This lovely story has been sitting here lonely for over five years just waiting for a comment. I stumbled in here "by accident" so I'll make a comment to keep this lonely story company, maybe for another five years.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=145
My husband and I - and our teen-age son - visited India in May 1984. During that time I had a very strange and haunting encounter.
He was a Hindu boy, about the same age as my son., with a very interesting question. "How can I make God my friend?"
What a question! And why on earth would he ask a Sikh? "You're a Hindu, young man. Why not ask a Brahmin?"
"I am a Brahmin. No one gives me an answer that makes sense."
So I give it a try. "If you want God to be your friend, maybe you should be a friend to God."
He perked up at once, then again looked dejected. "I don't know how." He looked hopefully at me.
"When you greet people, you put your hands together and say 'Naamaste," do you not?"
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=145
He nodded.
"And when you say that, you are recognising the God in each person, right."
"Yes."
"OK. To be God's friend, greet everyone you meet that way, no matter who they are, and mean it. See the God in everyone you meet."
"OK, I'll do - Wait a minute, you mean EVERYBODY I meet? EVERYBODY?"
"Everybody. It doesn't work unless it's everybody."
"Even Dalits and Shudras?"
"Especially Dalits and Shudras, anyone you believe is less than you are. And people you dislike, too."
"There's no other way?"
"Not that I know of."
Dead silence. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a big grin. "OK. I'll try it! I really want God to be my friend."
That's the end of the story. I never saw or heard of the young Brahmin again. I still think about him now and then and wonder whatever became of him.
And I still haven't figured out why he asked a strange Sikh woman such a question.