More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
August 9 - August 15, 2023
To paraphrase Guru Nanak, “If we can conquer our minds, we can conquer the world.”
There is an old tale about when the sun was first setting. As her distance narrowed to the horizon, the light on earth slowly diminished. This made way for darkness to creep over the land. The people were afraid that when the sun would finally set, darkness would be permanent. “What will happen to us?” they said. Far, far across the land, in a small hut, a little lantern lifted its wick. It said, “I challenge the darkness. In my small corner, I will not let the darkness settle itself around me.” With this example many other little lanterns in other small huts lifted their wicks to the
...more
The lantern did not set out to save the world. Its satisfaction came in understanding the needs of those it could reach and in seeking to meet those needs. This is what it means to serve selflessly.
the Sikh outlook is that the entire world is fundamentally interconnected. Seva, therefore, is a way of caring for others, and it’s also a way of caring for ourselves. With each selfless act, we become slightly less selfish; with each loving action, we become slightly more loving. On their own, single acts of seva might seem random, but taken together, they bring light into our world and into each of us.
While our world is filled with pain and suffering, and while our culture focuses on the negative, there’s beauty all around us, too. Noticing it can restore our faith in one another and in life itself.
“If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” —james baldwin
Sikh teachings prepare us to meet the challenges in our lives with core principles, frameworks, and practices. At a time when failing to convince someone can be fatal and where an easy answer is sometimes a cultural betrayal, Sikh wisdom offers a necessary balm in an age of daily provocation.
there’s no winning when it comes to racism,
Notice how much more love there is in the world than hate.
Years later, I came across the words of Angela Davis that put into language what I’d felt so viscerally then: “In a racist society, it’s not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist.”
Sikhi places little emphasis on the afterlife because it’s a question of speculation: If no one knows with certainty what happens after we die, then why dwell on it so much? Sikhi teaches us to do what we can in the world that we know, that by dwelling in the here and now we can achieve joy and love and enlightenment.
opening our hearts and our minds is to open up our humanity.
Religion laid the groundwork for American racism.
The problem is not that people don’t see us. It’s that, too often, when people see us, they are unable to see our shared humanity.
Ignorance causes unnecessary tragedy for others simply because people are not willing to look beyond their own prejudices and hatred.
In his seminal book Orientalism, Edward Said reminds us that when outsiders tell our stories, their distorted representations come to be accepted as fact.
African proverb: “Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
Until and unless we tell our own stories, we will remain misrepresented, if we are even represented at all.
Many of us talk about wanting to fight hate with love, but not many of us know what that means or how to do it. Loving our neighbors unconditionally is one of those aphorisms that’s far easier to say out loud than it is to embody.
Those who, when faced with fight or flight, have chosen neither, finding that middle path of grace and compassion, even in the most extreme situations.
a core Sikh teaching: “No fear, No hate (Nirbhau, Nirvair).”
Rage, anger, and fear afflict us all, no matter our backgrounds and situations.
And while we often comfort ourselves by saying that this is just how people are, there is a simple truth that can set us free: We don’t have to live this way. Living with calm and compassion can be learned and earned.
Liberation is not about what happens to us after we die; it’s about the here and now.
We can believe anything. We can preach anything. But what truly shapes our character is what we practice.
My practice has taught me how to live with the paradoxes that hurt and frustrate us all: sharing what’s in our hearts without worrying that they might be crushed; caring deeply for others without relying on their validation; enduring hate without returning it; seeking constant growth without feeling pressure to attain perfection.
Racism always discriminates but rarely discerns.
we cannot explain our way into dignity, nor can we control how people choose to treat us—especially when they are operating out of fear.
We may not be able to fix all the problems or make our world perfect, but we can help the people around us who are suffering. And through our efforts, we can change ourselves. Striving every day to live a life of love and service will ultimately make us kinder, calmer, and happier.
Responding to hate with grace is not just about turning the other cheek; it’s also about turning inward and practicing those values we want to cultivate within ourselves.
Embracing difficult moments as opportunities for personal growth can be both empowering and liberating.
Our liberation comes in realizing that, no matter what’s happening in our lives, we can always choose joy and freedom.
My working thesis is that other people’s hate is not actually about you or me. It’s about an imagined sense of who we are based on bias and stereotypes.
While sympathy points toward our shared humanity, empathy honors it with depth and fullness.
James Baldwin put it like this: “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.”
To express anger is to come off as untamed and to feed into the stereotype of darker-skinned people being predisposed to violence. We have been taught, by our elders and through our experiences, not to show these characteristics to the world if we value our well-being.
A robbery also takes from us emotionally, breaking trust and compromising the assurance of being safe in one’s own home.
How we feel. How we see. How we connect. Each of these three insights stands on its own as transformative wisdom.
They build on and reinforce one another, creating an interlocking system to facilitate growth and challenge the darkness.
understanding his hate intellectually would not bring emotional comfort.
Tying our happiness to changing other people’s minds is a recipe for disappointment.
the Sikh teaching of chardi kala, a phrase that translates roughly to “everlasting optimism.”
fierce optimism
We know happiness well enough to know that we want it, but not well enough to know how to nurture it.
Happiness and optimism are sustained when we root them in the firmament of connectedness.
the idea of ik oankar: “Everything is divine,”
“Of course we’re in pain. But how could we be unhappy when God lives in our pain, too? Everything in life is beautiful, even the hard parts.”
Despite their different perspectives, there was one practice that every survivor mentioned: gratitude.
I was so focused on the pain that I hadn’t seen the blessings.
gratitude is not something that happens by accident but rather is cultivated through intention and practice.
