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Class # 3 was held on Sunday Feb 20th, 2011.

Though we only briefly talked about this in class, i still feel like the central theme for the class was “I AM BEAUTIFUL”.

The class began with everyone receiving a copy of the image below. So before you begin reading the blog, please stare at the image below for a bit.

The class took 5 minutes to themselves to write anything they could think of when they saw this image. Where was this from? Who was in the picture? Where was this picture taken? What is going on in the picture? etc. etc.

This image has recently been circulating the internet amongst some other pictures, and is a photograph of a group of Egyptian Christians forming a human shield to protect the Egyptian Muslims, who have stopped protesting for their daily namaaz (prayer). My good friend and mentor Rubinpaul Singh first mentioned this image to me over the phone earlier in the week and the first thing that popped into my mind before he even said anything was Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji.

For those not familiar with Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, this class was definitely ideal for you. We did a good amount of history on who was Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, what sort of a political climate did he see in his lifetime, who was in his family, who were his teachers, and eventually we lead it all up to Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji’s martydom. To look up more information on him, just simply enter “Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji” in google and should find a good amount of links with helpful information

Whats important to be mentioned here is that the common misconception is that Guru Tegh Bahadur laid down his life for a specific faith or religion i.e. the Kashmiri Pandits. But what I personally believe is that, he laid down his life for the freedom of religion. Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji’s views were nowhere close to being in line with the views of the Hindus, but he still stood alongside them in Solidarity and ensured their security.

We spoke about what happened after Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji’s shaheedi and how it inspired Guru Gobind Singh Ji to create the identity of the Khalsa. This further lead the class into a simple question that often boggles all our curious minds, Why Do I keep my hair?

I don’t believe there should be a standard answer to that question, but we can all have some common reasons why. One of the more common and vague answers I hear is “it’s a part of my religion”. Which doesn’t really say much, so I gave the class my top 4 reasons why.

# 4 – Commitment – anybody and everybody is able to make a safe assumption that when you keep your hair, that you have made some sort of a commitment to something. The general public has no idea what the committment is to, but at this point they know that you are the type of person that has some sort of principles and ideals and you commit to them.

# 3 – Role Models – Think Pop Culture (or as i like to call it “poop culture”). When your favorite basketball player, nfl player, or justin beiber dresses a certain way or behaves a certain way or follows a certain code of conduct, you tend to do the same. Think about why we wear nfl jerseys when we go to football games. Because in that moment, we WANT to be a Redskin or cowboy or giant or whathaveyou. Similarly, I’m a huge fan of my Gurus, my shaheeds, my generals, my bhagats, my kings and queens. And so when I read about how they lead their lives, I WANT to do the same things they did.

# 2 – I AM BEAUTIFUL. Simply put by Guru Ji as “meray raam rai, jyon raakhay, tyon raheeyay.” The way that you have created me, the way that you have presented me to the world, is the way I wish to remain. The class agreed that God is perfect, hence his creations are perfect. Which means that we have no reason to alter ourselves as we are perfect in the eyes of God.

# 1 – I signed up for this. In class, we spoke about Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s reaction when he heard that no other Sikh from the crowd of many stood up against the call of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji’s executioner when he asked if there was any other Sikhs that was brave enough to stand up against the rule of Aurangzeb. Guru Gobind Singh Ji vowed to create such a people, such a breed of humans, such an elite class of saint soldiers, that even if they wanted to hide the fact that they were Sikhs, they wouldn’t be able to. “savaa laakh say ayk ladaun, taa-en gobind singh naam kahaaun”.

I keep my hair because I signed up for this.

Obviously a lot more goes down in Trailer # 9 on Sundays from 11am-12pm, but you gotta be there to experience it.

**Homework for the week is to come up with your OWN Top 5 Reasons for why you keep your hair. Come up with these answers for yourselves and not for me. Find out why you fell in love with this concept and what keeps you madly in love with it.

Fateh!