A few things which struck suddenly 5 minutes ago about "revealed" religions (I include Sikhi in this to an extent) - if a person is somehow stranded on a desert island, or for some reason it is impossible for them to learn about the religion, what happens then?
Or what happens if you are stranded somewhere with no idea which direction Makkah is in, and with no means to learn what to do? To the Sikh, what if you are traveling somewhere and in need of urgent guidance from Shri Guru Granth Saheb; what do you do then? The only place you can really find a SGGS is in gurdwara, and there are many places on earth where you could be at least a 5 hour journey from one. Something that only recently occurred to me as weird is how inaccessible SGGS must have been before the internet. If not for the internet, I most definitely would never have heard even a word quoted from Shri Guru Granth Saheb - but the Bible is everywhere I look, and I know many places I could go tomorrow morning and buy or borrow a Qu'ran without too much hassle.
How did Sikhs study the SGGS in depth with only one per community? I suppose Gurbani is recited as often as the gurdwara is open. Maybe you could argue that this is an important communal aspect of Sikhism.
I am sure this topic could be delved into more deeply, but there are just a few questions that popped into my head quite recently. Probably a simple and cliché kind of question, but the community here always manages to churn out some interesting perspectives.
This is what I'm getting at: why isn't religion (or worship, to be more specific) something we should need only our own bodies and minds for, and nothing more? When it comes down to it, isn't that all we have? Why do you think we need dastar, a gurdwara, 5 Ks, the Bible, (if you're Catholic, a Priest for consecration on the Sabbath), a Qu'ran, prayer mat, compass & map, etc. etc... when there are possible scenarios when all of those would be unavailable to us, and all we would have would be our bodies, minds and conscience?
Or what happens if you are stranded somewhere with no idea which direction Makkah is in, and with no means to learn what to do? To the Sikh, what if you are traveling somewhere and in need of urgent guidance from Shri Guru Granth Saheb; what do you do then? The only place you can really find a SGGS is in gurdwara, and there are many places on earth where you could be at least a 5 hour journey from one. Something that only recently occurred to me as weird is how inaccessible SGGS must have been before the internet. If not for the internet, I most definitely would never have heard even a word quoted from Shri Guru Granth Saheb - but the Bible is everywhere I look, and I know many places I could go tomorrow morning and buy or borrow a Qu'ran without too much hassle.
How did Sikhs study the SGGS in depth with only one per community? I suppose Gurbani is recited as often as the gurdwara is open. Maybe you could argue that this is an important communal aspect of Sikhism.
I am sure this topic could be delved into more deeply, but there are just a few questions that popped into my head quite recently. Probably a simple and cliché kind of question, but the community here always manages to churn out some interesting perspectives.
This is what I'm getting at: why isn't religion (or worship, to be more specific) something we should need only our own bodies and minds for, and nothing more? When it comes down to it, isn't that all we have? Why do you think we need dastar, a gurdwara, 5 Ks, the Bible, (if you're Catholic, a Priest for consecration on the Sabbath), a Qu'ran, prayer mat, compass & map, etc. etc... when there are possible scenarios when all of those would be unavailable to us, and all we would have would be our bodies, minds and conscience?
