Year of Faith

I’ve been doing the Year of Faith for four months now, and there is an obvious pattern emerging.  Month one was good.  Satanism wasn’t perfect, but it felt good, it felt like I was making head way and I was pretty happy with it.  Taoism in February was brutal.  Everything felt like it was dragging, writing was forced, my interest waxed and waned.  Then everything turned around in March. Baha’i was great, it was easily my most productive and insightful month of the year.

I’m on month four now.  Bet you can’t guess how I’m doing.  Bet you can’t figure out that I feel burnt out, that I can’t focus, that I every time I try to bring something to the blog or realign myself with this new religion that things  are just frickin’ dandy…

I’m choking on Sikhism.  It isn’t anything about the religion.  It has a rich and interesting history and philosophy.  There are plenty of helpful people and many gurdwaras and communities to visit, but I’ve dropped the ball.  I’m twenty days into the month and I’m nowhere.  In light of this pattern I may have to reevaluate my schedule, or try to make more of an effort to plan ahead.  Having a more fixed schedule helps, so maybe I should be looking further into the future before the month is up.

I’ve decided to stop my month of Sikhism. I’m going to take some time to work on other things, and set up the schedule for May.

People always say that in order to succeed you need to get used to failure.  I have always assumed that this meant external obstacles- things that I have no control over.  What it really means, for me, is to get used to falling short of my own expectations.

It’s okay.

My name is Michael and I am a terrible Sikh.

I still have the beard going, which I’m noticing more and more (and no, I don’t like it yet), but a good beard does not a Sikh make.  I’m quite uncomfortable with Sikhism and I really don’t know why.  I’m not as interested in it as I have been in other religions I have done, and there is a large social hurdle I have to cross, namely making contact with Sikhs.  This brings to light one of my flaws, namely I’m terrified of strangers and meeting new people, and thus would much prefer to just email these temples I’ve found around town rather than call them and talk to a complete unknown.  I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s me.  The only reason I cleared this last month was because the Baha’is took it upon themselves to spread word and they all got into contact with me over email, which is less terrifying.

I’m going to get over it, I have to get over it, or else there won’t be much to report this month.  Working full time really isn’t’ helping my situation, but again this is something that I can’t really fix right now.  I have no alternative means of income that wouldn’t similarly sap my time, and the job I do have often affords me enough free time that I can read and write during the day.  The fantasy is to be able to do this full time, and the compromise will probably be that I’ll be sticking it out and saving up my nickles and dimes so that come the end of the year I’ll have enough to take a month or two off to focus on pulling The Book together.  I might have to live off of ramen for a while but I would really, really like to do this all day, every day.

I also need to move come June, so that doesn’t really help either.

For those of you who weren’t following Kotaku’s run of articles on religion in video games, check ‘em all out here.  All in all it was okay, nothing really stellar, and they didn’t go as deep as I would have liked into the meat of the issue.  But since I feel kind of passionate about the subject matter I assume that was inevitable.  Still, zombies and Ouija boards?  Really?  Really?

Anyway, I’m working on something that will communicate my feelings on the matter, which you probably won’t see up here for a while since I really want to nail it.  We’ll see what comes of that, in fact I think I’ll work on it once I sign off here.

Which will be right about now.

Sat Sri Akal.

Waheguru.

A few inspired quotes, courtesy of The Sikhs- Their Religious Beliefs and Practices by W. Owen Cole and Piara Singh Sambhi.

Burn worldy love

Grinding  it into ahses to make ink.

Let your intellect be the fine paper

On which you should write

With the pen of divine love,

As dictated by the Guru.

Write the praises of his Name

Write that He is limitless and great.

Oh teacher, if you were to learn writing this

The truth of it will stand by you

Wherever you are called upon to render account.

-Guru Nanak

Let him bear the name of Shiva or Kesava [Vishnu],

or of the Jina [Mahavira], or of the lotus-born Lord,

whatever name he bears

May he take from me, sick woman that I am, the disease of the world,

Whether he be he, or he, or he.

-Lalla, a fourteenth century Kashmiri Shaivite

The grandeur of the Sat Guru is infinite, infinite in his bounty,

He opened my eyes to the Infinite and showed me Infinity.

I was just tagging along in the wake of the world and the Veda,

Then the Sat Guru met me on the path and he put a lamp in my hand.

A lamp full of oil he gave me whose wock will never run dry;

All bartering is over,

I will go to the market no more.

- Kabir

Today was a good day.  Work was slow so I managed to get a lot of writing done.  Not much that will end up on the blog, but I’m making progress.

When I came home I managed to find a great resource for Sikh topics- the Raj Karega Khalsa Network, which I found while looking for info on Sikh prayers.  If you’re at all curious about Sikhism, do give that link a click.  Don’t let the very dated look of the website scare you, they update regularly and the databse of knowledge hidden in there is nothing short of dizzying.  It will become a constant resource for me over the next month, and I’m very glad that I found it.

Praying is very different now than it was last month.  During Baha’i the prayers were short, I could do them in a few minutes at most and so long as I could wash my hands and find east I was set.  Now, I don’t have to do much but meditate and pay attention to the words, as you do in most prayers, but they are frickin’ huge.  Instead of a few minutes a day I’m spending around twenty minutes three times a day.  I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, because I’m not, I’m just shocked.  I was not expecting this.  I’m used to prayers being little things that give you a moment of pause during the day, not these comparatively large investments of time.  I can see why these are usually performed in groups in gurdwaras.  They are events in-and-of themselves.

So there is no way I am going to be able to memorize these, and I haven’t found a convenient way to cart them around with me yet.  Luckily the format of the prayers means I won’t have to.  Much like other faiths, Sikh prayers are scheduled around certain times of the day, though in Sikhism they are more practical than sunrise and sunset.  The first Sikh prayer, the Japji, takes place in the morning, before one heads out to work.  The second, Rahiras, is performed in the evening, when one returns from work.  The final prayer, called Kirtan Sohila, is done before you go to bed.

You see, they are broken up around the workday, as a method to prepare yourself for the events of the day, for recovering and re-energizing at the end of the day, and finally for resting.  I really like that, it stresses the utility of prayer, it’s role in not only the spiritual life, but as something that can prepare us mentally and physically.  As someone who has some trouble getting in touch with his spiritual side at prearranged times (especially in the mornings) this is really valuable.

But back to my original point, the Raj Karega Khalsa Network has a series of videos (their youtube channel could be described as ‘terrifying’ in its depth) of the three basic prayers, performed in the original Punjbai with English translation.  Now, I have a lot of trouble getting up early enough in the morning to stare bleary-eyed at my laptop for twenty minutes, prayer or no prayer.  Heck, some mornings I barely make it to work on time, that’s how well I deal with the wee early hours.  But dragging my sorry ass out of bed to listen to someone speak and sing beautifully in an enchanting foreign language, whilst I try to follow along, is something that I think I can manage.  I’m equal parts geek and religious student right now, so I’ll let youtube be my temple for a while until I contact a gurdwara.  Hmm, ‘religion nerd’, I like that.

Seriously though, check them out.  Try leaving one on in the background for a while.  They can be quite beautiful.

-Japji Sahib

-Rahiras Sahib

-Kirtan Sohila

Sat Sri Akal

My month of Sikhism is off to a slow but gentle start.  I basically took Easter weekend off, gave myself some time make the transition between the two religions.  I think that helped a lot.  March already feels like it happened years ago, and now April stretches out in front of me, long, uncertain… hairy.  Sorry, the beard is definitely getting to the itchy stage right now, I’m very aware of it.  At the moment I don’t think it makes me look particularly wise, worldly, or holy.  I’m getting more of a homeless vibe from the mirror- a spiritual vagrant.  If my hair was shorter I could probably pull off some kind of trendy hipster look.  But I have no hope of fitting into those skinny jeans, so it’s probably for the best.

There’s another reason why I’ve been slow to get into Sikhism.  It feels different than any other religion I have experienced so far, it looks perilous, closed off, difficult to penetrate.  Let me explain.  You see I feel pretty comfortable donning the suit of any particular belief system by now, of thinking and discussing things like God, prayer, faith, in a variety of contexts.  I feel like I can do so with honesty and candor.  At the very least by this point I can fake it pretty damn well.  But Sikhism doesn’t feel like just another religion, it feels like an entirely new culture, new language, new mannerisms, new food, new everything.  I wonder if I can know what it is like to be a Sikh without being East Indian, I wonder if it will matter that I’ll probably be the only white guy in the gurdwara.  I’m sure none of that really matters, being of a different race doesn’t preclude you from being sensitive to different religions, and culture, though experienced individually, can be shared.  Still, these are the things I worry about.  Different faith, different challenges.

The daily prayers are lengthy, longer than anything that have I so far encountered.  There are three central prayers to be recited in the morning, in the evening and at night.  I found a helpful booklet online that contains these in a line-by-line translation with the original Gurbani.  It is over 300 pages long.  The key word here is- daunting.  The central text of Sikhism, the Guru Granth Sahib, was available at the library in four volumes.  Large volumes.  This is not a religion of brevity.  But so far it is quite beautiful

In the platter are placed three things; truth, contentment and wisdom, as well as God’s Name, the support of all.  Whoever eats this food, whoever relishes it, is emnacipated.

-Guru Arjan, the Guru Granth Sahib

Sounds delicious.

So how’d you like my little April Fools bluff?  Huh?  Pretty good eh?

Yeah, not quite sure what that was.  It started off as a funny kind of visitation, but then I thought it would be a bit more believable if I made it… um, well a bit more genuine.  And weird.   I don’t think I finished it right, I was trying to write the last few paragraphs on the bus on the way back from work.

So yes, welcome to my head.

I’m not really done writing about the Baha’i faith, I feel like I left it on a bit of a negative note, but now we’re into Sikhism!  So that may have to wait until later.  I promise I enjoyed Baha’i quite a bit, I think it was my most successful month yet, but right now I really want to write about my beard.

Not much of a beard yet I know.  You’re looking at about three days worth of growth.  I knew that I was going to have to let my hair grow out this month, so I wnet a few days without shaving, just so that I could start getting used to it.  The verdict so far- it’s kind of itchy.

Unshorn hair is part of the five K’s of Sikhism, five articles of faith worn by baptized Sikhs, a right called Amrit Sanchar.  This is the formal entry of the everyday man or woman into the Sikh religion, where one swears to live up to the ideal and practices of the religion and adopts the five K’s.  I don’t think that this is something that I will be partaking in this month, as it implies a genuine will to practice and cultivate the Sikh life throughout one’s life.  However, I can practice the five K’s in spirit, and letting my hair grow out is pretty simple to do.  This is called kesh, and symbolizes a respect for God’s creation.  Sikh’s believe that hair is a gift from God, and so to cut it would be a sign of disrespect.

I like this part of Sikhism, outward signs like the kesh set Sikhs apart from everyone else, and harken back to the days where they actively monitored and secured their communities against outward and inward threats.  This is probably still true today, though modern society has probably essoned this Sikh responsibilty.  I guess I’ll be finding out for myself.

Hope eveyrone has a good Good Friday (yay repitition) I’m off to enjoy another transition day.