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Summary of Question:	Disability
Category:	Other
Date Posted:	Thursday, 12/09/1999 5:07 PM MST

Hi,

Swagatam.

I have two questions.

In the Rehat maryada there seems to be an aversion to people with disability. ie no-one who cannot use there limbs correctly can give amrit to anyone being entered into the khalsa. Why is this. Being physically disabled should not make you less spiritually unaware of gods love or less in his eyess.

What is the status of disabled people in Sikhism? People born disabled or who become disabled. I refer to the law of Karma. Are they prejudged by karma for past evil doing?

Secondly I would like to ask this question. I meet generally two types of amritdhari. One who has been born a sikh , lived in a small cliques,an enclosed life with not much comunion with the depravities of human life.

Other people such as addicts. murderers, etc who have found the love of God through personnel trial.

Whose faith is right or stronger. Whose love of God is truer?

Salaam Alaykum.

Jas

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REPLY
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Dear Jas:

Sat Siri Akaal.

On the query of disability, search this Forum using keyword "disabled" and then double click on "rehat maryada" link that comes up (dated 5/6/01) for discussion of the first part of your query.

Sikhi regards ALL people as equal in eyes of God. All of us were created by the SAME CREATOR and how He made us is how He made us. We are in no position to judge why he made her beautiful and him ugly and her deaf and him with no legs, etc. We are in no position to decide that the one born disabled had a really bad karma and is a bad person. There are SO many karmic reasons why God made us as we are. A most beautiful woman could have been a rank serial killer in a former life. No telling. We cannot judge God's ways or plans or Hukum (will). This is in Japji Sahib, the morning prayer of the Sikh.

By the same token, Sikh Gurbani explains that God makes some of us devoted and some not. He makes some of us murderers and some saints. He raises the lowly when He wills, and lowers the so-called high ones (also in Japji Sahib). Devotion is a matter of the heart. I have seen equal devotion in converts as well as those born Sikh, as you describe above. We cannot possibly know another's heart or its relation to God and Guru, nor should we try. As Sikhs, we must see God in all, PERIOD. For God is ALL-in-All, period.

God bless you,
--DKK