A worthwhile and readable introduction to Sikhi and a strong testament to peaceful living.
Lessons from the Sikh faith.
Singh provides an accessible work that combines personal testimony of a fascinating and little-understood ethnic and religious minority in America and an introduction to the teachings of Sikhi (the author uses the Punjabi noun as opposed to the colonialized Sikhism). Singh’s life story—and the history of the Sikh community—has been shaped by misunderstanding, racism, and violence. The author recounts a shocking array of racial confrontations with people on public streets, in schools, in airports, and elsewhere. He chronicles the Sikh struggle through numerous periods of oppression and mass murder in India as well as incidents in the U.S., including the post–9/11 murder of a Sikh man and the 2012 massacre of a Sikh congregation in 2012. “They didn’t have to forgive the man who’d tormented them, but they didn’t have to internalize his hate either,” writes Singh. “Rather than calling for blood or revenge, they shared with the world a core Sikh teaching: “No fear, No hate (Nirbhau, Nirvair).” This concept—to “fight hate with love”—has helped the author deal with his own anger. He points to three major components of his faith that shaped his positivity: “chardi kala,” a teaching that imbues life with optimism and gratitude even amid pain and suffering; “ik oankar,” the concept that all people are divine, or have a light of divinity within them, making all people equal and worthy of respect; and “seva,” the practice of expressing love in all things, especially through service. “With each selfless act,” writes Singh, “we become slightly less selfish; with each loving action, we become slightly more loving.” The author calls on readers to seek a life of active empathy, seeing each person, even those who are hurtful, as valuable and worthy of kindness and love.
A worthwhile and readable introduction to Sikhi and a strong testament to peaceful living.Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-08797-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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