changed here and there. Angad took over for Nanak. After Angad Amar Das took over and allowed Sikhs to challenege "the social hierarchies of the Hindu World." He also created new rituals and ceremonies and allowed a more friendly atmosphere to the religion. After this his son in law Mar Das' took over he built the city of
Amristsar as the center of the religion. He requested and was granted the piece of land from Mughal Emperor Akbar. Next was Arjan who put together their sacred book and a huge temple known as Hari
Mandir for the worship of God. Sikhists also are monotheists believing in only one God, they also believe in reincarnation and not hurting living things. During his lifetime the Sikhs were persecuted like several other religions in today. This forced the Sikhs to develop a militia type attitude in their religion. Har
Gobind developed the first Sikh army and created more symbolism into their religion. Har Rai took over after this and was beheaded after fighting the emperor's policy to destroy all other religions besides
Islam which further proves that Islam isn't neccessarily a peaceful religion. Gobind Singh was taken over and contributed many more teachings to their holy book and taught many more military ideas.
He creaded what is called the "orthodox" of their religion known as the "Khalsa".
Today Sikhism is almost like Christianity in the fact that it has many different denominations all hailing they are the pure and closest to the original attempt at the religion. Gobind Singh was the last of their leaders since he gave the leadership role to the book of their religious teachings. This allowed the religion to
never die with one of their leaders and continues today to be a very powerful religion.
Even today and in the past 200 years more fighting has continued against the Sikhs and they have merely either conquered their opponents or merely moved around. Their religion never dieing or
fading because of persecution. All this is a great example of religion staying alive since most
religions have taken on similar roles of going from normative and peaceful to having a military role due to persecution to peacefullness again and etc. As with Christianity today it seems we
are a mix between defensive and offesive as it is being persecuted in several parts of the world and the terrorists have waged Jihad against the Christians. The Christians spread the bible without the fighting they did back during the crusades however. Similar in recency with Sikhism.
this religion is focused around was a man. This man named
Siddhartha Guatama. He is said to have woken up out of "life" which
will be explained later. It is said that He was a marraid man and
had a child and was part of a family that would have placed him in
royalty to inherit. He decided to abondon all of these to find out
more about himself and life. In the book it's written that his
unhappiness was explored during the "Four Passing Sights". The
first was seeing an old man "gaunt, broken-toothed, trembling as he
leaned on his staff." As written in Smith's book. The next day
he "saw a body racked with disease, lying by the roadside. On a
third outing he encountered a corpse." While seeing these three
things he learned about aging, disease, and death. His fourth sight
was a monk with a shaved head and a robe, and bowl, which taught him
to renounce the world around him and it's posessions. After all
this he had his "Great Going Forth" in which he left his wife and
child and road out to the forest to seek enlightenment. During
these six years he went through three different phases, seeking out
two high Hindu monks and seeking out ascetics to see their
teachings. After this he sat down under the Bodhi tree and was
tempted by "Mara" or the evil one. After he resisted the
temptations it's said he found Nirvana and instead of deciding to
remain in Nirvana he decided to leave it and go back to noraml life
and teach others about it. After Buddha died since most of his
teaching was on him where in other religions it's in a god or
something immortal and usually in things that are written down his
religion immediately split into two groups and that is one of the
reasons it left india. Also his religion did not take hold of the
traditional things within religion. For example he preached to
disregard authority and that you are in control of your own life; he
taught to not have any rituals, to not speculate things you can't
know; to not have traditions; to be one with yourself and focus on
yourself instead of others; to rid the though of the supernatural
and don't believe or do any mystics.
There are "Four Noble Truths" that Buddha taught for his religion.
The first is life is dukkha or suffering. The second is that the
cause of dukkha is tanha, which means desire or desire to fulfill
your own delight. The Third Noble truth is overcoming Tanha and the
fourth noble truth tells of how to cure it. In order to overcome
Tanha one most use the "Eightfold Path".