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Vahiguru ji ka Khalsa, Vahiguru ji ki Fatih!
Guru Teghbahadar Sahib (popularly spelt Guru Tegh Bahadur), in the fortieth couplet of Salok Mahala 9, says the entire world wanders like a beggar; Ram, the beautiful, charming One is the only universal giver. O mind! Remember That One so that your affairs may be resolved.
We pause.
We reflect.
The whole world is begging someone for something.
The whole world is wandering in their begging.
We are seeking to have our desires fulfilled by other people. However, if we want our affairs to be resolved and our desires to be fulfilled, we ought not to beg other people for those things.
The people we think can give us what we want are themselves, beggars, even if they do not appear to be. Why beg others who are also begging?
If we beg a wealthy or powerful person for something, we are still begging from someone who cannot give us what we need, who cannot satisfy us.
Where do we go?
Go only to the beautiful, charming Giver, the eternal Giver.
Are we ready to beg only from the One?
Do we know what we want to beg for?
May we beg from the eternal Giver.
May the Wisdom-Guru guide us!
Guru Teghbahadar Sahib: The Benevolent Warrior. Harinder Singh speaks about the Sikh historical narratives that live in the psyche of the Guru Khalsa Panth, the flag-bearers of the Sikh collective.
Death is a thing we all must do. But we are deeply afraid of it. In classically religious Sikh and non-Sikh understandings, and even in non-religious understandings, death is personified as an aggressive thing that snatches us away, drags us by our hair, beats us over the head. Follow Jasleen in her exploration of Salok Mahala 9 as Guru Teghbahadar Sahib helps us confront our fear of death and understand the lessons death has to teach us here and now.
Transcendence lies not in the wishful disappearance of opposition from without but in the resolution within to disregard and rise above it. How do we rise from the fragmented universe of our fears?
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