Saturday, May 29, 2010

What's That?

I recently stumbled upon I. J. Singh's '30 second sales pitch' for the Sikh tradition. Drawing on the three pillars of a popular mantra (Kirat karo, Vand chhako, Naam japo), he offered the following gloss:

An honest life, shared with others, lived with an awareness of the Infinite within all.

A powerful sentiment. It reminds me of former UUA President Bill Sinkford's response to that infamously nagging question: Unitarian Universalism - What's that?. He once answered: One God, no one left behind.

Print this post

1 comment:

TinyPlankton said...

Hi Erik

I've been learning about Sikhism for a number of years now. I'm an Australian of English/German descent, which puts me unfortunately at odds with the majority Punjabi population in the gurdwara sahibs in my area.

Consequently I have found myself feeling isolated in that environment, and without sangat, and started reading up about other religions where I might better fit in. And came across UU.

I think I'm seeing things on the same page as you, that Sikhism and UUism appear to go hand in hand. I attended my first UU service but a week ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps I could see this as my sangat? It was a relief to have people come up to me and speak to me, tell me about the place, rather than ignore me (I guess due to language barrier).

I think UUism appears to be a great platform for "Westerners" to access the wonderful treasure of Sri Guru Granth Sahib.

I do ponder though about how Sikh Sikhs (haha) would view such an attempt?

Are you able to share with us your views of head covering if you are going to share Gurbani in your future congregations? Perhaps you can assist me to visualize how you imagine "Unitarian-Sikhs" to be?

At any rate, I'm encouraged by what you're doing, and very happy to have come across Unitarian Universalism. Keep up the good work!

Ishna