Year of Faith

Burn worldly attachment, into ink powder it; make your chaste intelligence the paper.  With the pen of devotion, with the mind to scribe, record what the Preceptor has taught.  Write down thou praise of the Name, that is endless and limitless.

Last month I can safely say was a bit of a failure, and this month isn’t shaping up to be much better.  Let’s look at exactly what I managed not to do:

• Didn’t even try to initiate contact with relatives and family throughout the month.
• Barely read the Guru Granth Sahib.
• Did not attend a single service, religious function, or information session.
• Did not manage to converse with the religion’s adherents.
• Did not acquire most of the five symbols of a Sikh.

However, all is not lost, as I did manage to:

• Grow a beard and abstained from cutting my hair.
• Read a bit of the Guru Granth Sahib and secondary texts.

I think I’m beyond making excuses for myself at this point.  Right now all that I am following of Judaism is the easiest of the dietary prohibitions- not eating pork.

Tomorrow is the Sabbath.  I don’t know whether the prohibition against work covers school work as well.  Even if it did, since I’ve managed not to get anything done today, I don’t think I can afford not to work tomorrow.

Until the first post about Judaism goes up by our lovely resident photographer Andrew, I’ll be putting up leftover thoughts about Sikhism. University has begun again and so I am busier than usual, but maybe I’ll keep my act together long enough to post…oh…every week or so at this rate.

Doing my best to adhere to the dietary restrictions, though I had some sausages today without even realizing what I was doing. It’s easy to forget these things when your mind is more on philosophy rather than religion. Though it’s kind of a fine line…
Ah well, enough about that. Let’s talk about beards.

This whole thing about not cutting your hair raises a lot of interesting questions about devotion and God’s will.

When one cuts their hair, they are in essence saying that God’s plan wasn’t quite right. This is absurd as the traditional Sikh would reason- God is totally and unbelievably perfect and this shows through in It’s creations. By cutting our hair, we are in some ways choosing not to see ourselves as God fashioned us, but by how we decide to see ourselves. It seems, in the Sikh sense, that choosing to cut one’s hair is the same as choosing not to devote themselves to God.

However, there are some obvious practical concerns as well. I mean, unshorn hair is a rather obvious sign of ones place in a religion. As I remarked in the introduction, it makes it hard to hide where your convictions lay. It isn’t necessarily just a sign of devotion, though it is still a sign of commitment.

Yet I’m curious. How do Sikhs feel about those who shave, cut, and even dye their hair? Are they mistaken? Uninformed? Or is it perfectly acceptable? The Sikh religion seems to entail that any path to God is valid, so long as it is done genuinely, so really, there should be no problem.

However, it is not a question of religion or faith when we cut our hair, or shave off that itchy stubble on our face or on our legs. It is a question of vanity, and of convenience and practicality. When I get up in the morning, I did not approach my morning routine with the reverence and mindset of my daily prayers. I picked up the razor simply because I thought I looked better, and felt cooler, with less hair.

It does not seem that Sikhism is alright with this. Things done for the flesh are clearly not done for God, but for the self, for the body. The end is not faith, it is not commitment to your duties as a Sikh.

It seems to me that whether or not semone grows their hair out defines where they lay in Sikh eyes. it determines whether or not you live in devotion to God.

And what does that say about those of us, a great majority of the world, who don’t just let it all hang out?

It seems like in some other circumstances this would be more of a confession. Perhaps if I were more devout in my monthly beliefs, if I took each to be exclusive in its control of my thoughts and feelings, then this may feel a bit more like coming out. But such is not the case, so I don’t feel that bad.

You see, I haven’t been sticking to my readings for the last few months. Instead I have been quickly (quick for me, anyway, which ain’t that quick) working my way through the latest and most popular atheist authors in addition to my religious readings. I’ve finished Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and now I’m reading Dan Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

It seems kind of strange that I would be trying to maintain positions that seem both for and against religion. Luckily this is not the case. As I study these religions, month by month, my interest in my own personal beliefs has escalated. I’ve never been really against religion per se, but these books are a good way of getting a look at religion from the outside, which oddly enough is something I think I’ve been missing. I’ve spent so much time trying to wrap my head around new ideas that I’ve forgotten where I’m coming from, so it’s good to get back to my roots.

When (perhaps I should rather say ‘if’, this place is looking pretty bare these days) I’m finally at the end of this year, looking back on the twelve months and the twelve faiths that I tried to practice and study, I doubt I will find myself wholly converted to one of these ideas. In fact, I kind of hope I don’t. I’ve never been satisfied with one school of thought or another.

So anyway, don’t get me wrong. I am genuinely trying to experience each of these religions, but my personal beliefs have not changed. In fact, they’re growing by leaps and bounds.