TheBattleDrums.com

Disclaimer: Long blog ahead.

I want you to use your imagination and paint a picture of what I’m about to describe to you……

Imagine a Sikh…….. In fact, imagine a perfect… Sikh. A Sikh that wakes up at the early hours of dawn, does ishnaan and sits down to do paath. A Sikh that constantly remembers Waheguru. A Sikh that is filled with humility, sincerity, humbleness and service. Imagine if you will, a Sikh with such a character and personality that anybody that comes in contact with this Sikh realizes that this person is different from the rest of us. Imagine a Sikh that stands for justice and fights against oppression and tyranny. Picture if you will, the perfect Sikh. Now quietly open your eyes….

That’s how we started the class on Sunday… The class was then asked to quietly jot down everything they saw. And once they were done, we put these responses up on the board. To their own surprise (and now hopefully yours), when asked what was the most common theme on the board, someone yelled out “a man!”

99% of my class, when described the image of a Sikh, saw some sort of male personality. Whether it was a Guru, a shaheed, a relative or themselves. ONE brave girl timidly said “Mai Bhago”. ONE girl. Prabhleen Kaur (Aneja) probably deserves to be this week’s Champion Child since I didn’t declare a champion child in class this week. GUDRJOAB!

This was a perfect lead into a discussion about the psyche of people. We often subconsciously behave in ways that if spoken about we would probably disagree with. For example, subconsciously almost all of us are racist, but if someone asked us if we were racists, we would probably be offended.

The girls in this past Sunday’s class were extremely intrigued and came to the realization that several things in our traditions, practices and communities were gender biased and over time as a people we had subconsciously made them the norm. Even to the point where the girls didn’t think to question it or even to think twice about it anymore.

The girls vocalized their thoughts on how it’s at least a 1000 times harder to grow up as a Sikh girl than it is to grow up as a Sikh boy. And I couldn’t agree more… the lack of support systems for our growing women, the absence of any sort of encouragement and the seldom discouragement completely destroy the concept that growing up as a Sikh boy is tough. (sorry fellas)

We spoke about what our Gurus had done to abolish many of these gender biases by giving examples of Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s bodyguard Mai Bhago and Mata Sahib Kaur who revolutionized the Amrit Sanchar process (from charan pahul to khanday dee pahul). Another mentionable here is the fact that Guru Sahib diminished all gender biases by referring to all human beings as the soul brides of Waheguru.

We concluded the class with more questions: How come we’ve never been to a dastar bandhi ceremony for a Sikh girl? How come a female Parshaad sevadaar is a rare sight? How come we rarely ever see a female doing Chaur Sahib at the Gurudwara? Who does a girl go to when she has questions about her hair?  Where does a girl go when she starts to second-guess her faith? These were all questions the boys had never even thought about. Even some of the girls had never thought about these questions. And I’m glad these are coming to the forefront, so even if we don’t reach concrete solutions today, we’ve at least managed to instill some consciousness into the minds of our youth.

Our discussions ended with trying to find solutions that we could implement here at our own Gurudwara and in our own community. I think the usual mindset is to “think big” or “start small first”, but even in this global community, I’m starting to like the concept of “start small and stay small”. Commit to absolutely changing something you absolutely have control over and don’t stop till you make that happen.

HOMEWORK!!!

Homework assignment from now is to write AT LEAST a half a page of reflection every week. Don’t just state what the class was about or copy and paste your notes, instead try to reflect on the class discussion and reach some conclusions of your own. MANDATORY assignment!

okaybye

p.s. The girls seemed to be a lot more involved this week than the guys. The guys in the class seemed to be afraid to say anything at all, which I found extremely amusing. J

The following links are for further reading:

http://spiritofthesikh.blogspot.com/2010/10/half-panth.html (this was the in class reading)

http://www.sikhchic.net/current_events/womens_equality_why_arent_we_spearheading_the_struggle

p.p.s. i might not always remember to tag every one, PLEASE feel free to tag yourselves or anyone else. Apologies.

This past Sunday’s class was about Thirst or Pyass (in punjabi) and I invited brother Rubinpaul Singh to help the kids make a better connection with Gurbani and explore the concept of Thirst.

We changed things up this week by setting up the structure for the class as more of a Gurbani Vichaar and the shabad for this week’s class was as follows:

ਪ੍ਰਭ ਸਿਉ ਮਨੁ ਲੀਨਾ ਜਿਉ ਜਲ ਮੀਨਾ ਚਾਤ੍ਰਿਕ ਜਿਵੈ ਤਿਸੰਤੀਆ ॥

Prabh Sio Man Leenaa Jio Jal Meenaa Chaathrik Jivai Thisantheeaa ||

My mind is attached to the Lord, like the fish to the water, and the rainbird, thirsty for the raindrops.

(full shabad can be found here: http://searchgurbani.com/guru_granth_sahib/ang/703/line/30366 )

The class was broken up into groups and each group was given 1 line with the definitions of each word in the line. Then the group was told to make sense of the line and try to figure out what the meaning of that specific line was.

In this shabad, Guru Arjan Dev Ji talks about his thirst to be with his beloved God. He says things like:

” Whoever leads me to my Beloved – I would cut off my head and offer it to him, even if I were granted

the Blessed Vision of His Darshan for just an instant”

Guru Sahib is expressing how badly he wants to be one with his God and he explains his love and his thirst by comparing himself to a fish. He says, “My mind is attached to the Lord, like the fish to water”

We further talked about how that relates to us? How do we start to develop this thirst ourselves? What does it take to get to that level?

Perhaps we can conclude that short meetings such as the one we had last sunday are a good start. A group of youth sat together and actually LISTENED to what the Guru had to say to us. We all HEAR kirtan, some more frequently than others, but seldom do we actually take the time to register what the Guru is actually saying. I thought this week’s class was a good way to get a little taste for thirst.

We gave the example of imaginging yourself in the middle of a desert with absolutely nothing but sand in sight. Just the hot boiling sun, the sand and you. And as you can imagine, after a couple of hours, you would start to get thirsty….. but why? Simply because we KNOW what water tastes like and we KNOW that only water will be able to quench our thirst. In the same way, we need to taste Gurbani more and more often in order for us to develop more of a thirst for it…

The class ended with the quiet listening of the Shabad which we discussed above, this time actually letting it register wiith us and having more meaning than before…

More thoughts can be found on brother Rubinpaul Singh’s blog here:  http://spiritofthesikh.blogspot.com/2011/02/pyaas.html

The shabad can be heard here:

http://www.gurmatsangeetproject.com/Recordings/DharamSinghZakhmi3/Sun%20Yaar%20Hamaray%20Sajjan.mp3

Looking forward to this Sunday’s class! 11am-12pm. GNFA Gurudwara. Trailer # 9!

p.s. it is important to be noted here that Amitoj Singh was our beloved Champion Child this week. GUD JAAB!

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!

Alright, without further delays. Here we go.

Class # 2 took place on Sunday Feb 13, 2011.

After a short game of Hangman, which was won by Raveen Kaur (Champion Child), the class discovered that the topic for the second session was Sangat.

For those that are not familiar with the word Sangat, sometimes its loosely translated as Congregation. The class spent some time trying to define and understand what a Sangat really means. Is it just the people who congregate with us at a Gurudwara? Or does it also include our friends, families, peers, classmates, or co-workers? We could all agree that a Sangat is a group of 2 or more people that provide a support system for each other.

One of the main discussions of the class was about whether or not it was necessary for your Sangat to be Sikh. Our conclusion was that as long as they help you better understand your Sikh faith and your Sikh principles, anyone could be a part of your Sangat. Students gave examples of how volunteering with groups such as the Key Club or other afterschool activities made them a part of your Sangat because they taught you humility and selfless service.

We also spoke about the Power of Sangat. At times when we question our purpose, our faith, and our principles our Sangat provides us with the support to help find those answers. The class, as a Sangat, participated in a few minutes of collective eyes-closed Mool Mantar to demonstrate the power of our sangat. This made me super happy

My handout to take home can be found here. Make sure you read it!

http://spiritofthesikh.blogspot.com/2010/04/it-takes-sangat.html

More happened but you gotta be there to experience it! Every Sunday 11am-12pm at GNFA Gurudwara, Trailer# 9!

Fateh!

The first class of the semester had a great turnout! We had about 26 members of the Sikh Youth come together to talk about the topic of Integration is Not Assimilation. The first half an hour was spent on defining what each word means and what the phrase as a whole might mean. We also spoke about Segregration, American History, and how the lesson relates to us.

Some of my favorite quotables from the class are:

- “Integration is like a salad bowl, and Assimilation is like a smoothie”

- “Its not about how it relates to us, its about how we cause integration or assimilation. Because without us there wouldn’t be any talk about integration or assimilation”

We also played a quick 30 second game of sharades, which was won by Gurleen Kaur (champion child who received a Khanda sticker). The correct answer was Harmandir Sahib, which we said was a perfect example of Integration. Its situated in the middle of the water, but its still stands above it, similar to the lotus flower.

The Second half of the class was used to discuss the Sikh perspective on Integration and Assimilation. A line from Asa Ki Vaar reads “Neel Vastar Pahir Hoveh Parvaan”. Guru Nanak talks about how the hindus at the time dressed in blue robes and ate the food of the muslims in order to gain their acceptance. More on that can be found here: http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Asa_di_var_Page_10

A lot more happened and was talked about, but you gotta be there to be there. Every Sunday 10:30 – 11:30AM. Trailer # 9 at GNFA.

Look forward to next week’s class!

Brand New song from SaintSoulja. check out I’m Beamin (Lupe Fiasco Remix)

peace!

Some new music from ya boy. Hopefully I’ll be releasing a lot more music in the coming weeks/months. I hope yall will keep supporting.

Also, we’ll be Live and Direct in Vancouver, Canada THIS saturday Night (12/18/2010) at the Taj Banquet Hall for the United Sikhs 3rd Annual Global Sikh Conference. Come out for the entire weekend for the conference! We’ll be performing Saturday night!

Peace

I think what just happened is pretty interesting. President Obama had planned on visiting the Harmandir Sahib/Darbar Sahib aka The Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab while he was in India next month. But apparently it seems like he is going to opt out of visiting Punjab.

See, Harmandir Sahib is to the Sikhs what is The Kabba (Mecca) to the Muslims, except we’re not required to make pilgrimages to it at least once in our lifetime. But Harmandir Sahib, like any other Gurudwara around the world, requires that when you step inside the Guru’s court that you have your head covered and your shoes off. Now you can question why this mandate is in place, why exceptions can’t be made (especially for the leader of the free world), or why can’t baseball caps aren’t considered head coverings, but the fact of the matter is, these mandates were put in places hundreds of years ago and no president/ prime minister/ king or queen is going to be the exception to the rule. (Things don’t always work the way they do in the West).

But whats even more interesting is that the issue has become that of the “head covering”. Is that really the issue at hand? Or is there perhaps a much larger issue in cahoots? Like, I don’t know….maybe the fact that Amritsar is only a 30 min drive to the Pakistan border. Or maybe that if the President was to visit the Harimandir Sahib, even his security team would be required to be bare feet with their heads covered. (I’m not sure about this, but I don’t think firearms are allowed INSIDE the Harimandir Sahib). Who knows.

BUT, I think him NOT going to the Harimandir Sahib due to a “head covering” controversy will definitely create a lot more publicity (good or bad) for the Sikhs than it would have if he would have gone.

Mixtape coming 2011!

So guess who I met this weekend?

nope. your wrong.

I met the Great Grandson of General Hari Singh Nalwa. If you’re punjabi and don’t know who that is, then thats a shame, because this dude definitely doesn’t get enough recognition. Not like our history gets much recognition anyway, but this guy definitely deserves his props.

General Hari Singh Nalwa was an exceptional man in Sikh History. You can look him up on google and do your own research, but if you don’t know him, then lets just say that the Sikh Kingdom, to this DAY, is the ONLY kingdom to EVER rule over Afghanistan and the army to command this conquest was lead by this man, General Hari Singh Nalwa.

Russia, Pakistan, Great Britain and the United States have ALL tried to do the same thing, but have failed and/or are still failing.

This all took place under the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, and General Hari Singh Nalwa was pretty much his right hand man. I found this link to be somewhat useful in finding more information about him, but again make sure to do your own research and discover your own history.

http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/sikh-personalities/25507-hari-singh-nalwa-1791-1837-a.html

Peace!