Can Deaf Ppl attain spirituality

[tableji]

suniai andhhae paavehi raahu ||

Listening-even the blind find the Path.

So wot if you are deaf??

[Hari]

Those who are spiritually blind my dear, not those who's eyes don't work.

[tableji]

ok then, so wot if ur spiritually deaf??

[Pheena]

this is from Jap JI sahib no? The Art of Listening can give you liberation.

He who has heard truth in the guru's words has known fragrance in sitting quietly next to him. He finds that the happening flows towards him through such a person, and begins to penetrate him. Knowledge is contagious; bliss is contagious. If your doors are open bliss enters into you like a breath of wind from a person who has attained it. While you stand to gain he loses nothing since it increases and expands to the extent that it is shared. If you are silent a space is created within you. Remember, existence prefers a vacuum. No sooner do you become empty than existence fills your vacuum. As the river water rushes in to fill your empty jug, create a vacuum and air will rush in to fill it.

Prepare to be empty and you will be filled, but as long as you are filled with yourself you will remain empty. Empty yourself and you will be filled with supreme energy. As you depart from one corner God will enter from the other.

Nanak says, Even those who lead sinful lives, whose lips have never spoken a good word, whose tongue has always uttered abuse, whose heads are filled with curses, if even these listen but once, they are filled with glory. An infinitesimal glimpse of shravana can make you fresh, can bathe your entire being.

Nanak does not tell evildoers to stop sinning. He just tells them to listen and the isms will fall away. He doesn't tell them to improve first and only then can they listen, because that would be impossible and then there would be no hope for people to listen.

Nanak says: Listen and forget about sin, forget about evil. And no sooner do you hear than a new sutra, a new path, begins to unfold in your life. A new spark will kindle a fire that will burn away your sins; your past turns into ashes as soon as you become silent.

What is sin? What have you been doing in the past? You have identified totally with your thoughts, constantly turning them into actions, and this is sin. Stand away from your thoughts; actions will crumble, the doer will be lost, and all connection with the past will snap. Then you realize that the past was no more than a dream.

Through infinite lives everything you have done is because of the illusion of doing; the day that illusion is broken, all actions come to an end.

People will be unable to understand Nanak if they hold the common belief that each sin has to be wiped out by an equal virtue. For people of calculating minds this seems but fair -- that for each sin you must atone with a corresponding virtue. But if this were so you would never be liberated; for infinite lives you have sinned and where is the guarantee that in the course of your equalization you will not sin further? Then this chain is impossible to break and liberation is impossible.

Your sins spread over infinite lives. If God is a shopkeeper or a magistrate who insists on the cleansing of each sin, when will it ever end? And even assuming that all present deeds are virtuous, it will still take infinite time to make up for the past. And how can you be sure you will perform only good deeds? Wise men follow a different method of calculation altogether, because they say that the question is not of sin but of the basis of sin, its very roots.

Say you have watered a tree for fifty years. Do you think you will have to starve its roots of water for another fifty years before it dies? The tree no longer depends on you for water; it draws its supplies directly from the soil. Cut off its roots and the tree will die today, but you can tear off the leaves one by one and the tree will not die even in fifty years; no sooner do you break one leaf than two new ones are born.

No, by cutting leaves and branches you are merely pruning the tree. In the same way you cannot nullify sin by virtue. Eradicate one sin and four new others spring up. Catch hold of the roots. Actions are the leaves, and the sense of doing is the root. Remove doing and the tree will dry up at once. All flow came from: I am doing. The art of eradicating doing is witnessing, and to witness means shravana.

Nanak sings of such unique and wonderful glory! He says, Be silent and listen. In moments of such listening you are no longer the doer. Listening is a passive state since you have nothing to do in order to listen; it is not an action.

Now this is interesting. In order to see, one has to open one's eyes; whereas the ears are already open. You have nothing to do in order to hear. Therefore, there can be some sense of doing in seeing, but hearing does not involve doing at all! Someone speaks. You listen, sitting empty, motionless, passive; you are in non-action. Therefore that glory is not attained even by seeing which is attained by listening; hence the stress on shravana.

Mahavira speaks of samyak shravana, right listening, which Buddha also emphasizes. To Nanak it is a wonderful glory to hear. There is no doer there. No one is present at the moment of listening. If you are silent, who is there within? There is a solitude in moments of listening in which a voice resounds and passes away.

There is no one within. If a thought comes, you come along with it; when thoughts are not, you are not. Since ego is the name given to a collection of thoughts, shravana also means the ego-less state.

[Dalvir]

Good answer Pheena and Hari.