Guru Nanak Festival
¤ The Divine Guru of Sikh
Community
The Birth of Guru Nanak
The Guru was born amidst portents of greatness. Heavenly light played
about the mud walls of the birthing room in his grandfather’s
house.
The child was born to Kalyan Chand, the patwari of the small village
of Talwandi. In that year of 1469, the family priest was called in to
cast the infant’s horoscope, and he told Kalyan Chand that this
was no ordinary child. “He will worship and acknowledge but One
Formless God, and teach others to do so...Every creature, he will
consider to be God’s own Creation.”
The Mystic Childhood of The Guru
From the very beginning, he was not as other children. In school, he
picked up the wooden plank that served as his slate, and wrote on it
an acrostic using all 35 alphabets to compose verses that questioned
the meaning of learning without understanding, a verse that forms part
of the Granth Saheb. often the father must have must have got
impatient indeed; when sent to buy goods from the marketplace, he gave
away all the money to a band of indigents that he saw in the bazar.
In the store where he was sent to work, he weighed out goods, but
when he got to “tera” (thirteen) the word was chanted
repeatedly like a mantra : “Tera (thine), O Lord, tera, I am
Thine...” His father sent him away to work in his sister’s
village, thinking that this would steady the youth; but his mind was
preoccupied with the contemplation of the universal nature of God.
Guru's Association With The Holy Saints
He sought out the company of holy men, pandits and mullahs, ascetics
who had renounced life as well as scholars of the scriptures, and
engaged them in long discussions.
The roots of this contemplation lay in the prevailing religious
atmosphere, a turbulent era of warring faiths.
On one side, the Muslims, the rulers of India, with their credo of
forcible conversions and oppression of the non-believers; there was
little to be seen of the essential compassion of the Quranic Allah,
nor that of the mystic and adoring quest of the Sufis. On the other,
the Hindus, whose faith expressed itself in a welter of superstitious
rituals, and a caste system that rigidly excluded many of its
followers while maintaining power in the hands of the priests. The
profound spiritual experiences of the Vedas, open to all of humanity,
had been almost forgotten. True, the faith had already been swept by
the Bhakti movement, with its many voices of a direct, unintermediated
experience of God. But it was an era ripe for a spiritual ferment, a
new belief that would show mankind a path of peace, and reconciliation
between bitter divisions.
Nanak Enlighted
While still a youth, Nanak underwent a profound spiritual experience.
For three days he disappeared, immersed in the river Baain. Here, says
the Puratan Janamasakhi, he was in direct communion with God, who bade
him to heed His words, and to carry them to all mankind. “Nanak,”
said the Voice, “I am with thee, and I do bless and exalt
thee...Go rejoice in my Name, and teach others to do so...Let this be
thy calling.”
His First Words After Emerging From River
“There is no Hindu, there is no Musalman.” This did not
refute or disparage either religion; it simply transcended present
bigotry and discrimination to emphasise that there could be no
distinction between man and man on the basis of religion or creed.
Thus, at the age of 27, Nanak carried this message of the essential
one-ness of mankind far and wide through his several travels, or
udasis, which are said to have extended over close to three decades.
He was accompanied by a Hindu peasant, Bala, and Mardana, a Muslim
rebeck player who played as he sang his hymns in praise of the One
God, who is the Master of all.
He criss-crossed from Punjab to Orissa, and beyond to Afghanistan,
Arabia, Tibet and Ceylon. He went to Mecca, wearing the turban of the
true believer. and in the course of his travels, he met saints and
sinners, visited temples, mosques and Buddhist centres, had
discussions with scholars and spoke to simple unlettered people, went
to small villages and big cities. He spoke of man as the expression of
God’s highest grace, redeemed by His love, made radiant by His
worship. His Way did not call for an ascetic renunciation of life, nor
the scriptural cleverness of the scholar, nor the narrow insistence of
the fanatic. It was open and accessible to all those who lived lives
of everyday ordinariness, but yearned for the Nectar of the Name.
Around Nanak the Guru clustered men and women attracted by his words
of peace and faith, and the gentle sweetness of his discourse. They
became his disciples, his shishyas
in Sanskrit, and the
word later became “Sikh”.
Interesting Tales Associated With His Travel
Many stories are told of his travels. Once in Mecca, he slept with
his feet in the direction of the Holy Ka’aba. This was viewed as
an insult by the Mullah, who kicked him and reproached him for turning
his feet in the direction where God was. Nanak replied quietly, “Turn
my feet in the direction where God is not...” Thus saying, he
effectively silenced his critics, for they too believed as written in
the Quran that God is everywhere. Yet again, when he was on the banks
of the Ganga in Hardwar, he saw pilgrims throwing water in the
direction of the rising sun. Why, he asked, and was told that they
were offering oblations to the spirits of their ancestors. Thereupon,
he too started flinging water in the air, but in the opposite
direction, towards the west. and when asked why, he replied, “I
am watering my fields.” The people laughed scornfully. “How
can this be?” they asked. “How can you water your fields
from such a great distance?” “Why,” said the Guru, “if
your oblations can reach the other world, cannot these drops of water
reach my land in Punjab, which is much closer?”
When in the east, in Orissa, he visited the temple of Jagannath in
Puri. It was evening, the time of the arati offered to the deity with
lamps and flowers. Nanak stood silent, not participating. This, he
said, was not homage enough to the glory and wonder of God, to whom
Nature paid a far more sublime tribute. In reply, he sang verses which
remain immortal for their exquisite mystic poetry:
“In the salver of the sky
The Sun and Moon shine like lamps,
The galaxy of stars are scattered like pearls;
The chandan-scented winds waft as Thine incense,
The forests are Thy flowers.
(Thus) is Thy arati (adoration) performed,
O, Thou Destroyer of fear!”
Guru's Last Days
The last years of Nanak the Guru were spent in his farmlands in
Kartarpur on the banks of the Ravi river, where he donned the clothes
of the agriculturist and tilled the land to provide for himself and
his family. Here he was surrounded by a community of disciples; not an
order of monastics but a gathering of farmers and householders who
went about their everyday occupations under the guidance of the Lord’s
Word. and here he started those practices that were to permeate the
Sikh way of life and have a long-term effect in keeping the faithful
welded together. One was the institution of the langar, the community
kitchen, where people shared bread in the spirit of brotherhood and
equality, forsaking concepts of caste or creed for the expression of a
common humanity. This was a radical departure from the social norms of
that time. Sewa, the concept of service to the community through
concrete work and mutual help, was invested with the aura of a pious
duty. All this was in keeping with the basic work ethic :
kirt karo (do your work),
wand chako (share your
earnings with those less fortunate), and
Nam Japo (recite the Name
of God). He also realised that if the new faith was to survive, there
had to be continuity, thus he appointed his faithful disciple Lahina,
whom he renamed Angad, as his successor.
Passing Away of The Holy Saint
Guru Nanak passed away in 1539. After him was to follow a succession
of nine Gurus, before Guru Gobind Singh decreed that thereafter there
would be no living Guru, but the Granth Saheb would be considered the
embodiment of the Guru, since it contained their collective wisdom.
Religious and Social Revolution
What Guru Nanak started was nothing less than a religious and social
revolution, a movement that drew from both the Hindu Bhakts and the
Sufis of Islam to sweep aside the rigid sectarian conventions of the
day. All men and women are equal in the sight of God; there can thus
be no discrimination on grounds of caste or creed or gender. There is
no place for superstitions, nor any need of rituals demanding the
presence of priests. What is needed is a True Guru who will guide man
and the community in the quest for perfection. The fourth Guru, Ram
Das, used a homely metaphor when he sang :
“Just as the fire is locked within the wood, and can be struck
only by one who knows how -
So, through the Guru’s Wisdom, can man find the bliss
of the all-pervading Light of the Lord...” Courtesy :
The Golden Temple
Published by : Pictak Books |
