Sukhi

people tend to forget the universal message of love and tolerance and assume it to apply to those that are part of the group. we're humans. we're narrow-minded like that. forgive them for being who they are and move on. and apart from that, for some people religion is meaningless. it's what they can get out of it that matters (ie money, power, whatever else). doaba, let's discuss whatever can be discussed. i'm pretty sure that i dun have everything down pat anyways.

i see what you're saying. so then what's your solution to all of this? to simply stop discussing things cuz they oftentimes become heated discussions? are we supposed to stick to what we know and not care about possibly learning something from someone else? and exactly what are we supposed to do with people who clobber others for not agreeing with their beliefs? personally, i just let them have their own way if there's nothing to learn from them and move onto something else. or am i getting confused again as to what we're discussing? sexysingh, there's no need to feel inferior. the point is to ASPIRE to greatness. if you can do that, you're already greater than you think you are. just dun let it get to your head.

guvducky, if you act on your paedophilic intentions, you'll be causing harm to an UNCONSENTING child. when two homosexuals get together, they're consenting to it and they aren't causing harm to another (unless someone is raping someone else). so i think tha's the difference that lies between the two. sexysingh, i'm using the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/charter/). so if everyone has the right to equal benefit of the law without discrimination, why are homosexual people not being allowed to marry? in Ontario, i know for a fact that homosexual people are allowed to be married legally, but this isn't so in other places. i believe that the American government also has a similar bill/charter, and that they've got a similar section. NOW... what i've figured from reading your post are 2 things: 1. you think homosexual people are getting special rights that the rest of us arent. what are these rights you think they're getting? 2. you assume that people are gonna label you as an uncaring bastard because you don't care about what happens with homosexual people. first of all, i can't comment on #1, till you can tell me what sorta special treatment they're asking for. secondly, no one is telling you that you HAVE to care about what happens with the gay community. if you don't care, you don't care. simple as that. but i asked you if you had a reason for hating homosexual people. that wasn't a challenge on your "right" to not care.

okay... imma try this... socially speaking, people need groups. they need definitions of who is an outsider and who is known. it's a need for affiliation that leads us to create groups. and over time, these groups of people tend to find themselves in conflict over things. but the the thing to remember is that there are many types of groups and religious groups are just one type. there have been wars based on nationality, ethnicity among other things too. religion on its own is just ONE type of social group. when talking about whether religions cause war, i would have to think about it in the same context as these other groups. let's make an analogy to ethnicity, because god knows ethnicity has been a common factor in many wars. has ethnicity on its own been a cause for war? the answer is no. people's biased views of others' ethnicity has definitely generated hatred and animosity which has led to war. but ethnicity on its own, hasn't. i think the same thing applies to religion. religion on its own hasn't caused wars. and i don't think it can (i'll talk about this later). but people's interpretations and beliefs based on these interpretations CAN lead them to feel hatred and animosity towards what they BELIEVE other religious groups are preaching, which in turn leads to hostile actions. now spiritually speaking, i don't think religions were made specifically for the purpose of bringing people together. i think the point of religion is something that should be discussed in a separate topic or after your original query has been addressed. but in the end, from what i've seen, it isn't really RELIGION per se that has caused wars. it's been people's misunderstandings and hatred that has caused wars. things like religion, ethnicity etc are highly subjective and what is said should be taken in an appropriate context. it's when we misunderstand what is being said and alter our beliefs accordingly to accomodate that understanding that our perceptions change, and we allow hate to come into the picture. talk to any member of the taliban. they're belief is that the quran specifically wants their women to be oppressed and treated brutally. but from what i've heard from others, the quran hasn't said that it was right to treat women that way, and so people refer to the taliban as an extremist group. they have a different interpretation of the quran and islam than other people who practice it do. and their beliefs as such lead them to act differently than those who have different interpretations. okay, now i'm babbling. hopefully i made some sense through all of this.

nice question. i'll come back with answers later.

okay, the point of having a "perfect ideal" is to aspire to it. not kill yourself if you can't make it. if you're doing that, then you're engaged in an unhealthy internal dialogue. secondly, what's so bad about having debates about what "perfect" constitutes? if you don't discuss your own ideas with others regardless of what they're about, how do expect to get any change or betterment?

ah... makes sense. mercy buckets for clearing the confusion.

you know... that makes sense...

oookay... but tha's what i was talkin about. the fact that it might seem necessary for us to view the dead as being perfect in order to challenge ourselves to be more than what we are. hence, the inspiration bit. am i becoming confusing again?! :?

lol... Amrik, man... o p e n y o u r m i n d . . . l e t t h e c o n f u s i o n i n . . . j/k...

this is a really stupid question that popped into my head when i read everything that was written: if a brahmgyani is one with god, and still subject to hukam... does this mean that god himself is bound in part by his/her/it's own hukam?

dunno. never heard of it. mebbe the other canucks have.

hmmm... intermeresting... wanna expand on that?

i think you're forgetting about the roles that humility and modesty play in Sikhi. if you're truly humble and modest, then you see yourself as the lowest of the low. so of course, you could never live up to those ideals. secondly, those ideals aren't there to be paid some eternal "debt" to. we don't owe anything to anybody. but they're there to inspire us to be better than what we are. maybe i've got a different interpretation of gurbani and the gurus than you do, sexysingh. but i've always thought of the guru's as being individuals that one can relate to. i know some people want ever itty bitty little thing the gurus did to be highly metaphorical. and yeah, they might be right. but it's hard not to see the humour and humane sides of the gurus. for example. i once heard a sakhi of guru gobind singh ji when he was a kid. and i'm paraphrasing here, cuz i don't remember the sakhi perfectly. guru gobind singh ji used to wear two gold karey as a child, and he apparently didn't like it. so he threw one of his karey into a river. so his mum comes up to him and goes, where's your kara? and itty bitty guru gobind singh ji goes, which one? ggsj: you mean the one that looks like this? mum: yeah. ggsj: (takes off the other gold kara and throws it into the river too) over there. now... if you wanna see this as a metaphor, you'll see how guru gobind singh ji, even as a young child, recognized the unimportance of material wealth. but it's hard not to see the humour in it. can you imagine doing that in front of your mom and not gettin a couple of good shittars for it?! i just happen to think that the gurus knew how to get their message across, but they defo had fun doing it. i dun think they were trying to be superhuman and show us that we're nothing in comparison to them. but we see it like that cuz it might be something we need to see.

ah sexy, how i miss the days of our arguments in the cheating thread you made. methinks you has almost made my time here worthwhile. (shameless flattery, i assure you. ) thank you for admiring my open-mindedness. i hope i can expect you to be patient with me as i go through your post and pose questions from it. first of all, i've never felt forced to defend anyone who's different. but i do feel resistant to the idea that someone should be allowed to be discriminated against because of that difference. when i speak of equality in the context of this thread, i'm discussing the fact that homosexual people's basic human rights as defined by the respective charter of rights in their countries are being infringed upon. that's the equality i speak of. and if you ask me, this isn't a dishonest or false struggle. i have no issues with the fact that people have issues with homosexuality. but i don't think that having issues with homosexual people gives you the right to take away their basic rights and discriminate against them. and i say this not based on an external notion of correctness but from my own personal morality and rationality. it doesn't make sense to me to say that because someone likes something different from me, that they shouldn't be allowed to have it or have equal rights as i do. i agree with you that socially responsible acts involve a sense of genuine concern. and i really am genuinely concerned with the fact that if we don't make an attempt to ensure that people have the RIGHT TO BE DIFFERENT from us and live a life of freedom regardless of that difference, that we could have other discriminatory and prejudices accepted as proper. i've never implied that we need to embrace this difference and hold hands and be happy. not everyone is going to be happy with homosexuals. but that doesn't mean that homosexual people don't have the right to be different. heck, not everyone in the world is happy with coloured people. but these individuals are allowed to have their difference of opinion and get to take advantage of all their rights. i disagree with your definition of equality as being characterized by uniformity and homogeneity. for me equality is recognizing the differences that exist between people while maintaining that they have a right to be different. equality isn't about us all being the same, but rather us all treating each other the same: as human beings, with intellectual, emotional and spiritual faculties. in your example of sexy, i'd like you to consider something: nobody sees sexy as a threat. nobody has threatened to take away his right to be a monosexual. but if someone had done that, would sexy have sat by idly and allowed it to happen or would he have raised a voice in order to defend himself and fight for his right to be a monosexual?

so i guess my new question is whether there are any universal virtuous or sinful deeds. but it would help more if SOMEONE could shed some hair on the notion of sin.

ditto!

genuine chance?

doaba, there's a whole bunch of threads in which heaven/hell/other realms have been discussed. but in short, i think yeah we do. Mehtaab, Iron, can you expand on your thoughts please?

hmmm... i see where you're coming from. but if you're right, then we should just sit back and let people discriminate against homosexuals however they want. and expanding on your way of thinking, i don't think we should bother with tackling racism or gender equality either. you know what, i think we should simply forget about human rights period. let everyone live for themselves. (if you didn't get it, this is me being sarcastic.)

is it possible that we gained the ability to "grow" because we somehow became aware of "self"?

i think we're starting to talk about morality here. are there any universal moral values that can guide us to what is considered a good deed or a bad deed? what is paap and what is sin? how are morality, sin, and karma related if they are at all?

wow "khalsa fauj". i definitely dunno why i could ever think that you have no sharam whatsoever. and i can see how much your posts are overflowing with love for others. vah jee vah. this is what you call a "gurmukh". quick question fer ya: are you the exact same as Bhai Taru Singh? are you the exact same as CE? is anyone the exact same as anyone else? no? then why do you assume that everyone's path must be the EXACT same as everyone else's?

dudette, it's like this: i'm a nutcase. but you're a bigger nutcase. besides, his suggestion was fun-ny! *hugs G* dun worry though, we'll find you a good name that you can discard after about 2 seconds.

ouuu... guvducky... you've been askin real good questions all along... how do you do it?! lol... j/k... drummer boy, i think what you're gettin at is the fact that other animals wouldn't accept the human child as one of their own and wouldn't mate with him/her. this may be possible. but if the human child has been raised by those animals and is now part of the animal community, he/she probably has his/her own role in it and would probably find a mate according to that. guvducky, self-consciousness or awareness isn't unique to human beings. research on other primates (particulary chimpanzees) has shown that they are self-aware and can recognize themselves in a mirror. the difference may be that they aren't AS self-aware as we are. but they ARE self-conscious/aware. as for higher level thoughts... it seems that our massive forebrain has been attributed with giving us the capacity for "higher" thoughts. most animals have forebrains, but none seems to have one as advanced as ours. and it just so happens that language skills are associated with the forebrain. so i'm guessing that our higher, complex thoughts, linguistic abilities and forebrain are all related to your query of why we humans have been able to rise above the level of animals. what's interesting though, is that it took us a couple million years to figure out how to use the goddamn brain for ourselves. i'm not sure how accurate i am when i say this, but i think that we require the guidance of a guru to "achieve realisation". think about it along the same lines of the feral child. let's suppose that we're all itty bitty babies, new to the world. without proper guidance, we'll become like those feral children spiritually. without guidance, we won't know how to speak or behave like "civlized" people and will become more animal-like in our behaviour and thoughts. but if we have someone who'll teach us "the alphabet" and our "numbers" among other things, we'll grow to be wise. does that make sense somewhat?