From:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/sikhism/holydays/gurpurbs/arjan.shtml
The Martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev
(1563-1606)
Guru Arjan Dev was the fifth Sikh Guru and the first Sikh martyr: he gave up his life for the Sikh people.
Contributions
The Guru laid the foundation of the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar. He also designed the four doors in a Gurdwara, proclaiming that "My faith is for the people of all castes and all creeds from whichever direction they come and to whichever direction they bow."
He also declared that all Sikhs should donate a tenth of their earnings to charity.
The greatest contribution he made to the Sikh faith was to compile all of the past Gurus' writings into one book, now the holy scripture: the Guru Granth Sahib. It was this holy book that made him a martyr.
Martyrdom
Guru Arjan Dev included the compositions of both Hindu and Muslim saints which he considered consistent with the teachings of Sikhism and the Gurus.
In 1606, the Muslim Emperor Jahangir ordered that he be tortured and sentenced to death after he refused to remove all Islamic and Hindu references from the Holy book.
He was made to sit on a burning hot sheet while boiling hot sand was poured over his burnt body. After enduring five days of unrelenting torture Guru Arjan Dev was taken for a bath in the river. As thousands watched he entered the river never to be seen again.
The way in which he died changed the course of Sikhism forever.
Thought for the Day, 16 June 2006
Rhidian Brook
We're in Hong Kong, staying at the William Booth Lodge - a Salvation Army guesthouse in downtown Kowloon. China and Christianity don't sit easily together and yet ever since Ingrid Bergman played Gladys Aylwood and led those children from the Inn of The Sixth Happiness I can't separate these things. This image has been compounded by the fact that we are about to spend a week with a modern day missionary - Jackie Pullinger - whose own story is every bit as deserving of the film treatment as her forerunner, another English girl who took a slow boat to China after obeying God's call.
There is rightly something heroic about someone who drops everything - their culture, their comfort, their ambition - in order to follow something greater than themselves. Something impressive about a person prepared to be stateless, rootless - a cultural orphan for the sake of a spiritual calling. But there's nothing glamorous about it. The pay is terrible; the uniform sucks; you get to keep company with the broken and the unbeautiful; what good you do usually goes unheralded. And most people are suspicious of your intentions. These days, taking your religious message to other nations goes against the accepted sensibility.
If the image of the missionary is now more Poisonwood Bible than Inn Of The 6th Happiness, maybe it's because the boom years for missionaries were too closely connected to imperialism. Solzhenitsyn said 'only own what you can carry with you'; the trouble with much missionary work in those colonial days is that instead of the gospel they took culture and instead of travelling light, they took heavy burdens.
But the planet has got smaller and methods have changed. Like St Paul, I really believe that a good thing should cross any boundary man cares to impose; that the gospel is for Greek and Jew, African and Englishman; but I also agree with St Francis: 'preach the gospel at all times and as a last resort use words.' The best missionaries are those have done just this: they have travelled light, lived their mission. On this journey we have seen its fruit, and it's often grown from seeds planted generations before. In Kenya I met a group of octogenarians who had worked for a white farmer all their lives. Without hesitation they told me "colonialism took away our freedom, our culture and our dignity; but someone also brought us the gospel and that we treasure; without it how could we have forgiven you?"
Perhaps it's an error to think of missionaries as a separate order of people who have to cross the ocean. William Booth himself challenged this idea at a time when it was hard to distinguish between imperialism and Christianity. In his manifesto 'In Darkest England' (a prophetic counter to Stanley's hugely popular 'In Darkest Africa') he said that there were people on his London doorstep in need of the gospel and he would start there before crossing any sea. There's no getting away from it, Jesus used the imperative verb when he instructed his followers to 'go and make disciples of all nations.' But he wasn't specific about where. Did he mean Hull or Hong Kong? Or did he mean just across the road? I think the point of the mission wasn't about where you go but how you go. The key was that he asked his followers to make disciples by teaching people 'to love God and our neighbours as ourselves.' A tough call to follow but one that makes us all potential missionaries.
copyright 2006 BBC
The Martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev
(1563-1606)
Guru Arjan Dev was the fifth Sikh Guru and the first Sikh martyr: he gave up his life for the Sikh people.
Contributions
The Guru laid the foundation of the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar. He also designed the four doors in a Gurdwara, proclaiming that "My faith is for the people of all castes and all creeds from whichever direction they come and to whichever direction they bow."
He also declared that all Sikhs should donate a tenth of their earnings to charity.
The greatest contribution he made to the Sikh faith was to compile all of the past Gurus' writings into one book, now the holy scripture: the Guru Granth Sahib. It was this holy book that made him a martyr.
Martyrdom
Guru Arjan Dev included the compositions of both Hindu and Muslim saints which he considered consistent with the teachings of Sikhism and the Gurus.
In 1606, the Muslim Emperor Jahangir ordered that he be tortured and sentenced to death after he refused to remove all Islamic and Hindu references from the Holy book.
He was made to sit on a burning hot sheet while boiling hot sand was poured over his burnt body. After enduring five days of unrelenting torture Guru Arjan Dev was taken for a bath in the river. As thousands watched he entered the river never to be seen again.
The way in which he died changed the course of Sikhism forever.
Thought for the Day, 16 June 2006
Rhidian Brook
We're in Hong Kong, staying at the William Booth Lodge - a Salvation Army guesthouse in downtown Kowloon. China and Christianity don't sit easily together and yet ever since Ingrid Bergman played Gladys Aylwood and led those children from the Inn of The Sixth Happiness I can't separate these things. This image has been compounded by the fact that we are about to spend a week with a modern day missionary - Jackie Pullinger - whose own story is every bit as deserving of the film treatment as her forerunner, another English girl who took a slow boat to China after obeying God's call.
There is rightly something heroic about someone who drops everything - their culture, their comfort, their ambition - in order to follow something greater than themselves. Something impressive about a person prepared to be stateless, rootless - a cultural orphan for the sake of a spiritual calling. But there's nothing glamorous about it. The pay is terrible; the uniform sucks; you get to keep company with the broken and the unbeautiful; what good you do usually goes unheralded. And most people are suspicious of your intentions. These days, taking your religious message to other nations goes against the accepted sensibility.
If the image of the missionary is now more Poisonwood Bible than Inn Of The 6th Happiness, maybe it's because the boom years for missionaries were too closely connected to imperialism. Solzhenitsyn said 'only own what you can carry with you'; the trouble with much missionary work in those colonial days is that instead of the gospel they took culture and instead of travelling light, they took heavy burdens.
But the planet has got smaller and methods have changed. Like St Paul, I really believe that a good thing should cross any boundary man cares to impose; that the gospel is for Greek and Jew, African and Englishman; but I also agree with St Francis: 'preach the gospel at all times and as a last resort use words.' The best missionaries are those have done just this: they have travelled light, lived their mission. On this journey we have seen its fruit, and it's often grown from seeds planted generations before. In Kenya I met a group of octogenarians who had worked for a white farmer all their lives. Without hesitation they told me "colonialism took away our freedom, our culture and our dignity; but someone also brought us the gospel and that we treasure; without it how could we have forgiven you?"
Perhaps it's an error to think of missionaries as a separate order of people who have to cross the ocean. William Booth himself challenged this idea at a time when it was hard to distinguish between imperialism and Christianity. In his manifesto 'In Darkest England' (a prophetic counter to Stanley's hugely popular 'In Darkest Africa') he said that there were people on his London doorstep in need of the gospel and he would start there before crossing any sea. There's no getting away from it, Jesus used the imperative verb when he instructed his followers to 'go and make disciples of all nations.' But he wasn't specific about where. Did he mean Hull or Hong Kong? Or did he mean just across the road? I think the point of the mission wasn't about where you go but how you go. The key was that he asked his followers to make disciples by teaching people 'to love God and our neighbours as ourselves.' A tough call to follow but one that makes us all potential missionaries.
copyright 2006 BBC