THUS SPAKE GURU NANAK

By Khushwant Singh

A few weeks ago, Punjabi University at Patiala organised a seminar on the life and teachings of Guru Nanak. Over 60 scholars, including 15 from American, Canadian, English and Australian universities, read papers on different aspects of the Guru’s philosophy. It was evident that scholars belonged to two schools of thought — one who believed that Guru Nanak was a saint of the Bhakti cult and the other, that he strove to make synthesis between Hinduism and Islam and took equally from two movements — the Hindu Bhakti and the Islamic Sufi — to propound an eclectic faith which developed into Sikhism. Both schools of thought marshalled their arguments with copious quotations for Nanak’s hymns. y.

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Let me now put the arguments to you — and you judge for yourself. I will quote Guru Nanak’s view on five topics — the beginning of life and its dissolution, his concept of God, the role of a religious leader, the Guru, man’s obligations towards his fellow beings and the way to salvation.

Nanak’s views on the origin of life and its termination follow the Hindu theory of Samsara — of birth, death and rebirth. Let me quote his words:

“Know you whence comes life

How we are born? Where go we when we die?

Why some are caught in the cycle of birth and rebirth?

While others are freed to merge in the Deathless One

Those who have Him in their hearts

And have His name ever on their lips,

Those who worship Him 

but seek no gain

To them come birth and death peacefully

Like birds at dusk settling on trees

To roost for the night

Some joyous, some sorrowing, all lost in themselves

When dawns the day and gone is the night

They look up at the sky and resume their flight

So does man fulfil his destiny.

* * *

Let us now see what Nanak had to say about God. In the opening lines of his Japji — his most celebrated composition — he states his concept of God with utter clarity.

There is one God

He is the supreme truth.

He, the Creator,

Is without fear and without hate.

He, the Omnipresent,

Pervades the universe.

He is not born,

Nor does He die to be born again.

Before time itself

There was truth.

When time began to run its course

He was the truth.

Even now, He is the truth,

And evermore shall truth prevail.

Nanak reaffirmed the Oneness of God with the passion which is reminiscent of Islam: 

Were I given a hundred thousand tonnes instead of one

And the hundred thousand multiplied 20-fold, 

Enter a hundred thousand times would I say, and say again, 

The Lord of all the world is One.

Nanak’s God was beyond description because he was Nirankar — formless. The best one could do is to admit the inability to define Him. 

But the fact that God cannot be defined should not inhibit us from learning about truth and reality. This we can do by treading the path of righteousness — 

Not by thought alone

Can He be known

Though one think

A hundred thousand times: 

Not in solemn silence

Nor in deep meditation.

Though fasting yields an 

abundance of virtue

It cannot appease the 

hunger for truth.

No, by none of these,

Nor by a hundred thousand 

other devices,

Can God be reached.

How then shall the Truth be known?

How the veil of false illusion torn?

Oh Nanak, thus runneth 

the writ-divine

The righteous path — let it be thine.

To Guru Nanak, God was the Father, the Lover, the Master, the Giver of all gifts. He was good God — but the evil that existed also emanated from Him; perhaps to purify or test our faith.

Let us now come to the third point, Nanak’s view of the role of the religious leader, the Guru.

Nanak made the institution of Guruship the pivot of all his religious system. Without the Guru as a guide, insisted Nanak, no one can attain moksha or release.

The Guru’s word has 

the sage’s wisdom,

The Guru’s word is full 

of learning,

For though it be the Guru’s word 

God Himself speaks therein.

Nanak was a firm advocate of man performing his duty as member of the society in which he lived and in the equality of men.

Nanak strongly disapproved of asceticism, of penance and torturing of the flesh as a step towards enlightment. “Be in the world but not worldly,” he said over and over again. In his oft-quoted hymns, he said: 

Religion lieth not in the patched coat a yogi wears

Not in the staff he bears,

Nor in the ashes on his body.

Religion lieth not in rings in the ears

Nor in the shaven head,

Nor in the blowing of the 

conch shell.

If thou must the path of 

true religion see,

Among the world’s impurities, 

be of impurities free.

Nanak denounced the caste-system in no uncertain words. He refused to grant audience to people unless they first broke bread in the community kitchen — where the Brahmin and the untouchable, the Muslim and the Hindu sat alongside as equals.

He was equally critical of concepts of purity and impurity that sprang out of notions of higher and lower category of human beings. 

On the fetish of cooking squares, 

he wrote:

Once we say: This is pure, this unclean,

See that in all things there 

is life unseen.

There are worms in wood 

and cowdung cakes,

There is life in the corn ground 

into bread.

There is life in the water which 

makes it green.

How then be clean when impurity 

is over the kitchen spread?

Impurity of the heart is greed,

Of tongue, untruth,

Impurity of the eye is coveting 

Another’s wealth, his wife, 

her comeliness;

Impurity of the ears is listening 

to calumny.

* * *

And finally what was Nanak’s goal? How did he propose to reach it? Human birth, said Nanak, is a priceless gift. It is the opportunity that God gives us to escape the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. The aim of life should be yoga or union with God. Guru Nanak laid emphasis on the worship of the Name of God. “I have no miracles except the name of God,” he said many a time.

As hands or feet besmirched 

with slime,

Water washes white; as 

garments dark with grime 

Rinsed with soap are made light.

So when sin soils the soul

The Name alone shall 

make it whole.

Words do not the saint 

or sinner make.

Action alone is written 

in the book of fate,

What we sow that alone we take:

O Nanak be saved or forever 

transmigrate.

Nanak believed in the triumph of human will over fate and pre-destination. He believed that all human beings have a basic fund of goodness which, like the pearl in the oyster, only awaits the opening of the shell to emerge and enrich him. 

* * *

A method advocated by Nanak was the gentle one of Sahaj. Just as a vegetable cooked on a gentle fire tastes best because its own juices give it the proper flavour, so a gradual training of the body and mind will bring out the goodness that is inherent in all human beings. In addition to self-imposed discipline of the mind, he advocated listening to Kirtan (hymn singing). He advised his followers to rise well before dawn and listen to the soft strains of music under the light of the stars. He believed that in the stillness of the ambrosial hours, (which he described as amrit vela) one was best able to have communion with God.