d33p

Having said that, how would a typical sikh community respond to someone within the community who chooses to remain celibate? I am not sure, but i think if the person does more than their fair share of work and participates within the sangat then it should be ok. or would anyone here be opposed to such a person being a part of the sangat? I think i dont have teh time to be married, i have so much left to learn and experience, i just dont think i have the time. But there are other issues that i havent really explored yet. Mostly of a family nature and parental expectations. I also dont see me being comfortable with anyone enough as required by marriage. Am i alone? Dont any other singhs out there have romantic notions of shaheedi on their minds. How do you reconcile that with leaving a family behind. I feel i have enough friends and family around me to not ever feel like i miss something. I have enough love from ppl around me. Its not that i hate women or anything like that. Some of my best mates are girls. I just dont want to get married. I dont know if any other singhs have experienced this, but its depressing when you find the perfect kaur who makes you a better singh and has a lot of knowledge and love for sikhi and then later on you find out that she prefers a monah suiter. The kind of accompanying reflection is painful at best and sometimes you come out of it with a changed perspective. My post might be offtopic, but i personally feel that i will be better off NOT LOOKING and concentrating on my sikhi and wider education. Plus sometimes, its good to feel that you are strong enough to resist the natural impulses one is born with. I feel as though i can have that best with my choice. Its a simplying world view. You basically force yourself to see all women in the same light. And after that, it becomes easier to deal with the human responses that arise. I've read on this site people saying sex should only be for procreating, blah blah. I find this to be more stifling a choice than anything else. Why would you marry someone, and then stave off from any affection to your partner. That to me is fundamentally unworkable and untenable within the scope of marital union. Do i get married because well, everyone else does it and i'll get my roti made and some kids out of it. Thats not satisfactory for me. Iam probably not alone in perceiving the need of someone who always available and willing to take on the questions and offer advice to teh youth. I think i might be able to do that, maybe. I still have a long way to go in acquiring sufficient knowledge to play that sort of role. Its not like iam advocating shutting myself out from society. To the contrary i believe this will allow me to participate more often and more passionately in my sangat. ... any responses welcome and appreciated .. :?:

thanks neo ... that put things in perspective. Cheers bruv :wink: On another note, i've found myself disillusioned with women. they confuse me by the things they say and do. They cant even play sport properly. Sometimes they laugh and point. Other times they talk about silly things like feelings and clothes. Most of them dont even use linux. Some of them dont even care about animals. Most of them hate cats. Even my own sister fights with me. They make guys do stupid stuff like falling in love. Is it really necessary to get married? Cant you live single and be a good sikh. Its something i've been considering lately. d33p the single singh :?:

Hmm, who else is gonna marry my hairy ass? Gotta be a sikh kurri

you might also try finding an atheist and ask them that question. you'll probably be suprised by their answer. I remember reading feynmans thoughts on God and I dont really think he thought God existed. But he was fully into nature is beautiful and amazing and i learned a lot from him. Anyway i ask the same questions as you and i like wondering why. I foudn i could assume a creator so powerful and elegant created this universe of ours and feel satisified.

i think one is a saint and the other, just a peer. In sikhi we are taught to seek out the company of the holy, and i am assuming that would include both of these. It gets a bit silly when ppl are given labels though, like ppl who do kirtan are called Bhai so and so. When the usage of the word doesnt normally extend to other members of the community. I probably wouldnt use either label on anyone or myself. Interesting question though ..

babbarsher not everyone believes that there is a God. I think the sikh world view accomodates for them, as well as other kinds of faiths. I mean we can all learn from sikhi. Discipline, fidelity, Social Justice, Appreciation of the universe and its beauty. etc. Or even if you just want to go about your life by contemplating God all the time. I am unsure if we actually have a choice in the matter or if we are destined to do so. If it is a matter of destiny, then who are we to question his Will. If people are destined to live not believing there is a God. Then thats his business, isnt it? I dont know if accept this view so much, but if its the sikh view, i guess i should understand it at least, even if i dont agree with it. I like to think humans are capable of deciding how they wish they to lead their lives, including the choice of whether or not there is a creator. And if you decide either way, then its your personal choice and so on. But then i also think if say i believe God exists, then i can believe so many other things. Like God has the ability to change my fate, and change basically anything in the system. Where the system here is our universe. Just because hes capable doesnt mean he does. And i wish to stress that my usage of hte pronoun He here does not arise from a anthropomorphic idea of God. I just think fair enough, I believe in Truth, and thats my choice. And then Truth comes to me in various ways. Mainly through intuition, but mostly when iam thinking. SO thats my choice there, to think. and understand. Iam probably just as confused as Khalistani Soldier (Big u bro) but i got ticked off at the authorative and clearly nonsense post of pheena.

To ask whether God exists is absurdity in itself. For those who know, God is the existence, or existence is the God... only things exist, not God. An object exists because a object can go into non-existence... To say that an object exists is meaningful because its non-existence is possible.. This is stupid. Its a tautological argument that hinges on the existence of God not being subject to logic. But this argument is done using logic. You either assume God exists, could exist, or does not exist. I didnt bother reading the rest of the post because it seems bullshit. Regards, d33p. undefined

and if you really feel that "the former to be a disguise for attachment" then what are you doing on a bloody internet forum talking to people like me. I reckon you should pack your bags and head for the mountains where you can live the rest of you life in solace and free of attachment.. I also find it funny that you guys say stuff like "an amritdhari person cannot fall in love". Why? Because they are succumbing to lust. OK. So if you cant expect khalsa to resist lust then who can you? Can someone tell me. IF you dont trust khalsa to avoid sinking into lust then whats the bloody point. And now a disclaimer. Iam no scholar but i do test things against things i know to be true. Saying so-and-so cant do this seems wrong to me. But you know what, if anyone wants to move to the mountains and become a monk you are welcome to join me, because iam confused (Guys only cause girls cause lust)

Mate, you love the souls of those ppl not their physical bodies. And i am told souls are around for an eternity so who am i to disagree.

stupid article .. there is no proof this has anything to do with the linux community and any such claims are based on lies and poor journalism.. bah. what i'd give for a world with fairer news reporting.

NEO, You say "there is such thing as true love towards opposite sex ..rarely you will find couples like bhagat kabir and mata laoi rest these days". But this cant be right. Are you saying all those gursikh kaurs who served gursikh men and the gursikh men who served gursikh kaurs didnt experience true love? You then go onto give an example of the said true love. Doesnt this counter your own statement? Furthermore, i've read people on this site saying there are few true sikhs these days, does that mean there cant be a true sikh? That doesnt stop us from trying, does it? I thought about your friends girlfriend leaving him. And i think all this proves is that your friends girlfriend didnt truly love your friend. Nothing more. Are you really saying that because you havent seen or experienced true love in opposite sex relationships, that this means they cannot or do not exist? I dont know, but iam not fully convinced. I saw a list of hukams on this site and one of them said you should serve a sikh. Are you saying you shouldnt serve a sikh of the opposite gender, because this cant work. Isnt this just a little bit silly. You say what is true love to you. Thats something more interesting to me since it says we have different ideas on what exactly this thing is. If you asked me what sikhi is, i'd tell you that it is pure love. And thats what it means to me. Its more than just a few words, its something i feel and believe. I'd not make distictions based on gender myself on the veracity of this love. The previous poster makes the point that there is a difference between emotional attachment and love. Maybe there is in your mind. But i dont think so. I read some gurbani where the narrator was going at length to describe his emotional state at the time and it was very emotional. That to me is true love. Feel free to disagree. But whats the point of forcing your view on others?

I read through parts of the thread and i noticed some people making their own rules about how a sikh should be or not. To these, i'd like to ask this simple question. What makes you so certain that you have got it right in terms of knowledge and intution to condense Guruji into a sentence or two. "A sikh cant do this" "A sikh should do this". What makes you so sure that you can do a better job that Guruji in setting out what a sikh should be, that you so authoratively and succinctly replace Gurbani with your work. I've always felt that sikhi isnt a religion of rules and regulations. If it were, then we'd have a book of rules. or something like that. Instead we have a Guru. Why you'd want to replace a Guru with a bunch of rules, i dont know. Personally i prefer to have a Guru. You know the feeling you get when you are listening to a dope Shabad and you are feeling the Gurbani. Even though you might not be a scholar of Indic and Arabic languages you might still get that heavy powerful intuitive understanding of the Bani. I love that about sikhi. I like how everything flows logically from first principles. I love how I can turn to my Guru if things are unclear and i need direction. Please dont lessen my sikhi by turning it into something its not. Something boring and trivialising like "rule #3 you may not fall in love, rule #5 you must wear a round pugh, ..." . About the topic. Love. I think its perfectly fine to love someone. There are people i love. Family ofcourse. Then friends, both male and female. Would i do anything for them? Hard to know for sure. But i'll say now that i would, at least in principle. As long as it doesnt involve breaching my own principles. Note principles are not in general rules. Principles are truths given by the Guru. They are much more wider in scope than simple rules. For example, the principle that there is only one creator, sustainer and destroyed. One God. That is far reaching and more profound than a rule that says for example, "you must only obey the god called Harri". Principles are more suited for application in life. Life isnt about certain fixed circumstances which then involve corresponding rules about what should and should not be done. Instead life is about continuously changing situations, decision which arent always clearcut, uncertainty is real and ever present, its complex. What this means is that if you have a rigid set of rules for a limited number of situations then you are in a position of constantly trying to beat the current situtation into one resembling the rule and then like a programmed machine, implementing the rule without thought. This is not how sikhi is. Sikhi is about intuitive awareness. Its about being aware of the present of Waheguru at all times. And then to use Gurbani to help us make the right decisions and realise the truths that a thinking person does. The relationship between a Sikh and his Guru is a personal one. What place then for rigid rules, one after another, after another, instead of the learning dynamic created by a guru-disciple relationship. I've fallen in love before. I wouldnt go out of my way and say its wrong for anyone to fall in love and that a true sikh wouldnt. Because, that wouldnt be right for me to claim to say something like that. I learned a lot, about myself from the experience. I learned about people and relationships and expectations. I learned to love. Not just the person, but everyone. It took something like that for me to realise what it means to care for someone else. I started playing with kids and writing poetry. I would read writings and think about what was being said. All in all, it put me in a better position to learn from SGGS. So when you make up that rule "Bhangra is wrong, no sikh should listen to it". Well good on you for taking the time for telling me what to do, but buddy how do you think i learned the little bit of punjabi/hindi/urdu that i know? Thats right. That evil bhangra music. So after my whole experience, i dont really believe in falling in love anymore. Thats ok. I'am allowed to change my mind through experience. But i learned so much from it, and i think it was something i needed to go through. I know whats important now, and its something i look back with no regrets. And in the midst of all this, i was close to my Guru. I think at least. So please, lets put an end to this "sikhs shouldnt do X" where X is something that isnt necessarily always net negative.

now ofcourse its fine to talk about how an ideal sikh would face a situation and i suspect that wouldnt be very insightful (at least to me). But for the rest of us .. its not really practical, IMHO

why do you people talk about the idealised sikh and then at the same time bring up problems faced by sikhs who arent ideal? Then the argument is used to reach a conclusion that doesnt any longer apply to the non ideal person. it seems to me those problems are not problems at all for the ideal sikh since they are easily surmountable by definition. for example to the ideal sikh pragmatism is for the weak and the game of love is worth playing to the end. etc. so cant we approach the problems common sikhs face without resorting to these strawman tactics? Just rational responses that dont work under the premise that sikhs are all elite and spiritually accomplished. thanks. not targeting anyone specifically in this thread .. just wondering since i myself have been guilty of this.

hah good stuff nadz yeah, its easy to jump the gun .. good lesson to be learned if you realise it. At least i hope that i did