hair that is similar to their eyebrow hair. This can form a pattern because the hair on our body runs in a pattern known as Langerhans lines. Eg if you look at your arm hair then it is sweeping diagonally and if you look at your leg hair then that sweeps in a vertical pattern. We as humans should not feel ashamed of our natural form.

Sikh men and woman don't remove hair anywhere on their body. The guru expected men to not only keep beard but also head hair, leg hair, arm hair etc. Similarly girls are expected to keep their arm hair, leg hair, and facial hair. The facial hair on a girl is normally different to a man as usually its not pubic style hair but regardless according to the Sikh faith we keep it because we accept our human body.

Akalifauj are you from India or did someone from India say 24hours naam abhiyaas to you? The only time I have heard people refer to things as 24hrs is when they say 'chaubi genteh' e.g. 'He works chaubi genteh i.e. 24hrs - What they actually mean to say is that all he does is work. The person in reality does not work 24 hours. Instead 24 hours means something close to 12 hours as the person sleeps, eats, toilets, washes etc. Looking back on your comments I think people from India use this as an expression rather than actually meaning 24 hours.

You had said this:

So i asked you, are you willing to meet a singh who can listen to three different recordings at the same time and be actually listening to all three while having a conversation with others. This shows the ability of Sikhs is not bound to what you perceive the limit to be. Sant Jarnail Singh ji, used to do 101 japji sahib a day. Add the hours up and 'logically' there is not enough time in the day to be working in the farms sleeping, eating, and doing nitmen. You and others can deny this fact.

Your inability or mine does not set the record to what a Sikh is capable of achieving. You have bound Grubbing and its Sikhs ability to the worlds limits. Yet Baba Deep Singh ability to fight without a head is a proven fact Gurbani and those sikhs who have made there life occupation to singing his praises are above the limits of the world. Breath mind is subject to death. In summary find a better yard stick to bound Sikhi too.

You used the word 24 hours naam abhiyaas....I said that making the naam a part of you for 24 hours is possible but to physically read for 24hours is not. Please explain what you mean by 24 hours naam abhiyaas if it is not reading for 24 hours....

In my opinion once you have learnt bani you can read it at any speed you want because its repetition and you already know every word that sometimes you can just hum. If someone told me that they can do so many paaths when they have been practising and repeating paaths all their lives then of course I will agree because I know you can do it in double, triple, quadruple, ten times the normal speed etc. It all depends on how many times you've done it before i.e. your experience. Thats why I said people get faster with banis when they do it more and more.

About the tape recording - If I knew 3 recordings inside out then I too could listen to them all and talk to people. What I don't understand is why would anyone want to do this - is the rationale to fit in more and more bani because I am sorry to say but its not a competition on who can do the most in the shortest amount of time.

Saheed Baba Deep Singh is a complete tangent comment. Please learn to stay within context.

There are five in the morning:

Japji Sahib

Jaap Sahib

Tav-Prasad Savaiye

Benti Chaupai

Anand Sahib

As far as I am aware there are various thoughts on the compulsory nature of the other two - its like how some people throw in Asa Di Vaar as a morning prayer too - which it is but its not compulsory unless your in certain circles. As far as I am aware according to the Sikh Code of Conduct there are only 5 compulsory banis. If people want to add the others then you follow the same method and time can be generated to do those too.

Would you like to be introduced to a Singh who can listen to three different recordings (katha, santhiya, and akhand paath) at the same time? He listens to all three at the same time and is holding a conversation with singhs.

Sorry I don't understand this at all.....I have never listened to three different recordings. Not sure what the rationale behind doing that is.