The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life

by Simran Jeet Singh

Seva demands humility, disabusing us of our desire to bear the weight of the entire world on our shoulders. Yes, there is endless suffering and injustice in our world, and yes, there are infinite issues to address. But aiming to fix all the problems around us or expecting ourselves and others to always do the right thing is not realistic. If that’s the goal we set for ourselves, then we are setting ourselves up for perpetual disappointment and frustration.

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

What does it mean to feel connected to the world all around us? How do we find love and joy in our everyday lives? And how do we learn to serve others and ensure justice in a world filled with suffering and inequities?

Questions i still ask

First, historically speaking, religion is the parent of American racism. Just a year after Columbus arrived in North America, Pope Alexander VI issued what would come to be known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which announced that Christians were superior to Indigenous “heathens” everywhere and therefore had the right to colonize them. Religion laid the groundwork for American racism.

Second, religion has been weaponized to uphold American racism. For instance, white supremacy often cloaks itself in the disguise of religion. We see this clearly in how Christian slaveholders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used the Bible to sanctify the enslavement of darker-skinned people.

Third, religious minorities experience racism because of how they look and what they believe. This racism has dire consequences for us all. For example, how we perceive religious groups and the threats they pose leads us to commit endless resources to combating foreign terrorism and hardly any to combat white nationalism, even when we’ve known for years that ...

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.

This has grieved me once i noticed prejudice, fear, bigotry, and ultimately racism.

Ignorance causes unnecessary tragedy for others simply because people are not willing to look beyond their own prejudices and hatred.

Ignorance and hate are strong sources resulting in powerful individuls using the fear for power. It is effortless for those to gather people with fear, ignornce, hate, and bigotry fueling the power.

In his seminal book Orientalism, Edward Said reminds us that when outsiders tell our stories, their distorted representations come to be accepted as fact.

Some journalists and politicians were speaking about us and for us, yet very few listened as we tried to speak about the events from our points of view.

Even if I tried to blend in by shaving and removing my turban, I’d still be perceived as a brown-skinned foreigner. Racism always discriminates but rarely discerns.

Facts

But I know now that 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.

Instead of trying to reconfigure how other people perceive us, we can focus instead on transforming ourselves for the better.

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.

It’s important to call out those who act on their racist ideas, and it’s critical that we call on those who harm others to do better, including at the institutional and systemic levels.

Embracing difficult moments as opportunities for personal growth can be both empowering and liberating.

When people say nasty things to me, I try to take in a deep breath, pause for a few seconds, and ask myself: Did I do something wrong? Did I cause this person harm? And if we replaced me with someone who looked like me, would this person attack them, too? By reflecting on these questions, I remind myself of one of the most powerful perspectives I’ve developed for dealing with hate—that, at its core, other people’s hatred is not about us.

I’ve grown a lot the past few years, particularly through embracing a painstaking personal challenge: endeavoring to see the humanity in a white supremacist who hatefully massacred members of my community as they prayed. Not to forgive him for what he did, and not to forget what he did, but to see his humanity in spite of what he did.

Sympathy might help see someone’s pain, but we still see the world through our own eyes, still rooted in our own self-centeredness. Empathy, on the other hand, is rooted in our connection.

The gap between the two is larger than it may seem: While sympathy points toward our shared humanity, empathy honors it with depth and fullness.

even though it didn’t carry the promise of social transformation or long-term justice, it reminded me that people were ultimately good and that they at least cared enough to reach out in crisis.

The first "it" is in reference to sympathy

We don’t have to minimize our pain, but we don’t have to let it isolate us either. When done responsibly, locating ourselves in relationship with one another, feeling connected, can be a powerful antidote to our own suffering.

we must learn to acknowledge our feelings while also keeping them in perspective.

connecting with others is about becoming more empathetic, reducing their suffering, and maintaining perspective.

Sikhs remember as the Lesser Holocaust (Chota Ghallughara), which took place in 1740, and the Greater Holocaust (Vadda Ghallughara), which occurred in 1762.

Don’t try to speak for every Sikh or even for your tradition. Instead, share your own perspective and experience, and as you do so, take the opportunity to introduce Americans to their Sikh neighbors.

I had the lived experience and depth of knowledge to speak about who we are and what our lives are like in America.

Simply acknowledging my hurt and making the conscious decision to try to heal made me feel lighter and more hopeful.

chardi kala, a phrase that translates roughly to “everlasting optimism.”

Every day, as Sikhs pray for the uplifting of all humanity (sarbat da bhala), they speak of chardi kala in the same breath.

Happiness and optimism are sustained when we root them in the firmament of connectedness.

If we see people as evil, then we will be drawn to anger and pessimism. No matter where we come from or what we do, we are susceptible to negativity:

While I was thinking about ik oankar, they were embodying it. While I was finding happiness in short bursts, they were living in chardi kala.

They all pointed to the idea of ik oankar: “Everything is divine,” the survivors would say.

At what moments do you find yourself most at peace? And are there specific practices that help you cultivate this feeling?

Despite their different perspectives, there was one practice that every survivor mentioned: gratitude.

gratitude is not something that happens by accident but rather is cultivated through intention and practice. The more we bring it into our lives, the stronger it becomes.

it was time to make gratitude a daily practice. I started simply, spending five minutes each evening reflecting on three things from that day for which I was grateful.

Sikhi teaches us to see every human being as equally divine and to reject the good-evil binary.

He didn’t see that light in himself or in other people. That’s why he could hurt them.”

dehumanizing someone we dislike is an easy perspective to hold, it’s a heavy and useless burden to carry.

ik oankar, is a vision of radical connectedness in which everything and everyone is bound together by a singular force.

Ik refers to the oneness of the world, the connectedness of reality, the intermingling of creator and creation, the integration of all we know, the wholeness of our being.

oankar, refers to a dynamic, divine force that permeates every aspect of our world.

this self-awareness is the difference between asking, “What’s wrong with you?” and asking the more empathetic and generative question, “What happened to you?”

Radical introspection enables me to see myself in them—and that simple connection can help us go from a place of intense resentment and anger to a place of sincere connection, inner peace, and in some cases perhaps the ability to change how people feel about us.

Ik oankar has universal value; it is a way of seeing and experiencing the world that evokes compassion, equity, justice, self-worth, and joy.

Bhai Ghanaiya.