Universe: Sikh aesthetics as an antidote

Aesthetics has much to offer in our hyperpolarised times. With smartphones as our bodily organs, social media as our mode of communication, and artificial intelligence to rely upon, we are getting increasingly alienated from our inner self, from society, and from the environment. Aesthetics can serve as an antidote to the existential threat facing us.

For Guru Nanak, our current crisis is existentially “corpse-like” (murdad); for the modernist poet TS Eliot, we are “under ether” (‘Four Quartets’). As opposed to anaesthesia, aesthetics is the heightening of the five senses, emotions, imagination, and moral action. Going beyond elite art theories, beyond museums and theatres, Sikh aesthetics is an intensified mode of everyday social, political, economic, environmental, and spiritual life. It is the fusion of mind and body, aesthetic and religious, the material and the divine. Sensate enjoyment is no different from cognitive knowledge: “Only the enjoyer of fragrance recognises the flower,” said Guru Nanak.

The core of Sikh aesthetics is “savouring”, and modern research in positive psychology is likewise promoting its practice. For Yale Professor Laurie Santos, “Savouring an experience in the moment is a way to keep yourself in the present and recognise the beauty and joy of that moment.” We find a striking parallel in Sikh scripture: its epilogue specifies that the sacred text be aesthetically savoured (bhuncai) — not mechanically consumed (khavai).

Attention is our most “endangered resource”, warns Chris Hayes (‘The Sirens’ Call’). Fragmented attention spans bring no joy. We do not have time to taste things properly. Being attentive to what we see, hear, taste, smell, touch is how we enjoy. The scriptural pluralistic poetry of Sikh Gurus, Hindu bhagats, and Sufi saints can be a healthy resource. Entirely different from texting, tweeting, tik-toking, or instagramming, its rhythmic musical lyrics, multivalent words, fascinating paradoxes, twists, and metaphors, serenely slow us down. We gain balance. We focus, we savour.

MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle diagnosed how abysmally “alone together” we are in our globally connected world. Sikh aesthetic modalities can help here: (1) togetherness (sangat), (2) sharing simple meals across religious and class divisions (langar), (3) praising the singular divine (kirtan), and (4) doing selfless service for the collective good (seva). These sensory practices pull us out of technological insularity. We create enduring social and spiritual bonds.

For our dangerously divided condition, we urgently need to revitalise our panhuman sensorium. An intensified body produces hormones which flush out socially coded discriminations and bigotry. Its virtuoso music and dance performance illustrated by Guru Nanak chimes in with Rabindranath Tagore’s “life throb of ages dancing” in his veins (‘Gitanjali’), the mystical dance performance of Sama in Sufi practice, and “…the dance along the artery”… “figured in the drift of stars” in Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’.

Sikh aesthetics is a lived trans-religiosity coloured in love. The Guru Granth Sahib inspires and empowers readers with its rapturous wonder of the singular One pulsating in each corporeal form (vismadu rup), colouring this pluriversal cosmos (vismadu rang). While evoking joy, the selfsame verses challenge us to respond to the inequities and injustice around us. As they intersect with modern poetry, art, and philosophy, we savour our shared reality, we discover new ways of being and becoming. The wondrous joy does not lull us into some mystical trance; it wakens us from our anaesthetised complacency to do our best here and now.

— The writer is the Crawford Professor & Chair of Religious Studies, Colby College, USA