Monday, May 30, 2005
Sunday eve
There was a beautiful, horizon to horizon rainbow tonight. We have been receiving rain quite regularly, and the land is still green and lush. This has been a surprise, since by now we should be well into the dry season and the landscape brown. It has caught everyone by surprise so no-one has been planting their gardens to take advantage of all this unseasonable water.
Kathleen visited this weekend, from Bunda. It was good to talk with her and share stories. Somehow, with the changes that have occurred in our program, we Lake Region volunteers seem to be getting together much less than we used to. I miss the companionship.
This morning at the gurdwara (temple) Mangit Singh gave me a magazine that gives a lot of background on Sikhism. I’ve been enjoying reading it today, learning more about the Sikh history and concepts.
The first Guru was born in 1469 but the holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, was codified by the fourth Guru some 400 years ago in 1604, which makes it the youngest of the major religions, and today it has some 25 million adherents. Unlike the other major religions, the content of the Granth was written by the Gurus themselves, not constructed through the memories of disciples decades or centuries later. It was born out of the conflict between Hindu and Islam, and sought to bridge that conflict by recognizing the spiritual worth of every person regardless of their class or caste, gender, or faith. Music is very important to the Sikh, and much of the Granth is sung in 31 ragas and 5699 hymns – don’t ask me who counted the hymns. Perhaps because it is so much younger, the precepts of Sikhism seem to be much more compatible with what we know of the universe through cosmology and science than are the other major religions. Seems rather Unitarian, actually.
The Sikhs have been persecuted along the line and quite a few of their ten Gurus have been martyred. The Mongols invaded in the 1520s, the Golden Temple was blown up in 1762, the British arrived in 1849, and the Moslems turned against them every now and then. The tenth and last Guru said they shouldn’t take it anymore: “Suffering dishonor and repression amounts to cowardice. Justice and liberty are worth fighting for. The use of the sword is the last resort of a man of peace.” - Gobind Singh, 1708
I am enjoying learning about this religion. I’ve wanted to visit India on my way to spend Christmas with Matt and his family in Beijing, and it might be interesting to make learning about Sikhism a focus of my visit there.
My official termination date with the Peace Corps is December 5th. But my teaching is complete when my Form-IV students start to take their National Exams in the second week of October. So I have filed my request to terminate early, on November 5th. That would give me more time to spend in India and China on the way back to the USA.
There was a beautiful, horizon to horizon rainbow tonight. We have been receiving rain quite regularly, and the land is still green and lush. This has been a surprise, since by now we should be well into the dry season and the landscape brown. It has caught everyone by surprise so no-one has been planting their gardens to take advantage of all this unseasonable water.
Kathleen visited this weekend, from Bunda. It was good to talk with her and share stories. Somehow, with the changes that have occurred in our program, we Lake Region volunteers seem to be getting together much less than we used to. I miss the companionship.
This morning at the gurdwara (temple) Mangit Singh gave me a magazine that gives a lot of background on Sikhism. I’ve been enjoying reading it today, learning more about the Sikh history and concepts.
The first Guru was born in 1469 but the holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, was codified by the fourth Guru some 400 years ago in 1604, which makes it the youngest of the major religions, and today it has some 25 million adherents. Unlike the other major religions, the content of the Granth was written by the Gurus themselves, not constructed through the memories of disciples decades or centuries later. It was born out of the conflict between Hindu and Islam, and sought to bridge that conflict by recognizing the spiritual worth of every person regardless of their class or caste, gender, or faith. Music is very important to the Sikh, and much of the Granth is sung in 31 ragas and 5699 hymns – don’t ask me who counted the hymns. Perhaps because it is so much younger, the precepts of Sikhism seem to be much more compatible with what we know of the universe through cosmology and science than are the other major religions. Seems rather Unitarian, actually.
The Sikhs have been persecuted along the line and quite a few of their ten Gurus have been martyred. The Mongols invaded in the 1520s, the Golden Temple was blown up in 1762, the British arrived in 1849, and the Moslems turned against them every now and then. The tenth and last Guru said they shouldn’t take it anymore: “Suffering dishonor and repression amounts to cowardice. Justice and liberty are worth fighting for. The use of the sword is the last resort of a man of peace.” - Gobind Singh, 1708
I am enjoying learning about this religion. I’ve wanted to visit India on my way to spend Christmas with Matt and his family in Beijing, and it might be interesting to make learning about Sikhism a focus of my visit there.
My official termination date with the Peace Corps is December 5th. But my teaching is complete when my Form-IV students start to take their National Exams in the second week of October. So I have filed my request to terminate early, on November 5th. That would give me more time to spend in India and China on the way back to the USA.
