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General Painting Without A Canvas (part 2)

Does truth Require Belief?

  • Yes

    Votes: 6 40.0%
  • No

    Votes: 9 60.0%

  • Total voters
    15

Astroboy

ਨਾਮ ਤੇਰੇ ਕੀ ਜੋਤਿ ਲਗਾਈ (Previously namjap)
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Gur Kee Moorat Munn Mein Dhyaan


Can someone help me find the full shabad ?
 

spnadmin

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Wasn't this in a recent hukamnama NamJap? I will take a look. The transliteration is really off on this one. I have to start a thread -- it will be boring -- on why translits of the exact same thing can look so different. It is all about the English language being a complete phonetic mess. If the world could read Gurmukhi it would be the perfect language for the Internet.

Get everyone on Unicode!!!
 

spnadmin

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Here it is Guru Arjan Dev Ang 864

ਗੋਂਡ ਮਹਲਾ ੫ ॥
gonadd mehalaa 5 ||
Gond, Fifth Mehl:

ਗੁਰ ਕੀ ਮੂਰਤਿ ਮਨ ਮਹਿ ਧਿਆਨੁ ॥
gur kee moorath man mehi dhhiaan || versus Gur Kee Moorat Munn Mein Dhyaan
Meditate on the image of the Guru within your mind;

ਗੁਰ ਕੈ ਸਬਦਿ ਮੰਤ੍ਰੁ ਮਨੁ ਮਾਨ ॥
gur kai sabadh manthra man maan ||
let your mind accept the Word of the Guru's Shabad, and His Mantra.

v ਗੁਰ ਕੇ ਚਰਨ ਰਿਦੈ ਲੈ ਧਾਰਉ ॥
gur kae charan ridhai lai dhhaaro ||
Enshrine the Guru's feet within your heart.


ਗੁਰੁ ਪਾਰਬ੍ਰਹਮੁ ਸਦਾ ਨਮਸਕਾਰਉ ॥੧॥
gur paarabreham sadhaa namasakaaro ||1||
Bow in humility forever before the Guru, the Supreme Lord God. ||1||


v ਮਤ ਕੋ ਭਰਮਿ ਭੁਲੈ ਸੰਸਾਰਿ ॥
math ko bharam bhulai sansaar ||
Let no one wander in doubt in the world.


ਗੁਰ ਬਿਨੁ ਕੋਇ ਨ ਉਤਰਸਿ ਪਾਰਿ ॥੧॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥
gur bin koe n outharas paar ||1|| rehaao ||
Without the Guru, no one can cross over. ||1||Pause||


ਭੂਲੇ ਕਉ ਗੁਰਿ ਮਾਰਗਿ ਪਾਇਆ ॥
bhoolae ko gur maarag paaeiaa ||
The Guru shows the Path to those who have wandered off.


ਅਵਰ ਤਿਆਗਿ ਹਰਿ ਭਗਤੀ ਲਾਇਆ ॥
avar thiaag har bhagathee laaeiaa ||
He leads them to renounce others, and attaches them to devotional worship of the Lord.


ਜਨਮ ਮਰਨ ਕੀ ਤ੍ਰਾਸ ਮਿਟਾਈ ॥
janam maran kee thraas mittaaee ||
He obliterates the fear of birth and death.


ਗੁਰ ਪੂਰੇ ਕੀ ਬੇਅੰਤ ਵਡਾਈ ॥੨॥
gur poorae kee baeanth vaddaaee ||2||
The glorious greatness of the Perfect Guru is endless. ||2||


ਗੁਰ ਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ ਊਰਧ ਕਮਲ ਬਿਗਾਸ ॥
gur prasaadh ooradhh kamal bigaas ||
By Guru's Grace, the inverted heart-lotus blossoms forth,

ਅੰਧਕਾਰ ਮਹਿ ਭਇਆ ਪ੍ਰਗਾਸ ॥
andhhakaar mehi bhaeiaa pragaas ||
and the Light shines forth in the darkness.


ਜਿਨਿ ਕੀਆ ਸੋ ਗੁਰ ਤੇ ਜਾਨਿਆ ॥
jin keeaa so gur thae jaaniaa ||
Through the Guru, know the One who created you.


ਗੁਰ ਕਿਰਪਾ ਤੇ ਮੁਗਧ ਮਨੁ ਮਾਨਿਆ ॥੩॥
gur kirapaa thae mugadhh man maaniaa ||3||
By the Guru's Mercy, the foolish mind comes to believe. ||3||


ਗੁਰੁ ਕਰਤਾ ਗੁਰੁ ਕਰਣੈ ਜੋਗੁ ॥
gur karathaa gur karanai jog ||
The Guru is the Creator; the Guru has the power to do everything.

ਗੁਰੁ ਪਰਮੇਸਰੁ ਹੈ ਭੀ ਹੋਗੁ ॥
gur paramaesar hai bhee hog ||
The Guru is the Transcendent Lord; He is, and always shall be.


ਕਹੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਪ੍ਰਭਿ ਇਹੈ ਜਨਾਈ ॥
kahu naanak prabh eihai janaaee ||
Says Nanak, God has inspired me to know this.


ਬਿਨੁ ਗੁਰ ਮੁਕਤਿ ਨ ਪਾਈਐ ਭਾਈ ॥੪॥੫॥੭॥
bin gur mukath n paaeeai bhaaee ||4||5||7||
Without the Guru, liberation is not obtained, O Siblings of Destiny. ||4||5||7||

Any other requests, anyone?


Interestingly at the bottom of this same page,

ਗੁਰੁ ਨਾਨਕੁ ਨਾਨਕੁ ਹਰਿ ਸੋਇ ॥੪॥੭॥੯॥
gur naanak naanak har soe ||4||7||9||
Nanak is the Guru; Nanak is the Lord Himself. ||4||7||9||
 

spnadmin

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Nam Jap ji

You are welcome.

For anyone who is interested in how I found this -- it says a lot about the importance of learning Gurmukhi -- because Gurmukhi is a consistent system of letters and sounds -- and English is not.

Gur Kee Moorat Munn Mein Dhyaan was not easy to find using the transliteration -- you can see from the first line that the same sequence of words and their sounds can be spelled two different ways in translit -- different enough to make a search engine tell you that there are 0 matches -- and you know that cannot be true. Both spellings BTW are correct. But a search engine want you to use only one spellings, ITS spellings.

After a few failed experiments with different ways to sound out some of the words, e.g., Gur Guru and Guroo for Nam Japs's Gur -- or murath and muraatth and moorath for Nam Jap's moorath -- I finally gave up using the translit. Instead I resorted to searching using my English equivalents with 4 of the words in Nam Jap's example. That led to a quick find.

Why does this happen? Compilations of SGGS in Gurmukhi, transliteration, and English employ one scholar to do the English translation and another scholar, who is an expert in English phonics or linguistic patterns, to do the transliteration. This is a person who can figure out precise equivalents between Punjabi sounds and English sounds. The problem is English is not precise. In English several combination of vowels or vowels and consonants make the SAME sound. Which confuses a search engine because it is using a system that may not be shared by another search engine. And the system may not be used by many Punjabi speakers. An example from Nam Jap's sentence is munn which means mind, but on the searchgurbani.com database is spelled man. And that happened because the a and u in English sound exactly alike, they both sound like the u in the word put because of the placement of m and n in man and m and nn in munn. Man and Munn sound exactly alike.

Same thing with the th sound in mooratth. The th sound in mooratth is a soft th, as in them. Your place your tongue behind your front teeth instead of between your front teeth. So the person who completed the translit used tth to indicate that. The word granthi is pronounced the same way.

What is the moral of this story? When posting a shabad, it helps everyone to use the Gurmukhi, translit and the English. The English may actually be more helpful for Punjabi speakers who do not know Gurmukhi and they are looking for something in SGGS. Just translating a line from a translit may not be difficult, but locating a shabad can be difficult using transliterations.

Apologies to anyone who thought this was boring and unnecessary.
 
Oct 14, 2007
3,369
54
Sachkhand
Respected aad ji,

What is the meaning of BTW /ITS in the above?

Just to add no transliteration will be the perfect chariot for conveying the original. Words are just like concepts only and the concept of one language can never match with that of another. Your concern is genuine but then it is so with any language.

As in English there is an exact word reflected by 'man' one who does know only English is likely to pronounce it the way it is done in English only. One who knows Gurmukhi can always make out that 'man' and 'munn' would be the same. I can appreciate your problem as well that is on account of non-usage of Gurmukhi.

Even if one learns one has to converse as well to arrive at the pronunciation, a difficult thing these days.

Enschulidigan sie bittee.
 

spnadmin

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Jun 17, 2004
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Sikh80 ji

You make some very good points. BTW means by the way, and ITS was just the word its in caps to emphasize. Sorry if that confused you.
 

Admin

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Jun 1, 2004
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Aaad002 Ji,

This is one of the most important points raised at in this forum. Ii think this post deserves a new topic under "Discourses in English" section as a sticky. You can also present your treasure of thoughts in blog so that these are always available as a ready reference. Thanks for your presence at SPN. :)

Regards
Aman

Nam Jap ji

You are welcome.

For anyone who is interested in how I found this -- it says a lot about the importance of learning Gurmukhi -- because Gurmukhi is a consistent system of letters and sounds -- and English is not.

Gur Kee Moorat Munn Mein Dhyaan was not easy to find using the transliteration -- you can see from the first line that the same sequence of words and their sounds can be spelled two different ways in translit -- different enough to make a search engine tell you that there are 0 matches -- and you know that cannot be true. Both spellings BTW are correct. But a search engine want you to use only one spellings, ITS spellings.

After a few failed experiments with different ways to sound out some of the words, e.g., Gur Guru and Guroo for Nam Japs's Gur -- or murath and muraatth and moorath for Nam Jap's moorath -- I finally gave up using the translit. Instead I resorted to searching using my English equivalents with 4 of the words in Nam Jap's example. That led to a quick find.

Why does this happen? Compilations of SGGS in Gurmukhi, transliteration, and English employ one scholar to do the English translation and another scholar, who is an expert in English phonics or linguistic patterns, to do the transliteration. This is a person who can figure out precise equivalents between Punjabi sounds and English sounds. The problem is English is not precise. In English several combination of vowels or vowels and consonants make the SAME sound. Which confuses a search engine because it is using a system that may not be shared by another search engine. And the system may not be used by many Punjabi speakers. An example from Nam Jap's sentence is munn which means mind, but on the searchgurbani.com database is spelled man. And that happened because the a and u in English sound exactly alike, they both sound like the u in the word put because of the placement of m and n in man and m and nn in munn. Man and Munn sound exactly alike.

Same thing with the th sound in mooratth. The th sound in mooratth is a soft th, as in them. Your place your tongue behind your front teeth instead of between your front teeth. So the person who completed the translit used tth to indicate that. The word granthi is pronounced the same way.

What is the moral of this story? When posting a shabad, it helps everyone to use the Gurmukhi, translit and the English. The English may actually be more helpful for Punjabi speakers who do not know Gurmukhi and they are looking for something in SGGS. Just translating a line from a translit may not be difficult, but locating a shabad can be difficult using transliterations.

Apologies to anyone who thought this was boring and unnecessary.
 
Oct 14, 2007
3,369
54
Sachkhand
Ok. Thanks BTW I was reading these lines.

sloku ] (578-1)

Shalok:

jo loVIdy rwm syvk syeI kWiFAw ] (578-1, vfhMsu, mÚ 5)

Those who long for the Lord, are said to be His servants.

nwnk jwxy siq sWeI sMq n bwhrw ]1] (578-2, vfhMsu, mÚ 5)

Nanak knows this Truth, that the Lord is not different from His Saint. ||1||​
 

spnadmin

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Jun 17, 2004
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Aman ji,

::cool:: You are kind. Start a blog and a thread in Discourses in English -- two ways to track difficulties and solutions going from one language to another reading Gurbani online. Will do it (both) Chief!!!
 
Hmm interesting results... we sikhs seem to be split down the middle when it comes to epistemology.

I think my mediocre post might have led to some confusion. i tried to make it as simple as possible. trying not to add my own bias to the poll.

so instead of rephrasing, let me re-haul the entire poll:

are belief and truth exactly the same thing? are you a skeptic? are you an internalist or an externalist? Where would the sikh stand? or better yet, the question of the century; Where SHOULD the sikh stand?

are you fond of this?
Knowledge_venn_diagram.png



i guess i am asking the wrong the question... i should be asking ... how much do your circles overlap? would you add more circles? how would you justify the addition of more circles?

"what tangled webs we weave"

cheers
 

spnadmin

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Jun 17, 2004
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Uhmm....

Sometimes truth overlaps with belief and sometimes it doesn't. A scientific truth (in the tradition of the scientific method) would not depend on belief, but on systematic disbelief of an hypothesis. A religious truth would depend on belief.

You are recently out of college -- so surely you remember in one science course or another - and I can't remember for sure. Are there not 4 kinds of truth? Only one coincides with belief.

We can talk about knowledge later -- makes the thread stay in play longer.

So to get to my bottom line -- the circles have to be re-arranged. Or not?

I will see if I can figure this out -- maybe William James......:{-:)
 
Uhmm....

Sometimes truth overlaps with belief and sometimes it doesn't. A scientific truth (in the tradition of the scientific method) would not depend on belief, but on systematic disbelief of an hypothesis. A religious truth would depend on belief. [/quote]


sounds reasonable... (whatever reasonable means)… but what is a religious truth compared to another faculty of truth?


You are recently out of college -- so surely you remember in one science course or another - and I can't remember for sure. Are there not 4 kinds of truth? Only one coincides with belief.


I am clueless... 4 kinds of truth?


i know leibniz's 'necessary truth' (the one that depends upon the principle of contradiction and disproof or “deductive proof”)
Which is what they use for scientific justification

I can also recall that he paired necessary truths with contingeant truths...these can come to realization through induction (inductive reasoning)?
These are both called logical truths…because they are derived from logic

I guess there could also be social or moral truths…defined by society again with overlap.

I'm guessing these faculties of Truth overlap and become really complex...nearly impossible to tell the difference between necessary truths and contingeant truth in most instances.

We can talk about knowledge later -- makes the thread stay in play longer.
So to get to my bottom line -- the circles have to be re-arranged. Or not?
I will see if I can figure this out -- maybe William James......


I guess the bigger question I would like to ask here is… did our guru’s believe ‘knowledge’ is a psychological construct (internalists) or a set physical quantification (externalists)? Or both?

Or is this question heretical and offensive?
 

spnadmin

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Jun 17, 2004
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Now we are getting the crux of the matter. What did the gurus believe about knowledge? Great inquiry!

As for 4 kinds of truth.

Deductive or logical
Formal or mathematical
Empirical or inductive
Religious based on a priori assumptions (beliefs) about good, evil and the supernatural.

This is real threadbare stuff on my part -- it has been more than 30 years since I was thinking about these things.

Well back to

I guess the bigger question I would like to ask here is… did our guru’s believe ‘knowledge’ is a psychological construct (internalists) or a set physical quantification (externalists)? Or both?

WoW! I can't wait.

 
Now we are getting the crux of the matter. What did the gurus believe about knowledge? Great inquiry!

I didnt want to come out and say it directly... but that is what i was leaning towards when I asked; "does truth require belief"?

if you say no; by deduction you follow some form of externalism
If you say yes; you are more oriented towards the internalist camp.

i know its a very slippery slope (i don't really approve of dichotomies). But for this case I think people generally make a choice or lean to one side of the spectrum. What makes it slippery? I'm trying to analyze eastern philosophy using the rubrics of anglophone epistemology.

I thought it would be a great measure, on how in tune with materialism sikhs are. (To what extent does the general public view 'reality' or 'truth' separate from their minds).

Similiarly i would like to assess the state in which our guru's preached (because i do not know)...then i would like to see if it has any profound influence on thought processes of the larger sikh populace today.

but i think my approach and question was lacking...plus we only have 5 votes (hardly a pole worth bragging about)...they too are lousily split down the middle. :roll:

plus if we do determine if the guru's were internalists or externalist (which at this time... i doubt we can) it will further add bias to peoples response...which I don't want, as it would hinder my secondary goal.

maybe im asking for too much.::cool:2:

I asked a very similiar question in "painting without a canvas (part 1)"
http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/general/19366-painting-without-a-canvas.html

but structured this all wrong as well...and the discussion really didnt flower as i hoped.

What i Don't understand is how something so critical in philosophy has slipped under the radar when it comes to sikhism...ive been looking for literature but cant really find any. to tell you the truth.. i dont think ive been looking hard enough.

cheers
 

spnadmin

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Sinister ji

Don't give up yet. Part of the problem is that on a forum many people are interested in serious discussion, but have limited time or willingness to analyze in depth. You may get more answers. Wait a few more days.

Let's see what happens. My own guess: The Gurus may have also been disposed in one direction or another -- the idea of the temple and the fortress -- contemplatives and warriors. But then again, when one is a realized soul, as the Gurus all were, then dichotomies no longer make sense to that mind -- and perhaps the Gurus were able to balance both internalist and externalist understandings of Truth. They were also very smart and probably understood all too well the strengths of each approach. Maybe they are smiling about this discussion right now.
 

spnadmin

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Jun 17, 2004
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I thought you would find this interesting. It is linked to other web pages that examine knowledge, truth and belief from the perspective of science and from the perspective of religion. The point of all the pages -- science and religion are very different, because they have different goals. Science and religion however play complementary roles.

Science Is Not a Belief System
 

pk70

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Feb 25, 2008
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i guess i am asking the wrong the question... i should be asking ... how much do your circles overlap? would you add more circles? how would you justify the addition of more circles?

"what tangled webs we weave"

cheers

Sinister ji,
Your question is about Sikhs, means sIKHISM MEANS A RELIGION.
When it comes to a religion, truth varies religion to religion. In a religion, belief becomes a base to understand that 'Truth" Most of the religions do not require knowledge to understand the "truth"; however, Sikhism requires knowledge to understand the "truth" in this context unlike other religions. Sikhism also requires belief with one clear reason. Since the truth, Sikhism talks about is the one that was experienced by Guru Ji. After having said that, simple answer to your question if the circles will over lap, YES, they have to as per above explanation. Remember, I havent touched "scientific truth "at all.
 
Oct 14, 2007
3,369
54
Sachkhand
Now we are getting the crux of the matter. What did the gurus believe about knowledge? Great inquiry!

As for 4 kinds of truth.

Deductive or logical
Formal or mathematical
Empirical or inductive
Religious based on a priori assumptions (beliefs) about good, evil and the supernatural.

Slight addition. Is Sikhism really a priori assumption~: May be or may be not as it is beyond reasoning. May be it is not an empiricist based study as well but is not a radicalism leading to some thing that senses can make us know the truth. Something is missing.
Subject is good but abstract...Cary on .shall pep into from time to time........
E & OE
 

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