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thecheatah

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  1. Waheguru Je Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji ke FAte. I have been doing some googleing and I have found many Muslim websites that claim Sikhism to be false. I know they have been doing this ever since, but this time its different. The method that they are using to disprove Sikhism is by assuming that Islam is correct and Sikhism is not. Thus, they discuses this in open forums and wikis. Actually hoping for Sikhs to join the discussion. Since they are open WE the SIKHS can place our own voice and clear their misunderstandings. Here are some websites that try to disprove Sikhism: http://www.muslimwikipedia.com/mw/index.php/Sikhism http://forum.mpacuk.org/forumdisplay.php?f=32 Now when you go reply to their comments, make sure you do not do so in hate. You should not use your own opinions and emotions to argue against them, but the teachings of the Guru. The Gurus have always corrected those who lived in falsehood, not so they could inflate their ego, but to help humanity understand the truth. If you increase the size of the Saad Sangat, the more of a chance you have that you will be present in one. Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji ke fate.
  2. Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ke fate. Sikhi does believe in rebirth and karma. This topic is very deep but I can try to explain from my understanding. In reality their is only one being, God. He created a creation, this world and many more. This creation is a part of him. WIthin this creation, he made countless beings and species. In all of these beings god abides withen them all equally. He does not see someone as good or evil. So all beings are within God's creation and are taken care for by God equally. In this world nothing lasts forever. These bodies that God has given us eventually age and die. The body dies but the part of God that abides in all cannot be destroyed. It is reincarnated into another body. Now those who seek the truth (these people are choosen by God) attempt to leave this cycle of life and death from this world and merge back into the great primal being. The creater of all creations God. Before Sikhism, people tried many things. Some went outside of civilized socity hoping to become detached from physical possesions. Others remained physically silent hoping to meditate on God and come to understand him. Others attempted to fast in order to gain God's love. All of these things seemed to work for some and thus different religions were made. All of these religions try to change the state of the physical being in order to come to understand God. Sikhism however teaches us that it is the state of the MIND that allows us to reach God not the state of the physical being. Basically mentally we must become prepaired. Instead of giving up all of our possesions and going into the wild, why not teach the mind to be as if it had no possesions. Instead of trying to quite our mouth, we need to quite our inner mind inorder to reach God. Basically Sikhism can be considered a Science to reaching God. The Siri Guru Granth Sahib has words from many who had actually lived in this world, faced the real problems of this world, studied the situations that occured and pointed out where man made mistakes that prevent him from reaching God. These people have managed to reach God. They also know who we are, how we think and act. Having such experience and knowledge they guide us to follow the correct path to reaching God. Their teachings are our Guru. Even though their are many physical ways that people claim make one realize the truth, their is only ONE way in which someone can come to realize God. That way is described in Sikhism. Like you say that people have made sects of Sikhism. All of these will fall because they are false. None of them will realize God. I can say this because knowing the truth "Sikhism", they have choosen a DIFFERENT path. It doesnt matter that their are people who try to discredit Sikhism. They are false and their confidence is false. Anyone who truly wishes to reach God will follow Sikhism (they might not call it Sikhism) and achieve the state of mind that will allow them to merge back with God. Any other paths that convince you that the state of the physical being matters, are false and are only used to show others that you are religious. Not achieve any true salvation. Instead of hearing stories, why don't you read the Siri Guru Granth Sahib. They have many translations of it in english online. sirigranth.org I believe is a good one. Remember Sikhism and the love of God is between you and God. Your parents have nothing to do with it. You yourself should be interested in Sikhism. You yourself should be convinced how great it is. This once in a billionth chance of you have in reaching God should not be thrown away in doubt. You should do research on Sikhism. If you have tried all and you still cannot come to understand Sikhi, just repeat God's name over and over again and ask that you do will become blessed to understand it. Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ke fate.
  3. I had a discussion with some Muslims on their forums. http://www.gawaher.com/index.php?showtopic...st=40&& Mostly they were trying to argue that Sikhs and Hindus go to hell. Read for yourself. Using Sikhism's teachings, I tried to show the Guru's view. Also I think in some cases my anger might have gotten the best of me.
  4. Hi, When you are free, and are bored, you should try this: Go here http://sikhs.org/english/frame.html Go down to where it says "Pick a Page", and type in a random page number from 1 to 1430.
  5. We should reply back to this person because they have presented an argument against the Guru Granth Sahib and the way we worship in an intelegent way. By using a logical proof he is trying to prove that Sikhi's core is wrong. Lets analyse his proof. What he is trying to prove is that Sikhs view the Guru Granth Sahib as an Idol. The reason for him to believe this is because he says we treat the Guru Granth Sahib as a person. My argument. I will first begin by saying what the word "idol" means: an image or other material object representing a deity to which religious worship is addressed. Breaking apart this definition you can see that an "idol" is a representation and not the actual thing. The Guru Granth Sahib however IS our Guru. It is not a representation of the Guru. It is not a symbol/sign or something that points to a Guru. This is true because a Guru is a teacher. Obviously we can learn from written text thus allowing it to teach us, Their is logically nothing wrong with calling written text our Guru. The Guru Granth Sahib is not something that represents the truth but IS the truth itself! That is where his proof is wrong. Second in reply to what he said that Sikh belive that the Guru Granth Sahib is alive is not the case. Sikh belive that the written Guru Granth Sahib is something that deserves much respect, because of its ability to make one reach God. The Guru Granth Sahib does not fall into the cycle of life and death thus can not be considered alive. The Guru Granth Sahib instead is considered one's teacher and because of the greatness in knowledge that the Guru Granth Sahib contains, its importance is placed above all others. That's why we carry it above our heads. Reading even one page of it a Sikh's mind fills with the love of God. How can one whos heart is filled with such love treat the Guru in any other way? It is not our duty to prove wether or not Islam is right or wrong, but it is our duty to prove that Sikhi is the is true. PS: I would like to know the link to this forum. Thanks
  6. I don't know much about punishment after death. But could it be that if we really understood the Guru that we would not act as Manmukhs. Maybe because we only repeat the words of the Guru without understanding them we have not reached that point where we would know the truth and still practice falsehood and thus fall into this situation. I would find it hard to believe that knowing the truth one would still want to follow falsehood. Once you reach that point I think following falsehood would be as hard as a manmukh following the truth. For a manmukh all the mind does is doubt the truth. This is also the reason we can learn about Sikhism and still be a manmukh. For a gurmukh all the mind does is love the truth.
  7. Very interesting. I often times find this kind of stuff hard to believe, but I will share a story that occured to my family and I when we went to visit Pakistan's Gurudwaras THIS summer. Because now my family had become American citizens, me and my family got visas to go to Pakistan. We weren't actually sure if we would go, but we did plan to go to India this summer. So if we got the chance, we would go to pakistan. In India, we talked to a few of our uncles and they told as that a bus ran from Amritsar to Lahore. I think it was Lahore. It was a very populated city. Once we got there, it was kind of scary, because there were no Sikhs there at all. Everyone did speak punjabi with the same accent as they did in amritsar. From Lahore we took a regular bus to Nankana Sahib, because our trip was very short and we had to be always on the GO to visit as many Gurudwaras as we could. On that bus we ran into a Singh! It was to our surprise and we felt alot better. He told us that he had lived all his life in Pakistan and he had never visited Amritsar. The trip was a few hours long, but we didn't feel scared. He said he was also going to Nankana Sahib, because he lived there. Once we got there. He got us a tempo and took us straight to Nankana Sahib Gurudwara. We stayed for a night there and met him later on before we left for Panjasahib. Once we got back to the US, me and my brother noticed this person at the Gurudwara. He reminded us of that person who helped us. Physically he looked exactly like him. I told our Giani this and he said something to the extent that "All of guru's Sants look alike". I had seen this person before at the Gurudwara too.
  8. That is a very good point. As even the translations can not be counted on to be exact. Furthermore, even the interpretation of the translation is different from person to person. I guess my idea is flawed Thanks for the reply!
  9. I was just reading a few of the posts, and the ones I found the most intersting were the ones that quoted things from the Gurbani. To me everything else is basically opinion. A lot of times, just reading the opinion dilutes the discussion. So I was thinking that may be we can have a section where people ask questions and others post answers by only referencing Gurbani. Or maybe we can have a read only section where questions that get answered using Bani get moved to it. This way we can have a nice collection of "FAQs" answered by the Guru! Also this would be a good excuse for our busy selves to read Gurbani! Any opinions?
  10. I get that feeling too once in a while. Usually its because something bad IS about to happen. Just take it as a HINT that something bad is about to happen. Things good and bad just occur. They will occur no matter what. We shouldn't become attached to such events. The "bad" will occur and it will go by. Any prayer, even the thought of god, will "help" you. Most important of all, faith in God will help you. You can read any prayer, but read it with Faith in the words that you read.
  11. I believe I got this quote from this website. It basically describes what is considered beautiful and acceptable in the eyes of God. I think it was from the Guru Granth Sahib: That family, whose son has no spiritual wisdom or contemplation - why didn't his mother just become a widow? That man who has not practiced devotional worship of the Lord - why didn't such a sinful man die at birth? So many pregnancies end in miscarriage - why was this one spared? He lives his life in this world like a deformed amputee. Says Kabeer, without the Naam, the Name of the Lord, beautiful and handsome people are just ugly hunch-backs. It doesn't matter what you look like, were just ugly to begin with. Only those with the naam are considered beautiful. That aside, this whole hair thing. If you can't shut your mind up and focus only on god, then you have other things to worry about then your hair. Such as why does my mind wonder about how to dispose of hair rather then trying to understand the truth. Don't worry about perserving our surroundings by "burning hair that fell off", worry about why your mind refuses to focus on god.
  12. Hmm... I too have these problems! But i have learned to apply my knowledge of Sikhi to understand them! First of all one thing I always remember is: everything in this world is useless. None of it is going to go with you when you die. If your "Sikh peers" dont respect you or understand you, it doesn't matter! Your path to God is seperate from everyone elses. Just worry about yourself. Also when we read quotes such as "God decides when we unite and seperate from him", we should not take this as "one day we will automatically find time for Sikhi and everyone around us will speak of it. Right now I dont need to think about god because its not my time." This kind of understanding of the words seperates you from Sikhi! You should ALWAYS face God. You should never turn your back on him. You should always try and keep trying to keep your mind as much as you can on God. You must try to do everything you can. You should consider yourself a fool and always think that this is the time to unite with God. Sometimes in some circumstances we will not be able to accomplish that (seperation from god), but atleast we tried. Then in other times, we will automatically wakeup before our alarm and God's Shabads will automatically come into our mind (union with god). The purpose of Sikhi and the reason so many people are ready to give up their life for it so quickly, is that it merges US with GOD. The most beautiful thought/act. It is used to create a relationship between you and God. This relationship is used to merge us with god. Sikhi does NOT take away what we consider "pain" and provide us with only "pleasure", what it does is it teaches us what real pain and pleasures are. Pain is not damage to our physical self, pain is seperation from God. Pleasure is not what our sences please, but is accomplished by having the ability to keep your mind on god even when all of our senses say otherwise. I think of Sikhi as a school subject! I don't know anything about it. I consider myself to be always wrong. Thus I am a listener when I read about Sikhi not a talker. Only things that I "know", are the things I have read directly from the Guru Granth Sahib. Everytime I learn something from the Guru, I always try to place it into this jigsaw in mind of everything else that I have learned from the Guru. Some parts of the puzzle are starting to become solid. Then again when I stop reading about Sikhi some of the parts start to fade. I am guessing thats why we need to read the Banis everyday. My advice is: Read the Guru Granth Sahib. Remember what it teaches. Then apply it to our lives. People often forget to apply :-\. This is just my understanding of Sikhi. I am sure there are people on this forum that know much more and can point out my wrongs. Please do not hesitate to do so!
  13. I think the real question the starter of this thread is asking is, do Sikhs believe that everything such as stones, rocks and trees have souls. This is a difficult question to answer and I am prolly not correct, so here is my opinion: I think in the Japji Sahib it says that God, his creation and his actions are unrecordable. They cannot be described nor explained. It also says that only fools try to explain such things. Also the state of the person who is in God's love cannot be explained. All this said, it turns out that we cannot understand how this world around us works. We can only percieve it from our senses and try to make conclusions. Thus, we cannot prove or try to disprove some of the things that are described in the Guru Granth Sahib. If you follow the Guru's words you will realize that even though much of God's power is undescribable, if you put your trust in him, you will begin to UNDERSTAND his power and his Greatness. So in order to begin to understand what the Guru Granth Sahib tries to teach us, we must first admit to ourselves that we are idiots. We should put MORE trust in the Guru Granth Sahib's teachings then anything else. In my opinion, I dont think this section is trying to teach us about how the spirit world works. It is merely using it as an example to describe something else. So in conclusion: If the Guru Granth Sahib says: rocks have souls. It MUST be. Do we care that rocks have souls? Probably not. But we do care that our human life is unique and is VERY RARE. So we should take advantage of what makes this life soo rare, the ability to merge with God.
  14. Hmm...I guess it doesn't hurt to add my own Opinion :D I think this shabad is saying that we shouldn't waist our human life doing pointless things. Do what we can only do in THIS life, which is to reach God. In no other life could we reach God. So something happend, maybe our luck or just our destiny that we were given this human form. Now we have intelegence. We can now try to understand God and hopefully merge with him. The rocks and trees that are all around us. They are so many. In comparison their are many fold more non-humans then humans. This means that this life is truly rare. It is basically trying to smack you upside your head and say LOOK fool, look how lucky you are!
  15. Sometimes when I am serving langar, I notice people don't use two hands when taking parshada (mostly non-Sikhs), I usually just tell them in a strict voice to use two hands. When everyone starts to look over they usually lift up the other hand. But other times, everyone just wants their food and I just ask them and I don't have time to wait :-\ I havnt really noticed Bibian not covering their head, but I have noticed little mone kids and girls not covering their head. Its true people get upset when I ask them, but I really don't know myself how to respond to them. If people don't respect the Guru then I don't think it really is langar. But your idea of putting up a post to how to respect the Guru while you are visiting the Gurudwara is a good idea.
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