Don't forget to Love today! Love yourself. And love your neighbor because they come from the same creator. There is no stranger says Guru Arjan. Only those who love can attain God says Guru Gobind. "I love you in all your names," sings Guru Nanak. The guru sings, and that is how he loves. And when you sing, you love too. Sing!
#Love #christmas #jesus #sing #gurugobindsinghji #shivpreetsingh
“Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant filled with the love of God.”
“Owing to ignorance of the rope the rope appears to be a snake; owing to ignorance of the Self the transient state arises of the individualized, limited, phenomenal aspect of the Self.”
“There is but One God, His name is Truth, He is the Creator, He fears none, he is without hate, He never dies, He is beyond the cycle of births and death, He is self illuminated, He is realized by the kindness of the True Guru. He was True in the beginning, He was True when the ages commenced and has ever been True, He is also True now.”
“Sing the songs of joy to the Lord, serve the Name of the Lord, and become the servant of His servants”
“There is only one Solution, for all our problems…There is only one cure, for all our ills, It is free…It has no side effects, one can have it any Time, Day or Night…Simran ! Simran ! Simran!”
“Those blessed with the karma of good actions praise the Lord. O Nanak, they make the Guru their spiritual teacher. In the fourth watch of the early morning hours, a longing arises in their higher consciousness. They are attuned to the river of life; the True Name is in their minds and on their lips.”
“You shall obtain the fruits of your mind’s desires, by focusing your consciousness on the Lord’s Lotus Feet. He is totally pervading the water and the land; He is the Lord of the World-forest. Behold Him in exaltation in each and every heart. Nanak gives this advice.”
“Everyone cries out, More! More! , with the idea of receiving. How great should we call the Giver? His Gifts are beyond estimation. O Nanak, there is no deficiency; Your Storehouses are filled to overflowing, age after age.”
” At the age of ten, he is a child; at twenty, a youth, and at thirty, he is called handsome. At forty, he is full of life; at fifty, his foot slips, and at sixty, old age is upon him. At seventy, he loses his intellect, and at eighty, he cannot perform his duties. At ninety, he lies in his bed, and he cannot understand his weakness. After seeking and searching for such a long time, O Nanak, I have seen that the world is just a mansion of smoke.”
Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they're worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36-years-old, as I happen to be, some great truth stands before the door of his life--some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right.
A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he's afraid that he will lose his job, or he's afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he's 80. He's just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80, and the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. He died ... A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.
So we're going to stand up amid horses. We're going to stand up right here in Alabama, amid the billy-clubs. We're going to stand up right here in Alabama amid police dogs, if they have them. We're going to stand up amid tear gas!
We're going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!
I have not written all this to complain: I have simply written the truth. I do not intend by what I have written to compliment myself: I have simply set down exactly what happened. Since I have made it a point in this history to write the truth of every matter and to set down no more than the reality of every event, as a consequence I have reported every good and evil I have seen of father and brother and set down the actuality of every fault and virtue of relative and stranger. May the reader excuse me; may the listener take me not to task.
Yunas Khan, son of Wais Khan, son of Sher-'ali Aughlon, son of Muhammad Khan, son of Khizr Khwaja Khan, son of Tughluq-timur Khan, son of Aisan-bugha Khan, son of Dawa Khan, son of Baraq Khan, son of Yesuntawa Khan, son of Muatukan, son of Chagatai Khan, son of Genghis Khan
We had been told that when Afghans are powerless to resist, they go before their foe with grass between their teeth, this being as much as to say, " I am your cow." Here we saw this custom ; Afghans unable to make resistance, came before us with grass between their teeth. Those our men had brought in as prisoners were ordered to be beheaded and a pillar of their heads was set up in our camp
I first heard the word sangur after coming to Kabul where people describe fortifying themselves on a hill as making a sangur. Our men went straight up, broke into it and cut off a hundred or two of insolent Afghan heads. There also a pillar of heads was set up.
After dismounting in Bannu, we heard that the tribesmen in the Plain (Dasht) were for resisting an4 were entrenching themselves on a hill to the north. A force headed by Jahanglr Mirza, went against what seemed to be the Kiwi sangur, took it at once, made general slaughter, cut off and brought in many heads. Much white cloth fell into (their) hands. In Bannu also a pillar of heads was set up. After the sangur had been taken, the Kiwi head-man, Shadi Khan, came to my presence, with grass between his teeth, and did me obeisance. I pardoned all the prisoners.
The Moghul troops who had come as reinforcements had no endurance for battle. They left the battle and began to unhorse and plunder our own men. It was not just here they did this: those wretched Moghuls always do this. If they win they take booty; if they lose they unhorse their own people and plunder them for for booty.
Hindustan is a place of little charm… There are no good horses, meat, grapes, melons, or other fruit. There is no ice, cold water, good food or bread in the markets. There are no baths and no madrasas. There are no candles, torches, or candlesticks.
For the sake of Islam I became a wanderer,
I battled infidels and Hindus,
I determined to become a martyr
Thank God I became a Killer of Non-Muslims!
ShaikhT the flautist {ndyt) was another ; it is said he played also the lute and the guitar, and that he had played the flute from his 12th or 13th year. He once produced a wonderful air on the flute, at one of Badl'u'z-zaman Mirza's assemblies ; Qul-i- muhammad could not reproduce it on the guitar, so declared this a worthless instrument ; Shaikhl Ndyi at once took the guitar from Qul-i-muhammad's hands and played the air on it, well and in perfect tune. They say he was so expert in music that having once heard an air, he was able to say, "This or that is the tune of so-and-so's or so-and-so's flute."
Amongst the musicians present at this party were Hafiz HajT, Jalalu'd-din Mahmud the flautist, and Ghulam shadt's younger brother, Ghulam bacha the Jews'-harpist. Hafiz Haji sang well, as Herl people sing, quietly, delicately, and in tune. With Jahangir Mirza was a Samarkandl singer Mir Jan whose singing was always loud, harsh and out-of-tune. The Mirza, having had enough, ordered him to sing ; he did so, loudly, harshly and without taste. Khurasanis have quite refined manners ; if, under this singing, one did stop his ears, the face of another put question, not one could stop the singer, out of consideration for the Mirza.Musicians are named in parties:
Having ridden out at the Mid-day Prayer for an excursion, we got on a boat and 'araq was drunk. The people of the party were Dost Beg, Mirza Quli, Ahmadi, Gadai, Muhammad 'All Jang-jang, 'Asas,5 and Aughan-blrdI MughilL The musicians were Rauh-dam, Baba Jan, Qasim-i-'all, Yusuf-i-'alT, Tingrl-qull, Abu'l-qasim, Ramzan Lull. We drank in the boat till the Bed- time Prayer ; then getting off it, full of drink, we mounted, took torches in our hands, and went to camp from the river's bank
During my stay in Tashkent, I endured much poverty and humiliation. I had no country or hope of one! Most of my retainers dispersed; those who remained were unable to move about with me because of their destitution. This uncertainty and want of house and home drove me at last to despair. I thought, 'It would be better to go off by myself than live in such misery; better to go as far as my feet can carry me than for others to see me in such poverty and humiliation.
In all Fergana no fort is so strong as Akhsi. Its suburbs extend some two miles further than the walled town. People say of Akhsi, "Where is the village? Where are the trees?" Its melons are excellent; one variety of them is known as Mir Timuri and may have no equal in the world. The melons of Bukhara are famous. When I took Samarkand, I had some brought from there and some from Akhsi. They were cut up at an entertainment and those from Bukhara could not compare with those from Akhsi. The fowling and hunting of Akhsi are very good indeed; white deer abound in the waste on the Akhsi side of the Syr-Darya; in the jungle on the Andijan side, abundant and well-fed bucks and does, pheasant and hare are had.
Samarkand has good districts and subdistricts. Its largest district, and one that is its equal, is Bukhara, 162 miles to the west. Bukhara in its turn, has several subdistricts; it is a fine town. Its fruits are many and good, its melons excellent, none in Mawara'u'n-nahr matching them for quality and quantity. Although the Mir Timuri- melon of Akhsi is sweeter and more delicate than any Bukhara melon, still in Bukhara many kinds of melon are good and plentiful. The Bukhara plum is famous; no other equals it. They skin it, dry it and export it from land to land with other rarities; it is an excellent laxative. Fowls and geese are bred in abundance in Bukhara. Bukhara wine is the strongest made in Mawara'u'n-nahr; that was what I drank while in Samarkand.
One of those on the south is Andijan, which has a central position and is the capital of the Fergana country. It produces much grain, fruits in abundance, excellent grapes and melons. In the melon season, it is not customary to sell them out at the fields. There are no pears better than those of Andijan. After Samarkand and Kesh, the fort of Andijan is the largest in Mawara'u'n-nahr (Transoxiana). It has three gates. Its citadel (ark) is on its south side. Water flows into it by nine channels, but, oddly, flows out by none. Round the outer edge of the ditch runs a gravelled highway; the width of this highway divides the fort from the suburbs surrounding it.Educational
Just as 'Arabs call every place outside 'Arab (Arabia), ' Ajam, so Hindustanis call every place outside Hindustan, Khurasan. There are two trade-marts on the land-route between Hindustan and Khurasan ; one is Kabul, the other, Qandahar.
From all these the mountains of Nijr-au, the Lamghanat and Sawad differ in having masses of cypresses,^ holm-oak, olive and mastic {kkanjak) ; their grass also is different, — it is dense, it is tall, it is good neither for horse nor sheep. Although these mountains are not so high as those already described, indeed they look to be low, none-the-less, they are strongholds ; what to the eye is even slope, really is hard rock on which it is impossible to ride. Many of the beasts and birds of Hindustan are found amongst them, such as the parrot, mina, peacock and liija {lukhd), the ape, nil-gdu and hog-deer {kuta-pdt); some found there are not found even in Hindustan.
John 8:7 “And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’”
John 13:1 “Now before the Feast of Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
Matthew 6:34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
John 11:25-26 “Jesus said to hear, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’”
Mark 2:17 “And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
John 3:16-18 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that they world might be saved though him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Matthew 5:11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”
Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Article by Pastor Jack Wellman
No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care
“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” — Don Swartz (discrepancy on author of quote)
“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” — Mark Twain
“One kind word can warm three winter months.” — Japanese Proverb
“Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.” — Mother Teresa
“Kindness is a hard thing to give away; it keeps coming back to the giver.” — Ralph Scott
“Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.” — Jesse Jackson
“Compassion for yourself translates into compassion for others.” — Suki Jay Munsell
“It’s only in our minds that we are separate from the rest of the world.” — Gay Luce
“Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
— Albert Schweitzer
“That old law about “an eye for an eye” leaves everybody blind.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Believe in something larger than yourself.” — Barbara Bush
“Everything is connected ... no one thing can change by itself.” — Paul Hawken
“The world will not change until we do.” — Jim Wallis
“Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.”
— Billy Graham
“The gift we can offer others is so simple a thing as hope.” — Daniel Berrigan
“We live very close together. So, our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.”
— Dalai Lama
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else.” — Charles Dickens
“Giving is the highest expression of power.” — Vivian Greene
“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
— Mother Teresa
“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.” — John Andrew Holmes, Jr.
“A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives.” — Jackie Robinson
“From what we get, we can make a living: what we give, however, makes a life.” — Arthur Ashe
“The miracle is this – the more we share, the more we have.” — Leonard Nimoy
“In helping others, we shall help ourselves, for whatever good we give out completes the circle and comes back to us.”
— Flora Edwards
“If you always give, you will always have.” — Chinese proverb
“Giving opens the way to receiving.” — Florence Scovel Shinn
“When one is out of touch with oneself, one cannot touch others.” — Aldous Huxley
“No act of Kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”-Leo Buscaglia
“Never Pass Up A Chance To Be Kind.”-Basil Hamilton
“Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy.”-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.”-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.”-Mother Teresa
“Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.”-Henry James
“The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.”-Henry David Thoreau
“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”-Blaise Pascal
“When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people.”-Abraham Joshua Heschel
As you probably know Ernest Hemingway was a writer, journalist and Nobel Prize Winner. Some of his most famous stories include “The Old Man and The Sea” and “The Sun Also Rises”. He also participated in both World Wars and worked as a correspondent during for instance the Spanish Civil War.
Now, here are 9 of my favourite words of wisdom from Ernest Hemingway.
1. Listen.
“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.”
Learning to really listen to someone rather just waiting for our turn to talk can be a difficult skill to develop. Often we may have much on our mind that we want to say and so listening falls by the wayside.
How can you become a better listener? Here are three tips:
Also, if you really listen then that alone will often provide you naturally with a better and more genuine answer than the clever response thought up while trying to listen simultaneously.
2. Take the first step.
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
The thing is if two people or more are waiting for someone else to take the first step then that step may never be taken. Or you may at least have to wait for a very long time.
If you after some time realise that, like in this example, you couldn’t trust the person then at least you have learned that.
By not taking the first step you’ll perhaps never know. So instead of waiting around and trying to figure things out just take first steps of different kinds in interactions. Be proactive.
3. Keep your eyes on where you are going.
“Never mistake motion for action.”
It’s very easy to get lost in busy work. You may spend much time in your in-box or filing and organizing things. But at the end of the day or week, what have you accomplished?
Just because you’re moving doesn’t mean that you are moving in the direction you really want to go. To do that you have to do the things that you know are really important and in alignment with your goals. And not getting lost in busy work.
So, improve your effectiveness and productivity. But, more importantly, never lose your view of your big picture. And take the action and do the things you need to do to get yourself where you want to go.
4. Just do.
“The shortest answer is doing the thing.”
How do you get things done? You take action and do them. You may need to do some planning, but don’t get lost in that stage or in over thinking things. Planning or thinking won’t get you any results in real-life if you don’t take action too.
So take action and just try something. Maybe you’ll succeed. Maybe you’ll fail, but if you do then failure can always teach you a bunch of things. The worst thing is not failure, it’s to just sit on your hands and do nothing.
Developing a just do it habit – where you learn to do what you know you want to do despite how you feel or what your thoughts are telling you at the moment – can be difficult. But it’s rewarding not only because you’ll get actual results and – sooner or later – success. It also builds real confidence in yourself, in your capabilities and in your own personal power to achieve what you want in life.
5. Do. Fail. Learn. Do.
“The first draft of anything is shit”
So you have to keep your eyes on where you are going and do the right things to get yourself there. However, you will not always get what you want on your first try. No worries though, if you have the right attitude.
What attitude is that? The attitude of the much younger you. The kid who learned to walk and ride a bike. A younger you that doesn’t put so much value into a failure. But instead just gets up after falling down, learns a lesson or two from what happened and then tries again. And again.
By cultivating that way of thinking about failure – instead of the more usual, more grown up one where you may think that the world will come to an end just because you failed – you can over time achieve some pretty awesome things.
You can read more about how failure can be redefined and be of great help to you in 4 Reasons Why Failure is Pretty Awesome.
6. Find strength through your tough times.
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”
This is a really interesting point. Because it’s really easy to let yourself fall into a frame of mind where you think that no-one has had it worse than you and that this and this happened and that’s why you are like you are. And of course, some people have had a much worse time than other people.
But I think it’s easy to let yourself fall into a kind of victim thinking where you let your troubles in the past act as reasons why you can’t do something now. But one must remember: that is the past. And people’s problems are rarely as unique as we may think. Everyone has had bad stuff happen to them. People may not talk about it and you may assume that it’s just you that has have these bad experiences.
But as Hemingway says, everyone has been broken in a kind of way throughout their life. It’s kinda unavoidable.
But the question is what you do now. Do you let those old things hold you back and allow them help the ego to build an even stronger victim identity? Or can you let them go and live in the present – as the person you are now rather than who you were – with plans for the future? Everyone has to handle such a thing in their own way. But it is up to just one person to decide on how handle it. And that’s you.
7. Don’t get hung up on the small things in life.
“The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.”
When you start to take life more seriously you may realize that you can let a whole lot of things just go. You don’t have the patience, time or energy to worry about the small and petty things anymore. You don’t get wrapped up in things that are totally unimportant.
You start simplifying your life because you realise that your time isn’t unlimited. You remove a lot of the less important things to have more time and energy for the really exciting and important stuff.
Have a look at what’s really important in your life. If you are unsure about if it’s really important, try asking yourself: ”Will this matter 5 years from now?”. Then simplify, simplify, simplify. You may be surprised at how much kinda unimportant important stuff that there is in your mind and life.
You may also feel lighter after having done some decluttering because you are no longer bogged down by boatloads of stuff that you have now realized is pretty irrelevant.
8. Don’t let your imagination hold you back.
“Cowardice … is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.”
Your imagination can really play tricks on you. By thinking about something over and over you and your imagination can come up the most elaborate and horrifying ways that things can go wrong. But if/when you finally take action and do what you wanted to do it may, well… be a little anticlimactic. Even if you fail and things don’t work out the way you hoped for you may think to yourself: ”Is this it?!”. There are no monsters under your bed. And the monsters and disaster scenarios you construct in your mind rarely come into life.
Now, some situations may actually be quite scary and create a lot of pressure within. The best way that I have found to deal with those situations is to reconnect with the present. When you are present you are just focused on what is happening right now. As Hemingway says, you are suspending the functioning of your imagination because your mind is no longer lost in possible future scenarios.
Check out Eckhart Tolle’s books The Power of Now and A New Earth plus 8 Ways to Return to The Present Moment for tips on how develop the habit of being able to step into the now. It can allow you to find a stillness and peace within despite calamity outside of you.
9. Don’t judge.
“The writer’s job is not to judge, but to seek to understand.”
I think this is not just a great piece of advice for writers but for anyone really. Seeking to understand rather than judging is hard but is something that can help you and the people around you a great deal. And this also goes back to the first tip, the one about listening. To be a good listener you must have the intent to understand the other person rather than judging him/her.
Instead of going into interactions or just life with a bunch of judgements that you apply on everything and everyone try acceptance. This is not easy if you are used to making judgements about everything. And the thing is, by making a judgement you can often strengthen you ego. You get a small ego boost and you feel good for a while. But just like with caffeine this wears off pretty quickly and you soon need to judge again to feel good.
Accepting may not feel so appealing or “normal” but I have found that when I just accept things I feel a relief and stillness inside. You just feel good. I’m still working on this though.
Accepting someone’s opinion doesn’t mean that you surrender and let them “win”. Nor does it mean that you need to just sit back and cannot take any action. You can accept and still take action to change something if that is what you’d like to do. Accepting just means that you let that person think and feels as s/he likes without judging it. When you just accept and let your judgements rest it’s easier to really understand each other and connect.
Singing oneness!