Is It Ok Twist Gurbani Meanings To Fight Extermal Threats?

[HSD1]

I think we are looking at puratan rishis/munis/pir/pagamvar/prophets lives with goggles of Western Victorian standards. Which is bit unfair. If you have problem with Mohammad marriage with 9 year old girl. Then I am sure you would have problems with lives of our Guru's and their multiple wives/consort at very young age. Again i am not comparing Guru Maharaj ji avastha and Mohammad. I consider Guru Maharaj ji - aap narayan vahiguroo ji. However, sometimes lives of prophets/avtars have to be compared to give reality checks.

p.s- I think we are going off-topic now.

hmm, true. but what if others twist their own religous texts in order to portray themselves in a certain light? muslims often chop and change hadiths depending on their current beliefs of what mohammed would/wouldnt have done. hindus go on about how they predicted jesus/mohamed/guru nanak/men on the moon etc. its all one big egotistical battle, where everyone is trying to show their religion as the best/most modern/worth believing in. to achieve this they often take aim at our religion and try to put us down or twist our religion. was guru nanak a muslim/hindu/sufi? is sikhi a mish-mash of hinduism and islam (as christians say), a part of sufi islam (as some musis say) or the warrior arm of 'hindu' dharam (as the hindus say)? the answer is no. we know that, but they will repeat the questions and say the answer is yes, until enough people believe it. i already see major splits in the panth where people always jump to the defence of hindus or muslims or goreh, based on personal allegiance rather than seeing whats going on. i'm not saying we sikhs are the best or we should shut ourselves off from others, but we have to face the fact that most people have an agenda. sometimes it may benefit us, other times we could end up seeing our religion change beyond repair.

[Kaljug]

I think we are looking at puratan rishis/munis/pir/pagamvar/prophets lives with goggles of Western Victorian standards. Which is bit unfair. If you have problem with Mohammad marriage with 9 year old girl. Then I am sure you would have problems with lives of our Guru's and their multiple wives/consort at very young age. Again i am not comparing Guru Maharaj ji avastha and Mohammad. I consider Guru Maharaj ji - aap narayan vahiguroo ji. However, sometimes lives of prophets/avtars have to be compared to give reality checks.

p.s- I think we are going off-topic now.

Fateh!

The difference is that the Gurus got married to young girls at a young age themselves as it was customary for the parents to chose the bride for the groom, and they and never said that it was God law that that was to be the way for everyone for all time .. or else.

Also, Mohammed's marriage to Ayesha when she was 6 and his subsequent rape when she was 9 (he was 54 by the way), was not considered a cultural norm, neither was his marrying multiple wives and keeping captured prisoners as sex slaves, neither was raping the wives of the male prisoners of war in front of them (Mohammed ordered his followers to do this to the wives of the Bani Quraiyh tribe - they were so repulsed by the order that Mohammed had to tell them that they had divine permission to do so), neither was getting his brother-in-law to divorce his wife so that he (Mo) could marry her. That is why the Quran is filled with divine justifications for Mo's actions, and to save himself the judgement of future generations, he wrote in the Quran justification from Allah for his misdeeds and gave his followers blessing to do the same for all eternity (since Allah's laws apply forever not just in 7th century Arabia).

K.

[amardeep]

for god's sake, didnt you read his post at 09:37pm. waheguru can send thousands of messengers, but if they fall prey to the vices of humanity's bad tendencies, then how is that god's fault? what you are implying borders on blasphemy.

Is'nt God all-knowing? If he sends messenger to the world with the aim of guiding mankind, then surely this He has a wish and purpose do to so. If the one he sends then falls prey to his ego, it means that God failed in his purpose to guide mankind...This implies that God is weak and that he is'nt all-knowing as he would have known that Muhammad/krishna/vishnu etc would fall prey to their ego and they would therefore not be the right ones to send with this mission.

Do you see the problem with this interpretation of Dasam Granth ? If God sends messengers to mankind to guide them, It must mean that God has a wish to guide mankind. If the one's he send then fails, it indirectly means that God failed and this makes him a weak limited God..

Also, if you belive that it is possible for the messengers of God to fail and sucumb to ego, then what is your guarantee that the Guru's (who were also mandated by God) did'n fail also and sucumb to their ego ? You should seriosly reconsider your belief system and read Dasam Granth once again!!

Edited August 13, 2009 by amardeep

[amardeep]

If youre the manager director of a company and you hire a poor uneducated man to do your taxes, and he fails because he was not inteligent enough job, then iit is the failure of the manager director because he could'n foresee that an uneducated would'n be able to do this kind of job.

This is how it works. the business director gets the blame as he should'n have hired the man if he knew he would'n be able to do the job!!

[tonyhp32]

Two points here.

Neo,

Neo have indirectly insulted our Gurus by making the ridiculous comparison between their marriages at a young age and the paedophile 'marriage' between Mohammed and Aisha. Kalyug has already shown you where your comparison was nonsense.

Amardeep

Yours is a classic Muslim argument, since Mohammed predated Guru Nanak by only 900 years then Muslims when faced with the fact that modern humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years then why was it that God did not send his guidance before 610AD? They get around this because Mohammed claimed that there were 124,000 odd prophets before him and by taking over wholesale the Prophets of the Jews as well as Jesus.

Your argument about non-guidance from God makes sense in a semitic view of human life and salvation. As man only has one life then if Guru Nanak was the first to receive guidance then all the humans who live befored 1469 when without guidance. There are two ways to explain. One is that Gurbani states that people like Ganka, Ajaimal who predated the human Gurus etc did get mukti, so there were people around before Guru Nanak who through various means could gain mukti. The other way to explain this is that since we all got through reincarnation then the semitic argument holds no water as they need guidance in their belief of only one life but in Sikhi one can go through countless lives striving for mukti. Kalyug made a good point in that what kind of guidance would have been available and how would it have been received by humans living in a primative and violent culture? We all know that humans evolved through millions of years to become homo sapiens around 200,000 years ago. The question would arise that when exactly did humans become sophisticated enough to understand the higher truths such as the golden rule, a loving God, a just society based on what is right and not who has the might etc.

One point which arises here which is, could someone now or in the future be able to bring forth guidance? This can be answered by the fact that-;

1. The Gurus left us our final Guru, Guru Granth Sahib

2. Can someone bring forth a guidance and a moral ethical system greater than that contained in Gurbani? for someone to bring forth guidance then he/she would have to show how their spiritual message is greater than that of the Gurus. In regards to the 'guidance' claimed by Mohammed their is no comparision between the message that contains such injunctions as discriminate against non-Muslims, rape captured women and enslave or kill their menfolk and Gurbani!

Edited August 14, 2009 by tonyhp32

[tonyhp32]

Also, if you belive that it is possible for the messengers of God to fail and sucumb to ego, then what is your guarantee that the Guru's (who were also mandated by God) did'n fail also and sucumb to their ego ? You should seriosly reconsider your belief system and read Dasam Granth once again!!

Did the Gurus wage a war to enlarge their worldly wealth and territory? Did they take their pick of captured non-Sikh women? Did they keep a lion's share from the booty captured from caravans of non-Sikhs. They did attack caravans at all? Did they claim that Gurbani gave them greater rights and privilages than common Sikhs? Did they display any character flaws which could be put down to the their suffering from the effects of ego?

Read the Quran and the hadiths and you will realise that the person referred to by Muslims as the 'mercy to mankind' suffered from the effects of kaam, krodh, lobh, moh and ahankar more than possibly any other human in history.

[amardeep]

Your argument about non-guidance from God makes sense in a semitic view of human life and salvation. As man only has one life then if Guru Nanak was the first to receive guidance then all the humans who live befored 1469 when without guidance. There are two ways to explain. One is that Gurbani states that people like Ganka, Ajaimal who predated the human Gurus etc did get mukti, so there were people around before Guru Nanak who through various means could gain mukti.

No, this is actually a very logical way of looking at things. How did Ganka, Ajamal and others know HOW to get mukti? If there were'nt any guidance given did they just guess what to do and luckily they got it right? If the world is left for thousands of years without guidance it means that God left them in their own darkness to wander around and guess how to connect with the Creator above.

The other way to explain this is that since we all got through reincarnation then the semitic argument holds no water as they need guidance in their belief of only one life but in Sikhi one can go through countless lives striving for mukti. Kalyug made a good point in that what kind of guidance would have been available and how would it have been received by humans living in a primative and violent culture? We all know that humans evolved through millions of years to become homo sapiens around 200,000 years ago. The question would arise that when exactly did humans become sophisticated enough to understand the higher truths such as the golden rule, a loving God, a just society based on what is right and not who has the might etc.

Let us leave out the cave men for once and talk about the people who lived from 5000 Bc to 1469.. How did they recieve guidance from God?? The content of various religious and philosopichal scriptures from india, china and greece shows that people were intelligent and capable of thinking of Higher Truths. Were they just left to mere guesses for those thousands of years while God in the meantime kept failing in sending one "messenger" who could live up to the job and mandate he was given?

[amardeep]

Did the Gurus wage a war to enlarge their worldly wealth and territory? Did they take their pick of captured non-Sikh women? Did they keep a lion's share from the booty captured from caravans of non-Sikhs. They did attack caravans at all? Did they claim that Gurbani gave them greater rights and privilages than common Sikhs? Did they display any character flaws which could be put down to the their suffering from the effects of ego?

Read the Quran and the hadiths and you will realise that the person referred to by Muslims as the 'mercy to mankind' suffered from the effects of kaam, krodh, lobh, moh and ahankar more than possibly any other human in history.

Why are you comparing the Guru's to Muhammad? Krishna, Ram, Ramanand, Gorakh etc did'n do the above either. Their ways of "failing" were different from the above, so there are obviosly other ways of "failing" than to do what Muhammad did.

So i ask again:

If it is possible(and most likely as history shows according to you) for the messengers of God to fail in their mission, then how do you know for sure that the Guru's succeded in this mission?

[Matheen]

........ then how do you know for sure that the Guru's succeded in this mission?

Because Guru Sahib was sargun form of God rather than a messenger or devta. The rest is a matter of faith - in Dasam Granth Guru ji explains where the avatars went wrong (and will go wrong), and we can compare their lives to Guru Ji's.

It's all Waheguru's khel at the end of the day so we shouldn't disrespect any dharmic figure.

[tonyhp32]

Amardeep,

Why leave aside the 200,000 years of history of Homo Sapiens and claim that there should have been guidance between 5000 BC and 1469 AD. Taking the semitic argument then either the guidance should have been there at the very beginning or you have to accept that guidance could have come at any time between then and 1469AD. You can accept that God can wait out the million odd years that man was evolving and then wait another 195,000 years of the Homo Sapien period yet find it impossible that God could wait another 7,000 off years until 1469AD. You keep on regurgitating an Islamic argument and yet claim that it is logical, it might be logical when religions believe in only one existence but when existence can take 8.4 million lifeforms then a human lifetime is just the twinking of an eye in this equation.

[amardeep]

Your argument is invalid. You keep dodging the bullet. I am asking you and kalyug questions about your view on Sikhi and God's guidance and you keep talking about Islam. The way i see it, there has always been guidance for creation since the beginning of time, hence people such as Ganika and Ajmal were liberated.

now with this out of the way, please continue to answer my question

Edited August 14, 2009 by amardeep

[navjot2]

so the only way you have of appreciating your own dharam is be criticising other peoples dharam? dont you have any intrinsic understanding of it?

the point of any teacher is to lead you to God not to themselves. this is what i understood from Bachitar Natak.

God doesnt depend on Anything or Anyone.

[navjot2]

The question is why should Sikhs be the only religion that is not allowed by the numerically larger religions to have an identity of their own? Why should every other religion have laws protecting them and special privileges and Sikhi alone should be stuck with being a second class member of somebody else's cult?

Sikhs were created to be different - we are teesra panth - and anyone who says otherwise is trying to use Sikhs for their own nefarious purposes.

You know, I have a hard time understanding why Sikhs are are so weak in their faith that they would even deny themselves and their Sikh brothers with their own unique identity. You accuse your brothers of being insecure because they are not OK with Muslims wanting to co-opt Sikh and then gradually convert Sikhs to worship their Arab prophet or Hindus desperately trying to replace their failed Kshatriyas with Sikhs to fight their battles, but you take great pride in the fact that guru Tegh Bahadur Ji died so that Hindus could maintain their own unique identity.

Do you not get that, unless Sikhs first have their own political, religious and linguistic identity that we will always be spiritually and politically dominated by those who want to destroy Sikhi or use Sikhs for their own purposes?

K.

see what i mean about insecurity and fixation on how others see us? at least he is honest though.

so sikhs can only define ourselves in terms of what other people think of us? thats all there is to for you?

funny Jains, Buddhists dont have these problems or insecurities. and they're even smaller minority

who is saying sikhs arent entitled to seperate laws or identity etc? so long as they are natural and or/necessary and not manufactured out of pettiness/fear.

im not proud of Guru Tegh Bahadurs matrydom I'm humbled by it. trying to take credit for acts of Gurus and great Sikhs has made modern sikhs very ignorant/vain and self-conceited.

Edited August 14, 2009 by navjot2

[amardeep]

im not proud of Guru Tegh Bahadurs matrydom I'm humbled by it. trying to take credit for acts of Gurus and great Sikhs has made modern sikhs very ignorant/vain and self-conceited.

That was beautifully said singh ji

Edited August 14, 2009 by amardeep

[Kaljug]

so the only way you have of appreciating your own dharam is be criticising other peoples dharam? dont you have any intrinsic understanding of it?

the point of any teacher is to lead you to God not to themselves. this is what i understood from Bachitar Natak.

God doesnt depend on Anything or Anyone.

Congratulations for being consistent in your practice of entirely missing the point .

Here's something you may want to bear in mind the next time you are worshipping your stone idol:

ਕ੍ਰਿਸਨ ਔ ਬਿਸਨ ਜਪੇ ਤੁਹਿ ਕੋਟਿਕ ਰਾਮ ਰਹੀਮ ਭਲੀ ਬਿਧਿ ਧਿਆਯੋ ॥

Thou hast meditated on millions of Krishnas, Vishnus, Ramas and Rahims.

ਬ੍ਰਹਮ ਜਪਿਓ ਅਰੁ ਸੰਭੁ ਥਪਿਓ ਤਹਿ ਤੇ ਤੁਹਿ ਕੋ ਕਿਨਹੂੰ ਨ ਬਚਾਯੋ ॥

Thou hast recited the name of Brahma and established Shivalingam, even then none could save thee.

K.

[Kaljug]

Your argument is invalid. You keep dodging the bullet. I am asking you and kalyug questions about your view on Sikhi and God's guidance and you keep talking about Islam. The way i see it, there has always been guidance for creation since the beginning of time, hence people such as Ganika and Ajmal were liberated.

now with this out of the way, please continue to answer my question

Fateh!

And pray tell what was happening to our cromagnon ancestors? Who was their guide?

You received an answer thrice already, don't make me repeat myself because you lack the ability to read.

Now go read the questions I posed to you and answer them.

K.

[HSD1]

Is'nt God all-knowing? If he sends messenger to the world with the aim of guiding mankind, then surely this He has a wish and purpose do to so. If the one he sends then falls prey to his ego, it means that God failed in his purpose to guide mankind...This implies that God is weak and that he is'nt all-knowing as he would have known that Muhammad/krishna/vishnu etc would fall prey to their ego and they would therefore not be the right ones to send with this mission.

Do you see the problem with this interpretation of Dasam Granth ? If God sends messengers to mankind to guide them, It must mean that God has a wish to guide mankind. If the one's he send then fails, it indirectly means that God failed and this makes him a weak limited God..

Also, if you belive that it is possible for the messengers of God to fail and sucumb to ego, then what is your guarantee that the Guru's (who were also mandated by God) did'n fail also and sucumb to their ego ? You should seriosly reconsider your belief system and read Dasam Granth once again!!

how on earth does it imply that? waheguru cannot wrap us in cotton wool and micromanage every aspect of our existence. answer this first: what is the point of reincarnation if waheguru has a rigid plan for all of us? its up to mankind to sort ourselves out. if waheguru wanted to make us perfect, he would have. but he didnt in order to test us. and that includes the messengers. and how do i know that the guru's didnt succumb? well if your asking that, you are more retarded than i first thought.

If youre the manager director of a company and you hire a poor uneducated man to do your taxes, and he fails because he was not inteligent enough job, then iit is the failure of the manager director because he could'n foresee that an uneducated would'n be able to do this kind of job.

This is how it works. the business director gets the blame as he should'n have hired the man if he knew he would'n be able to do the job!!

wtf? are you comparing the power that created all life, every planet, every solar system and every galaxy in every universe with some capitalist inspired company?! if you were really a sikh, you would know that gurbani explicitly says those who try and use analogies or examples to portray waheguru's power will have horrible lifetimes. oh well, have a nice reincarnation amardeep lol. comparing a CEO to the power behind the universes? lol. i am pretty good at coming up with analogies, and yours was a complete stinker.

[HSD1]

Your argument is invalid. You keep dodging the bullet. I am asking you and kalyug questions about your view on Sikhi and God's guidance and you keep talking about Islam. The way i see it, there has always been guidance for creation since the beginning of time, hence people such as Ganika and Ajmal were liberated.

now with this out of the way, please continue to answer my question

so you're saying islam is out of date then? well put. sikhi is the best faith according to you then.

[Kaljug]

see what i mean about insecurity and fixation on how others see us? at least he is honest though.

so sikhs can only define ourselves in terms of what other people think of us? thats all there is to for you?

funny Jains, Buddhists dont have these problems or insecurities. and they're even smaller minority

who is saying sikhs arent entitled to seperate laws or identity etc? so long as they are natural and or/necessary and not manufactured out of pettiness/fear.

im not proud of Guru Tegh Bahadurs matrydom I'm humbled by it. trying to take credit for acts of Gurus and great Sikhs has made modern sikhs very ignorant/vain and self-conceited.

Navjot,

At first I thought you were just an idiot, but now I'm convinced.

Get this through your head: when someone says that he is a Sikh, it automatically implies that they are not something else - Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, whatever. Similarly, when I say I am a man it means that I am not-woman, not-hermaphrodite, not-pre-or-post-op-transexual. I'm English whic means I am not-American, not-Arab, not- well you get the picture. To say that being aware of this is a sign of insecurity is rank stupidity of the highest order.

If you tell a Buddhist he is a Jew, he will laugh in your face or just pat your own the head out of compassion for your idiocy. Tell a Muslim he is a jew, and he will probably shoot you in the face.

If you doubt the difference, please explain the rehatnamas which give Sikhs a unique identity.

Your last sentence is irrelevant and well ... dumb.

K.

Edited August 14, 2009 by Kaljug

[tonyhp32]

Its funny how some 'sikhs' will jump up and down for the rights of others to have their own religious identity and yet get their knickers in a twist when a Sikh defends the Khalsa identity. Same goes for the liberal left wing nut case Sikhs who will march for the freedom of terrorist Palestinians but froth at the mouth if a Sikh mentions Khalistan!

[laalsingh]

if waheguru wanted to make us perfect, he would have.

Isn't everything perfect?

[HSD1]

Isn't everything perfect?

yes, waheguru made us perfect in our own ways, its just we slip from the path that we should walk, and its up to us to find it again in order to maintain the perfection. some people dont realise this and blame waheguru for their own personal failings, which is the one of the greatest untruths anyone can dare to say.

[Mithar]

Its funny how some 'sikhs' will jump up and down for the rights of others to have their own religious identity and yet get their knickers in a twist when a Sikh defends the Khalsa identity. Same goes for the liberal left wing nut case Sikhs who will march for the freedom of terrorist Palestinians but froth at the mouth if a Sikh mentions Khalistan!

True. Such people are called self hating Sikhs. Jews also have plenty of self hating jews.

[drawrof]

Its funny how some 'sikhs' will jump up and down for the rights of others to have their own religious identity and yet get their knickers in a twist when a Sikh defends the Khalsa identity. Same goes for the liberal left wing nut case Sikhs who will march for the freedom of terrorist Palestinians but froth at the mouth if a Sikh mentions Khalistan!

Very true TonyHP!

[The Khalsa Fauj]

I see lots of confusion in this thread. There is no need to twist Gurbani. The only thing we need to do is properly understand Gurbani. Muslims call us a sect of Islam because we never understood Gurmat properly and never did parchar properly. Hindus call us Hindus because we never translated Gurbani properly and try to rely on mythological sakhis given in Hindu granths. This has stopped a lot now but in the past, katha vaachak would spend whole time telling wrong Sakhi from Hindu granths. Gurbani rejects karamkaandi sakhis and gives the truth.

We have failed to understand who Raam is, who Krishan is, who Damodar is, who Madsoodan is, etc. etc. However, there is improvement on the way. Those interested should try to buy and read this book.

This book gives us aarths of some shabads which have been highly mistranslated.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WIgVbYVhzQM/Snf4...book+design.jpg