Ishna

(f) Marriage may not be preceded by engagement ceremony. But if an engagement ceremony is sought to be held, a congregational gathering should be held and, after offering the Ardas before the Guru Granth Sahib, a kirpan, a steel bangle and some sweets may be tendered to the boy. Doesn't this class as dowry of a kind? http://allaboutsikhs.com/rehat/rehat_04.htm#art18

Why not, if it brings issues to people's attention?

That quote from the Rehat Maryada says nothing about disapproving of pictures of the Gurus, it specifically says that bowing / worshipping the pictures is wrong. It would have to say that if it said that pictures were bad in the first place. The issue boils down to respect, I think. By taking a picture that is supposed to represent Guru Nanak and placing cards in the pictures hand to me is similar to someone taking a Khanda and hanging, say, panties from the points. I would be offended by that disrespect to an obvious Sikh symbol. That doesn't mean I worship the khanda, or that I am going to worship the khanda. I just don't like to see it disrespected. My two cents, Ishna.

I found that e-mail in my travels as well. If you keep reading you'll find a response to "Dr John's" e-mail from "Ali". The response by Ali is actually somewhat derogatory (in my opinon), and it is challenged by by someone called "Ryan" who goes to a great length to disect "Ali's" negative comments and shed a little light about Sikhi. I have not found a response to Ryan by Ali yet. Also, "Dr John" doen't say that he is a Sikh, he implies that he is an athiest. His comments do seem a little too sympathetic to Sikhi though.... Ishna.

I've done some extensive searching for this reference, including searching for the text in countless ebooks and downloads attributed to this author, and I have found no evidence. I think you are wise to regard it with suspision at this stage.

It's not down, but it's limping. I hope no one has attempted to hack that site. Although I would like to see the image removed, it would be very disappointing if someone has tried to perform an illegal action against the site.

It looks like an interesting movie, and I'd like to see it. Prem: So where does that place such people in relation to Sikhi? Is it justifiable then to call them Sikhs?

Perhaps a geological influence, what with there being five rivers in the Panjab?

Yeah it is interesting that everything seems to be in fives. I don't mind, because personally it's my favourite number. Does anyone know if there is a reason for it though? Perhaps on another thread.... Ishna.

Awe, we're not poking fun at him, or in a malicious way. We just don't know the answers! My apologies if I have offended you. Ishna.

Or carry it in your teeth? Grrr, Arg!!

Thank you very much for explaining that so definitively, Singh123 ji! I've never seen that wonderful little phrase laid out so well. :lol:

Well it all depends on how you define "God". God can mean the personality projected by religions like Christianity upon the Divine Essence... It can mean the multiple Pagan gods, or is can mean the Divine Essence itself. I think that what most Westerners see as "God" is the projected Abrahamic projection, a man-made heavenly figure sketched onto the background of Divine Essence. Without the religion, this God would not exist, but the essence behind it would remain for some other culture to draw their own picture of God upon. In my personal experience, Sikhi reaches that Divine Essence, the Naam. So if by God you mean Waheguru, then yes, without Sikhi God would exist, but I don't know how close we'd come to reaching It. Ishna. And I mean no disrespect to other religions' interpretation of God, and I'm not saying that their gods are any less valid to them. If that makes sense....

Sikhs don't need any proof to support their faith because they know it is the Truth. No one else can see that except by Waheguru's grace, so trying to argue about it with your Muslim friends is pointless.

So the rule is no chairs at all in any part of the gurdwara? I can most definately see why chairs are best left out of the... um... darbaar hall, if that's the correct term... but is the reasoning the same for leaving them out of the langar hall? With respect, Ishna.

So do you think Sikhism on other worlds would be exactly the same as it is here? Do you think there's another life form wearing a turban and the 5 Ks? Or do you think the 5 Ks are a specific cultural speciality to this world, a response to the environment? I guess this is really the topic of another thread that had probably already been done to death--the universality of Sikhism, and what Sikhism boils down to to become truly "universal".

What about for the defence of another?

Haha... okay, I guess it depends on your definition of the word 'Pagan'.

Hahaha, good one LifeIsBeautiful. And dreamman, it's referring to you personal beliefs. As far as the Belief-O-Matic is concerned, according to the responses you give it determined how closely your beleifs match those of various religions. 100% Sikh does not mean that you are personally 100% a Sikh, I agree with your views on that. It's saying that your personal beliefs, based on your responses to their questions, matches 100% to the critera they have for Sikhi beliefs.

When I was a neo-Pagan I kept getting 100% Sikh! No wonder that didn't work out and I'm here now! And ms514: most neo-Pagans don't worship idols.

That's so sad and full of despair.

ms514 ji, Thanks for your info, the part about dumping the ttfs to that directory is very interesting and definately a good place to start gathering more knowledge about this. I love Gentoo for portage, but I hear a few other distros are getting on that bandwagon too, like Debian which I'm thinking about switching over to pretty soon because Gentoo is too hard for me to maintain and I'm just not that interested in having a top-notch OS all of the time. I wonder why the Sikhnet Hukamnama doesn't work for you. I'll let you know if I find anything out about that. Regarding xorg.conf, I built most of mine from an example file, and with a bit of help from a friend in New Zealand got it up and running before I installed my precious, precious fluxbox *petpets*. The entire Gentoo install is done from console, so I'm actually pretty comfortable there and have broken my GUI a couple of times before. Whoops. KDE is an alright desktop environment, I like it a lot more than Gnome, but I prefer something like fluxbox because it doesn't come with all the bells and whistles and sometimes I like the challenge of finding things to taylor it to my needs. I've been using Linux by itself for a couple of years now. I can't stand Windows, and I'm not prepared to pay for my own copy, so using Linux I figure is a lot more honourable than the alternative. I'm interested in your slackware OS Vector Linux, I think I'll have to look that one up. But yeah, thanks again!

Sort of coinciding with the Smokey Smokerson thread, I came across a situation today at the shopping centre. As I was leaving, I was confronted with a very strong smell of smoke because I was down wind. When I got around the corner (I was in a sort of tunnel) I saw a pretty rough looking man (not the best part of town you see) with a cigarette sitting at a bus stop with a little boy probably about 7 or 8 who was sitting next to him, also down wind. Could have been the man's son, or maybe his little brother. But the smoke was going right into the kids face, and as I walked past I noticed the man was also setting fire to the wrapper from an ice cream cone. Only a few steps on and the boy started coughing and coughing, and I got to feeling pretty cranky with that situation. What do you think about situations like that? Does it make you angry? How do you deal with the feeling of not being able to just smack people upside the head and go, "Where is your sense?! Look at what you're doing!" Ishna.

Hi, Does anyone have any experience installing third-party fonts on Linux? I'm running Gentoo Linux and Fluxbox, and I would like to install a Gurmukhi font but I'm a little unsure where to start. *waves her hammer at her xorg.conf* Is this a good place to start? Thanks, Ishna.

Hehe, that's cool Disguised. And well said Randip Singh!