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