Sahiba

This is such disheartening news. Waheguru...Bibi Jasbir Kaur was such a good kirtanee. Back in October 2005, Dhulla ji did a shabad, it was a sad shabad and he sung it with such feeling.....I couldn't wrap my head around what Dhulla ji had experienced to make him sing that shabad with such emotion. I found the shabad and attached it below. I sing it today for Bibi Jasbir Kaur. You can download it yourself here: http://www.akj.org/skins/default/keertan.php?id=89. The track is actually a series of sad shabads (since the program was held in rememberence of Bhai Indraj Singh) but the specific one that i'm talking of comes exactly 24:18 min into the track. Naa(n)gae aavanaa naa(n)gae jaanaa har hukam paaeiaa kiaa keejai || Naked we come, and naked we go. This is by the Lord's Command; what else can we do? jis kee vasath soee lai jaaeigaa ros kisai sio keejai || The object belongs to Him; He shall take it away; with whom should one be angry? guramukh hovai s bhaanaa ma(n)nae sehajae har ras peejai || One who becomes Gurmukh accepts God's Will; he intuitively drinks in the Lord's sublime essence. naanak sukhadhaathaa sadhaa salaahihu rasanaa raam raveejai ||2|| O Nanak, praise the Giver of peace forever; with your tongue, savor the Lord. ||2||

Okay it's 12:11am on Aug. 18....SERIOUSLY, I thought we'd have topics on this guy running left, right, centre! So I'll start. WHOOOOOOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO IT'S YOUR BIRTHAY!!!!!!!! I want to take this opportunity to say THANK YOU! As a Sikh Youth, I greatly appreciate all the seva you do helping kids out here on the forum, attending kirtan darbars, and then putting the kirtan files up on websites...while still taking the harassment by everyone that you're not doing it fast enough...ahem (still sorry bout that).... Anyways, Happy Happy Happy Birthday! May Guru Ji bless you while you continue to do seva for him and the rest of the Sikh panth. Waheguru Jee Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Jee Ke Fateh.

Waheguru... May this type of samagam be the first of many.

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy ITALY!!!!!!!!!!! HAHAHA way to use your head Zidane! would've been nice if Italy won via scoring during the play of the game. Penalty shots don't really do it for me. meh.

JASDEEP HAS IT!!! mannnnnnn where is that kid..... :wub: And I wasn't dissin QSSA bhenji...my mistake if that's what you took my comment for. It was just a joke and I clearly mentioned I was 'kidding'.

Umm....I sorta kinda hate to break it to both of you....but Queen's University's SSA is one of the fastest growing SSA's in the world. We have just over 5 members, and hold about 1 event a year. It really is something aspiring, and a goal all universities should try to avoid. :wub: Kidding, kidding. Queen's SSA is great :| We're revamping ourself! Actually have an exec this year!! COME TO QUEEN'S!! yayyyyy! haha. ha. k and done.

Oh man...haha, I haven't visited this forum in 2 months, and this post was the first one I read!! Such important topics.....lol. Well actually, I was sorta wondering why there were two Wonderland trips as well, but honestly, it doesn't matter. Just as long as we all get to go and give Paramount Canada's Wonderland our hard-earned 60 Canadian dollars. Maybe next year they'll actually report a profit! ha. fat chance. K so hope you guys have fun :| I'll personally be going on Saturday but that's because i work Mondays. Stoopid corporate doesn't really give weekdays off .....but yeah, have funnnn!! Don't worry about which day you're going on. I know AllStarKobe is a little angry, but anger is expressed on this forum all the damn time.....I don't think its ever actually going to go away. And HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY PRINCESS and MANPREET! :TH:

If you've been blessed enough to take Amrit, than you are blessed enough to know what is right or wrong. Just because you take Amrit, doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to have fun, and be a youth. Of course you should go. Go to your prom with a good heart. Be responsible, be safe, take care of yourself. You're Guruji's daughter, and that's enough reason to know you will be true to yourself and your Amritdhari rehit. Guru Ang Sang :wub:

Mmmm alright, so I guess its my turn... Waheguru Jee Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Jee Ke Fateh This is by far my favourite thread. I go to all these youth kirtan darbars, and talk to some of you in person…but nothing prepares me for what I read in this thread. Your past is something to learn from…and how you all became Gursikhs from your past, is truly our Guru Ji’s bakshish. I read this thread a lot as a guest, always comparing my life to yours, and thinking about it afterwards…wishing I could talk to you in person and ask you more. But then I realized that there’s no need. I listen to your kirtan and observe your seva. Again, truly our Guru ji’s bakshish. I suppose my story differs from all of yours. Most of you have come from non-sikhi backgrounds, and fell in love with the perfect religion afterwards. Me? Allow me to illustrate how a girl can come from the most gursikh family, and throw it all away. I was actually born in New Delhi to a family full of politics. My parents became so frustrated with the politics that they left India to start a peaceful life in Scarborough. As I grew up in Scarborough, the only thing about Sikhi that I knew were the obvious: never cut your hair, and always wear a kara. Other than that, the concept of Amrit was never introduced, we rarely went to gurdwara, my dad was a drinker, we were never around sangat. There were parties every Friday and Saturday nights. Paht were never done. And shabad? What’s shabad? When I was about 8, changes started to happen. My parents realized that something was wrong. They had a long discussion and decided that they would try to practice Sikhi a little stricter because me and my sister were growing up, and learning by example was all we had. We moved out of the Ghetto, and into our first house in Markham. My mom put me and my sister in classical kirtan classes. We started going to gurdwara on the weekends and attended the Sukhmani Sahib sangat in Toronto every Sunday. That’s where I met Papaji. Papaji was a very Gursikh person. He adopted my parents as his children and he was the only grandfather I ever knew. In 1996, it was upon his encouragement that my mother took Amrit. When she took Amrit, my dad stopped drinking, and started learning, for the first time, how to read Punjabi. At these changes, we moved again, out of Markham and into North York. I observed my parents changes but personally, my change came in high school. Work became tougher and I was forced to choose between my two extra-cirrcular activities: kirtan and figure skating. I chose kirtan. While my high school friends spent their time partying and getting high, I chose to spend my weekends at Gurdwara. On my 16th birthday, I got charni on Sri Guru Granth Sahib Jee, and by my 17th birthday, I had done my own akhand paht. I had everything. Motivating parents, high marks, Gursikh family, kirtan di daat, I knew my paht, spoke Punjabi…. Sounds perfect right? Then I went to University and my first year killed all of that. When I got to my university, I realized there was no gurdwara….where was I to go on the weekend? There was no formal SSA…where was I supposed to meet my sangat? It took me two months to meet the first puran Singh on campus. And I still, to this day, don’t know who was happier….me, that I had finally met a puran Singh. Or him, that he had finally met a puran Kaur. I met the SSA soon after…three other girls, none of whom kept their rehit. It wasn’t sangat for me. No one knew kirtan, how to read Punjabi, how to do ardaas, or how to read the hukhamnama. I felt so distant in this sangat…I felt myself travelling every weekend to Toronto just to escape it. The work piled up, and the expense of travelling to Toronto every weekend was adding up. Soon enough, weekends were spent in residence….and you can guess what happened next. I started drinking, I started dating, I started clubbing. It was awful. Without a sangat to see every weekend, without having Sikh youth kids to teach, without having someone to discuss Gurbani with, sing kirtan with, do paht with, learn with….I felt really lonely and it just forced me to bond with the kids I had around me – the worst influence in my life. Over the summer, before I started second year, I felt really guilty. I took that summer and got myself together, drilled the concept of Sikhi into my head again and went back to university headstrong. I quit eveything cold-turkey and changed. If I couldn’t find sangat at my university, I would create it. Slowly, I started finding more Sikh students on campus, encouraged them to come out to paht, formed a personal relationship with each of them and made them as comfortable as possible. I needed them, I needed sangat. The SSA weekly paht grew bigger. I was still the only person doing everything – doing the paht, doing the kirtan, doing the ardaas, reading the hukhamnaama – but having the larger SSA made all the difference. These kids didn’t keep their Sikhi rehit like I did, but the passion they had for the religion inspired me…and the Sikhi lifestyle I grew up with inspired them. As amazing as this sangat is, it’s been three years now and I can’t say the passion matches what I’m used to in Toronto or New Jersey or anywhere else. I still see myself taking the train down to Toronto sporatically one Friday night to attend the simran at Dixie Gurdwara. The Amritdhari sikh youth that I meet at these sangats is inspiring. They’re my age, but so much more in love, it seems, with the religion. I learn from them….they’re accepting, forgiving, loving, passionate, helpful, caring, sharing, ridiculously amazing people that I have yet to find anywhere else on this planet. If you’re Amritdhari….I’ll pretty much follow you around until you become my friend. Needless to say, that’s next on my list – taking Amrit. It’s missing in my life and I can feel it. There’s a shabad…. qorI n qUtY CorI n CUtY AYsI mwDo iKMc qnI [1] Cutting it, it does not break, and releasing it, it does not let go. Such is the string the Lord has tied me with. ||1|| This verse gets me everytime; it summarizes my past perfectly. How I became distant from my religion, how I forgot all the values and practices of a Sikh. But how my Gurus never let me get away. Not a day goes by that I don’t thank God for lifting me out of that black hole I had so blindly fallen into. Moral of the story: Never underestimate the power of Sadh Sangat. Gurbani is amazing; it is the best support circle you can have for yourself. But sometimes, having a Singh and Singhni beside you makes all the difference in the world. I learned that the hard way...but you know what? Sometimes that’s the best way to learn. Bhul chuk maaf…. Waheguru Jee Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Jee Ke Fateh.

Did you know that if you squeeze an egg with one hand as hard as you can, it won't break? Try it.... :wub: hehehehe...

:wub: Listening to hip-hop music doesn't make you farther away from Sikhi. DOING some of the stuff said IN the hip-hop music.... :cool: @ yeah, that'll do it for ya. I guess my advice, other than "Sheesh bhenji have some willpower" (kidding) is to download as much kirtan and bani onto your hard drive as you possibly can. And then everytime you feel like listening to hip hop, turn on kirtan instead. It'll feel awkward at first, but the more kirtan you listen to, the more at bliss you'll feel. The only reason your so in tune with hip hop music is because you're so USED to it. It's always there! And you've become accustomed to the radio channels they're played at, the hip-hop beat, and you always know who..uh, sings? them. (is sing the word? maybe rap... ) With kirtan, if you start now, slowly you'll feel yourself changing and suddenly, you'll want to know who the kirtanee are, you'll see yourself going to STTM to find the meaning of shabads, and you'll feel yourself knowing EXACTLY where to download all shabads from the latest kirtan darbar....*ahem* www.ontariosikhyouth.ca Hope that helps bhenji. Have faith. You're in love with bani, I can see that. Listen to it everyday, everywhere you go - and it's all you'll ever want to hear. Hip hop what? Fateh jeeo.

That's great to hear :wub: You know, after reading about everyone's path towards Him, it's amazing to see the theme of this thread shine as the Love that is Sangat. We know about it - and we hear it - but its another thing to read it through these stories. Keep 'em coming! Fateh jeeo

do paht.

sooo...how bout those ants :cool: heyyyy how bout we start another convo on Aman singh :cool: ......NOT k this forum has been disappointing me for a couple days, I don't find anywhere that I can post....okay maybe thas 'cause I don't really know a whole lot but SERIOUSLY what happened to inspiring thoughts? Funny stories? Intellectual discussions? Seems like more and more posts are negative...and poor Admin Jee keeps closing more threads than letting some remain open! sooo...okay what about kirtan darbars. When's the next kirtan darbar hmm...? Sahiba needs a kirtan darbar... I kno something's being organized "behind the scenes" but mmm, can I be the first one to know Juss post it here....I'll read it.... :lol: