Dehra maseet soi puja au namaaz oi

He is in the temple as He is in the mosque,

He is in the Hindu worship as He is in the Muslim prayer.

Gods and demons who guard the treasures

Of the God of the riches, the musicians celestial,

The Hindus and the Muslims- they are all one,

They have each the habits of different homes,

But all men have the same eyes, the same body,

The same form compounded of the same four elements-

Earth, air, fire and water.

Thus the Abhekh of the Hindu and the Allah of Muslims are one,

The Quaran and the Puran praise the same Lord,

They are all of one Form,

The one Lord made them all.

written by Guru Gobind Singh Ji

(picture taken in the Great Mosque at Sousse, Tunesia.

people

visiting the arab world

Sorry, i have not updated for a while. So i try to catch up.
We have been visiting Tunesia, watching the Arab world a bit. I enjoy being in different parts of the world, seeing how equal we are.
Going to a moslim country gives very odd reactions, like every person is about to blow himself up over there. People have such strange ideas about islam, which are mostly basesd on prejudices. So there is still a lot of work to be done in interfaith forums and meetings. It is important that we start to know each other; to know each other is the beginning of peace.
Because we are all brothers and sisters!

(On the picture the great mosque of Monastir)

Zho

The day before Christmas this book arrived by post. The timing was perfect, this book is a real gift! It is the visual art journal of a young Dutch woman, Marloes Lasker.
She is wonderful, almost blind and deaf, she made this absoluty honest diary of last year. Her illness is not easy, but she radiates so much happiness.
Her dharma name (she is a zen buddhist) is "Ziende het onzienlijke" ("Seeing the unseen"). So that made the title of the book:"ZHO" (Ziende Het Onzienlijke).

She has a nice blog: www.tussenpoZen.com and i wrote her that her dharma name reminded me of some Gurbani by Guru Angad Dev:

Akhin bajhon vekhna bin kana sunana

To see without eyes,

without ears, hear,

to walk without feet,

without hands, work,

to speak without tongue-

thus living, yet detached from life.

o Nanak, if you follow the word of your master

You shall surely meet Him/Her.

debat

The reason why Harjinder Singh and Amrik Singh were in Sint-Truiden, my hometown was that a debat amongst several religions was held.
Harjinder Ji held the sikh colors and he did very well. Half of the audience were sikhs, most of them could not understand a word, but they came anyhow to support Harjinder Ji.
That is why Sint-Truiden is called Sikh (or Singh)-Truiden!!!!!

The bottom line of the debat was:

"If you can't see God in all,

you can't see God at all."

And where did we hear that before?
So the sikhs had the last word...

interreligious blossom blessing

Before going to the gurdwara for the Vaisaikhi celebration, we had to participate in a interreligious blossom blessing. It was out in the garden of the Catholic nuns in H., under the old cherry tree. There were members of catholiscism, bahai, buddhism, hinduism and sikhism. Our muslim brothers were not there this year.
We came a little late (indian time) and left a little early because we wanted to be on time in the gurdwara. But it was heart warming anyway. All these good people from different religious traditions... if only the full world was like this!

And by the way, it is warm in every way: today it is 30° C. Punjabi weather!