Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You But What You Can Do For Your Country!

[kam1825]

"Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country"

This quote is one of the worlds most quoted sayings from the inauguration speech of John F Kennedy. It made me think the other day and i thought of it with a twist

"Ask not what Sikhi can do for you but you can do for Sikhi"

The raeson i thought of this was due to the words and teachings of Sant Waryam Singh Ji and his lifes dedication to preserve divans, audio, video and magazines. I have mentioned this on another thread but only one Gursikh seemed to have been affected by it.

This forum has i would easily say over 200 - 300 active users every week but the contribution to the panth is minimal. Other then coming onto the forum to do Nindya of others or anything they can not percieve to be true or understand. This is all we have become, a panth of bitter moanins talking about how our panth has become misguided and looted in the past. However I put it to you all, who is doing anything for the future generations in any manner????

We have a massive cross section on this site of people from Aus, Asia, North America and Europe (apologies if you are from elsewhere) but what do we see from each one of us to assist the individuals who want to learn about Sikhi or come into the faith?

The reason why both Islam and Hinduism are attracting so many westerners to approach their faith is due to the vast amount of work put in by people of thise faiths to make sure every possible element of their faith is available in both audio and visual means via the internet.

An example is this, I wanted to learn about some vedantic granths and found the following link

http://www.lazydesis.com/devotional-classical/

and from that link all i wanted was some katha on the Advaita Markaranda and got the following link which was impressive full of talks and audio on a variety of granths

http://www.lazydesis.com/devotional-classical/176414-swami-tejomayananda-talks.html

That was just one thread of thousands and thousands that i have come accross. It seems that everyone in the Sanatan and Muslim faith have been busy recording, posting books and uploading videos of every and any talk they can find. I thought well alot of people also become buddhists but i wonder if they do the same, again they have done ont he following site

http://www.buddhanet.net/

There are books, audio, videos available.

Why are Sikhs so far behind???

On none of these sites do you see the different upsampardas trying to ridicule each other or slander any prominant lecturers, saints so why do we waste our efforts on this and not try to preserve anything for the future.

I think it is important to acknowledge the efforts of the other faiths in order to kickstart our own attempts at saving something for the next generation

I would like to see at least 200 people on this forum assist weekly to expand the resources of our faith over the internet. If 200 people on this forum go to various Gurdwaras around the world at least once a week and on that occaision recorded the katha, keertan or dhadhi each week we would have over 200 - 400 hours of audio each week to share between us and that is if we only go once a week. If we were to go three times a week it is outstanding we could have between 600 - 1200 hours of multimedia!. Just think of how that would benefit other and yourself. With the introduction of Rapidshare, 4shared and filesonic sort of sites everyone can easily upload what they have recorded.

If people have not got digital recorders that should not be an impediment to this revolution. I used to take my old boom box of a cassette player from the house to the gurdwara, put it near the fron of the divan and hit record. Record everything to my tapes. i got a lead from the shops, plugged the tape player in at home and connected it to the mic in output on the computer, downloaded freecorder from the internet and recorded all the tapes to mp3s onto my desktop. it is as easy as that

Books can be converted to pdfs with a camera and some advice from Bhai Prabhjot Singh (PJS) or Mohokam Singh (MohokamSingh).

So what is the difficulty here? I guess it is how much effort you personally have to get out there and do something for somebody other then yourselves.

I hope this thread has hit a nerve and from now on we will see a major influx to sites and blogs over the net promoting, One agenda and that is Sikhi.

If you have any issues then please PM me but i hope you will take your time to share your thoughts on this thread.

If we work together we could offer so many sikh sources to the world that any type of ignorance will cease to exist.

[kam1825]

I guess i got the expected response anyone would assume from this community!!!

[MS1NGH]

vjkk vjkf!

I think that this is an excellent idea. Perhaps Sikhsangat.com could dedicate an area of its website for users to upload katha/audio? alternatively, if somebody could create a site for this purpose that would be great. Please could you advise on a good audio recording device I could purchase for this seva.

Vjkk Vjkf!

[S1ngh]

I completely agree with the post by kam veerji. I am feeling such way for the long time and somewhat i tried to work on my own to do something good but realized that its good only if work done by team of volunteers. We are left very much far behind if compared with other faiths. We do not take things seriously nor we have any team spirit at all. All those who got talent or are active have some sort of ideology "My way or highway" (which is still kinda better than doing nothing).

What i really think is that we really need a few selected individuals to start a project where it actually involves members of the forum to do something more effective practical and put all talents in use. We need to be more pro-active and stress more on building defense rather than just concentrating more on offense.

One example i can give is.. when 9/11 attack happened, we all scrambled and bumped into each other and puzzled on what to do and how to tell our neighbors and community about sikhs and turban etc.. We started printing calendars, leaflets, brochures and distributed it to ppl for few months and then everything stopped. I mean come'on there are more than 300 million americans and but by distributing few thousands is not finishing our goal. This shows how small our mind or goal is.

We should start something where proper training or information is given to those who wants to volunteer. I attended one political party training where they tell you how to approach others and convince them to vote to particular party. It was awesome 2-day training and hall was full.

[Akaal Purakh Di Fauj]

Wahegurujikakhalsawahegurujikifateh

The links you have provided Veer Kamalpreet Singh Ji just goes to show how far we lag behind! It's incredibly depressing.

May Guru Sahib wake us up.

Admin - Please can this thread be made into a sticky?

Wahegurujikakhalsawahegurujikifateh

[kam1825]

What i suggest is rather then putting all the audio onto a specific sight we should all set up 4shared or rapidshare or similar accounts each. The reason i suggest this is so that if there are any financial implications we do not lose everything. We recently saw the Gurmatchanan website go down and for that reason if we have seperate sites we do not risk all in one pot.

Lets all do what we can for the sake of the others. Those who cant be bothered accept it as your karma that do not allow you to assist in this cause.

[Kamaljit_Kaur]

Brilliant thread Veer Jee ... I have a good collection of Keerthan/Katha and Literature collected over the years that was meant to be put up online but somewhere along the way I just got busy so this really acts as a blessed reminder to kickstart the Seva again ... VaheGuru Kirpa Karan

[SSG]

WJKK WJKF...

Below is a recording from the latest programme at the Mata Sahib Kaur Sikh Academy...

Sorry if the video has any mistakes or if this reply has any mistakes...

WJKK WJKF

[kam1825]

Thanks you for the recording, is the video going to be made downloadable?

Look foreward to more parchar like this. :khalsa:

[SunSingh]

scribd was good, but requires jumping through a lot of hoops now...

you can put up files on more flexible sites like mediafire http://www.mediafire.com/?tcapf58x463h8