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Vaisakhi –The Song of Love
Dr. Harbans
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Can there be religious fervour without Love? Can one love God
and His creation without Love? How is Vaisakhi as a song of love
a major contribution of Guru Gobind Singh to the Sikhs and
humanity at large? The learned author authoritatively answers
all these queries for the seekers of truth and godly love. |
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 Look
at Vaisakhi as a drama of LOVE; Love that the Guru used to mesmerize
his audience when he asked for a head and the love that the Guru
inculcated among those who came forward to offer their heads. To
them he prescribed a Rehat, a specific life style.
Was this the
reason that our 18th century’s writers name the path of the Guru as
Prem Sumarag meaning the sacred Path of Love? To appreciate this
event you have to go into the Guru’s lifelong teachings. It was Guru
Gobind Singh, who said,
Sach kahon
sun leho Sabai jin prem kio tin hee prabh paio.
Listen to this
eternal truth. Those who practice life of love, they alone will
realize the purpose of this life, that is, to experience divine
within and relate the divine to all creation with active expression
of love.
The vision of
love is always followed by the acts of love that join us to the
reality that we intrinsically yearn for, but we do not know how to
reach or how to realize, it remains a mystery without a specific
path. According to our Guru, the path of love is the path to that
mystery.
 Secondly,
with the practice of love comes a change that leads us into the
dimension of spirituality. That is: Your eyes see because in spirit
you become the witness to everything. You have newly expanded
thoughts because in spirit you begin to know all. Similarly, you
feel love toward another person because in spirit you are infinite
love.
Connecting the
spiritual dimension of human vision to love means abandoning the
notion of limited self with its limited ability to act in love and
regaining the Self with its unbounded ability to achieve and serve.
These are the changes because of the spiritual vision that the Guru
incorporated into his injunctions of Five Don’ts.
When the Guru
created the Order of Khalsa, he defined Khalsa in the terms of this
vision.
He is the true
Khalsa (Sikh), who awakens the awareness within of divine light and
divine creativity and lives the life of its practices, without
permitting inroads to any thoughts of “otherness”
Absolute and
unconditional LOVE and its “perteet” meaning full comprehension,
full grasp, full understanding of the meaning of love, then becoming
embodiment of love, never again to believe in the illusions of the
past.
Through the
practice of love, Guru Gobind Singh made us aware of pure creativity
and pure spirit. Through the vision of love, he made us free from
all memories or images from the past. His Love was beyond all
illusions.
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Connecting the spiritual dimension of human vision to love means
abandoning the notion of limited self with its limited ability
to act in love and regaining the Self with its unbounded ability
to achieve and serve. |
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Like the tiny
spark of fire that consumes a forest, his spark of love was all that
was needed for his followers to experience love in its full power
and glory, in all its aspects -earthly and divine. To them love
became spirit, and all experiences of love, however insignificant
they seem, were actually invitations to the sacrifice to uphold the
truth and justice. Within every story of their sacrifices was a love
story hiding the wooing of the creation by the Creator.
The expression -
path to love - is not simply a metaphor; it reappears throughout
spiritual history and cultures in many guises. On the day of
Vaisakhi, Khalsa became the guise in 1699.
Thus Guru Gobind
Singh created Khalsa to raise awareness within, awareness of the
creator and the creation, meaning nature and the world order
consisting of laws of nature, awareness of society’s problems
followed by solutions to society’s problem and problems of its
environments through pro-active resolution of them using the armor
of love.
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Guru Gobind Singh worked tirelessly to restore society’s
confidence in the time-tested human values of unity in
diversity, freedom of faith practices, justice and compassion. |
Guru Granth
says,
ijn qUÍ syivAw
Bwau kir syeI purK sujwn]
Those will
become the truly wise who serve the divine mission through the acts
of Love.
And those who
serve the Creator with acts of love, God will carry them across
ijn@I qUÍ syivAw
Bwau kir sy quDu pwir auqwirAw
p. 968 Sata Balwand in Guru Granth.
Those who serve
you with love - You carry them across.
The prophet
lived at a time (1666-1708) when religious fanaticism in South Asia
was at its height. It was endlessly posing a grave threat to the
human spirit of freedom and liberty. Practice of pluralism and
multicultural life was in peril.
Those with faith
practices different from their misguided rulers were persecuted and
the religious places of one religion were replaced with those of
others. Guru’s great-grand-father, father, four sons and countless
followers were put to death by the powers because they stood against
the effort to uniformity of religion and culture. You are well aware
of the notorious designs of Mogul administration at the time of
Aurangzeb.
It was a dark,
grim and ominous period in human history. The innate human desire
for individual expression and diversity of belief that was inherited
in Indian culture was being severely curtailed.
Guru Gobind
Singh worked tirelessly to restore society’s confidence in the
time-tested human values of unity in diversity, freedom of faith
practices, justice and compassion.
He challenged
the ruling and dominant powers with grit and determination.
With equal might
he challenged the wide-spread religious bigotry and spread a
religion of love and freedom of choice in religious practices. It
meant preserving the tapestry of regions and religious practices and
not a uniform one religion or one way to achieve the religious
acceptance.
Let me tell you
a story right from the Guru’s childhood. When time came to announce
public recognition to the prophetic role of the Child Guru, a
renowned Muslim saint, Syed Bhikhan Shah, did it through a profound
public demonstration. The saint was miraculously inspired by a
divine vision to make his journey to the guru’s birthplace, Patna,
to bless the infant Gobind, and to pronounce him divine. When he
reached in the Presence of the child Gobind, the pir presented a
pre-meditated riddle. He placed two bowls of sweets before the
child; one bowl was purchased from a Hindu's shop, and the second
from a Muslim's shop, thus signifying the two major contemporary
religions in India.
The riddle
sought answer to an unspoken question, which sought guidance as to
which religion this divine prophet would belong and lead. The
proper response would permit the Pir to pronounce the Guru’s
divinity and his prophetic authority to lead a certain people. To
everyone’s admiration and deep satisfaction, the baby stretched both
hands and placed one on each bowl. By this action the child Guru
was indicating that he would not profile people among religious
divides signifying that all religions would be dear to him. Further,
he would honor a Muslim holy man, Bhikhan Shah to become the medium
of his first message.
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Guru Gobind Singh was a champion of human rights. He advocated
freedom of culture, religion and thought for every individual.
We can thus see that self-righteousness which comes from
dividing the world into us and them has no place in Guru Gobind
Singh’s vision of love |
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Thus in his very
first public message Guru Gobind Singh laid the path to love for all
through interfaith events and dialogues, and sanctioned
inter-religious appreciation and accommodation during the difficult
times of religious divisions and fanaticism.
Further, he
chose symbolic language of loveful gesture over the literary
languages to communicate his first public sermon. Amazingly, the
Guru used profound public demonstration to impart his first sermon
of love in multi-faith dimension. Guru emphasized diversity of faith
and its practices that the India is constituted of.
Although in this
story Guru Gobind Singh dramatized it, actually the appreciation of
diversity in human ecology was presented as Cosmic Plan or Hukam
throughout the Sikh teachings. Guru Granth says,
My Eternal
Creator has staged a play. He has created no one like anyone else.
He made them different; he placed all the flavors and their
appreciation within each body. Then he looks at this diversity with
pleasure. –Guru Granth Sahib, page 1056.
Diversity is a
law of nature and a law of life that the Creator formulated as a
play of his love. Plants and animals diversify to evolve and
survive; they perish if they don’t. Structures of stars and lands
vary millions of times in size and characters, and, the cell and
biological particles in the human body do the same. Just as our
physical world is diverse, so are our religions, our cultures,
social systems, orbits, and traditions.
The law of
diversity applies to the institutions of religions. Pluralistic
religions originate out of the human ecology of diversity. They are
best suited to survive along with human evolution and human ecology.
The Guru Granth Sahib recognized these identities:
isru nwnk lokw
pwv hY ] bilhwrI jwau jyqy qyry nwv hY ]
Nanak places his
head at the feet of all people and is a sacrifice to as many
identities ascribed to You, O’ Infinite. –Guru Granth Sahib, 1168
To spread his
message of a perfect egalitarian society based on one-ness of God,
the tenth master, Guru Gobind Singh paraphrased this doctrine by
celebrating the diversity in all of its myriad forms. He wrote:
koaU iBea
muMfIAw sMinAwsI koaU jogI Biea koaU bRhmcwrI koaU jqI Anumwnbo ]
ihMdU qurk koaU rwPsI iemwm swPI mwns kI jwq sbY eykY pihcwnbo ]
krqw krIm soeI rwjk rhIm aeI dUsro n Byd koeI Bum BRm mwnbo ] eyk hI
kI syv sB hI ko gurdyv eyk eyk hI srUp sbY eykY joq jwnbo ] -Akal
Ustat
Many believe
that they become superior by accepting celibacy or undertaking
meditation, by giving up material comforts, by making themselves
look different, or by wearing long and matted hair or no hair.
Others feel higher by joining a particular sect of Islam as, Shia,
Sunni, etc. But no one should overlook the basic fact that
followers of all religions are the same human beings. The Creator of
all provides for the needs of all humans. There is one God of all
and that God alone should be worshipped.
Do not remain an
ignorant and believe in anyone else except the one Creator. All
humanity is equal, each one of us carries the reflection of the
Creator in us, and we are all manifestations of one Creator.
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Vaisakhi for All
Vaisakhi projects ecstatic images of nations, nature and
cultural landscapes spread wide and across the entire globe. It
is the time of year when people of almost every heritage are
seen jubilant and celebrating with both sacred and secular
merriment. Sikhs celebrate the birth of Guru Nanak in 1469 and
the founding of the Khalsa in 1699.
All Punjabis -Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims welcome Vaisakhi as
their spring festival when they harvest their crops. At this
time trees and bushes are laden with green leaves and bright
colored flowers that blossom all around. People act out various
expressions of thankfulness while appreciating at a deeper level
many scenes of prosperity and cyclical regeneration.
Naba Barsha (Poila Baisakh) is a famous occasion for Bengalis as
it is the first day of the first month of Bengali year.
In the year 599 B.C. at the time of Vaisakhi, Mahavira was born
as the last one in the galaxy of twenty-four Jain Prophets.
Similarly, the god/prophet of Hindus, Sri Rama, is widely
believed to be born sometime in the end of March or the
beginning of April, the exact date of his birth not yet
established. Vaisakhi is also the time of the birth of Sri
Hanuman. Prophet Muhammad who gave birth to the second most
followed religion of the world -Islam, was born on April 11.
April 7 is Ugadi, the New Year for
the people of the
Deccan
region of
India.
Sindhis from Sindh of Pakistan celebrate their New Year at the
same time. Easter in the spring that falls around Vaisakhi, also
called Pascha, is the most important religious feast in the
Christian
liturgical
year. It celebrates the
resurrection
of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the
third day after his
crucifixion.
And many more. |
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Guru Gobind
Singh believed that the differences among humans in terms of color,
appearance and ethnicity were due to God’s creative process; all
human beings had a moral responsibility to cherish and preserve this
sacred creativity. He emphasized the unity of human spirit despite
many apparent distinctions. He explained that the differences in
our outward appearance, clothes, customs and practices are
attributed to the choices that only we make. He said:
dyvqw Adyv j`C
gMDRb qurk ihMdU inAwry inAwrY dysn ky Bys ko pRBwau hY
Many are gods or
demon, or celestial musicians. There are heavenly tribes and the
learned people or the artists. There may be seen as people of
different religions as Muslims (citizens of Islamic nations) or
Hindus (natives of Indian subcontinent). They all look and act
differently, but their apparent differences are due to the
influences from their countries and cultures, or in the clothes,
they wear.
Guru Gobind
Singh was a champion of human rights. He advocated freedom of
culture, religion and thought for every individual. We can thus
see that self-righteousness which comes from dividing the world into
us and them has no place in Guru Gobind Singh’s vision of love, his
Prem Sumarag. His teachings and his sacrifices made great
difference and, thank God, the diversity so characteristic of today
India, was preserved by the teachings of Guru Gobind Singh and
sacrifices of his Khalsa.
Indeed, Guru
Gobind Singh’s ideal of appreciation and preservation of diversity
is a pivotal feature of all human activity. We must never forget to
defend it.
Harbans Lal, PhD., D.Litt (Hons) is Emeritus
Professor and Chairman, Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience
University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth, USA
and Emeritus Professor, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. He may
be contacted at
japji08@yahoo.com
27
May 2009
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