Bowing To Saints. Why Yes & Why Not ?

[etinder]

bowing to anyone other than Guru

I guess there are two types of learning that is involved here,if we go as per sikhi teachings a sikh should bow or ideally surrender himself or his ego per se only before Guru Granth sahibji,
but there is another perspective and that is because of the cultural and sociological learning,which tells us or teaches us to touch feet or bow in front of our elders and thats becoz of sheer respect.
But the basic difference in both of em lies is that in the first case we r surrendering ourself to the Guru n asking for Guru's Nadar but in the latter wer just being humble n showing respect to the one who is elder to us by age or may be in the issue raised here is have more knowledge of guru's words than us, so just being humble and want to learn more abt the Guru.

 

[Neutral Singh]

Welcome etinder Ji

The question is Should we bow to Saints or not ? What are your views about Babas in Deras ?

 

[CaramelChocolate]

but there is another perspective and that is because of the cultural and sociological learning,which tells us or teaches us to touch feet or bow in front of our elders and thats becoz of sheer respect.

Religion should come BEFORE culture, not culture before religion!
There are Indian Muslims that will not bow to elders because is it against their faith.
In my opinion Sikhs who do this are following a Hindu influence.

~CaramelChocolate~
The little philosopher

 

[Arvind]

Dear etinder ji,
I understand what you have said about two different perspectives, Somehow I disagree with those. As the discussion is about bowing to babas in deras, I take this as a bhaid-chaal (sheep following). Why? - One bows to a baba, because others call him baba. We dont have any gauge with us to measure other's spirituality quotient (Dont know if there is any thing like that though). I am not able to identify an enlightened person from a crowd, and if I bow to some baba, its just because others are doing it.
Coming to the point, babas may be taken as a senior students on this path, keeping Guru Granth Sahib ji as the only Guru.
Best Regards.

 

[etinder]

As raised by thinking one, sikh philosophy and caramel what i want to say is that as a Sikh myself i belong to the extreme side of the spectrum where i dont bow in front of anyone, i m very much prejudiced towards baba's and these deras and i dont consider them more than shops for making money and gratification of egos,i dont need a mediator between myself and my guru.I dont need anyone when i can myself have all the treasure of knowledge in front of me.

but there is another perspective too even our gurus acknowledge these saints and when we bow and surrender ourself to SGGS we are in a way bowing to the saints like kabirji, babafarid, namdevji, ravidasji etal, and this debate abt the identification of true saint amongst the thousand hypocrites..have been going on since ages.

So here i feel the choice is of the individual himself that what he want to do in the situation, i myself wud like to respect any person who is spreading the word of Guru and is trying to sow the seeds of Gurus love in any human being irrespective of the caste creed and religion, although i agree with "thinking one" that we dont have a guage to judge any person abt his or her spiritual status i guess the basic rule of thumb can be whether that person (so called saint) is talking of Guru, Sikhi or himself.

And regarding to wht Caramel has asked i would like to present my opinion that religion is individualistic while culture is societal and you cant categorize culture on the basis of religion although it is a sub group of that particular culture or u can say a subculture. So we as an individual learn different set of value systems on the basis of family,environment,class etc and at times these values can be conflicting or overlapping also.

 

[Arvind]

Thats a good point etinder ji.

Regards.