On the Guru Granth Sahib Project, the team speaks so often about how we do not work on sabad (Infinite-Wisdom), but that instead, sabad works on us. We feel this in our lived experiences—the way we pause more, the way we have become more steady, the way we are chiseled away at, becoming something more beautiful than before. This is the grace of IkOankar (One Creative and Pervasive Force, 1Force, the One), that even as we go through periods of waxing and waning, even as we feel ourselves oscillate between separation, longing, and connection, even as we feel we are not doing enough to foster that relationship with IkOankar, we are slowly transforming in ways we do not yet see or cannot yet name.

It feels silly to say that the sabads we work on always seem to come at the right time—because of course they do. But it needs to be said nonetheless. In the last six years of working on this project, I have known this to be true. 

As I sat down to write this, I began to reflect on one of the most transformative Banis of my time on this project: the saloks (couplets) of Sheikh Farid Ji. This composition was challenging and rewarding. It was a constant conversation between team members and, in a way, it was a constant conversation with Sheikh Farid Ji, too. These saloks have reverberated through each cell in my body, a kind of constant hum, a thing that I still feel is changing me in real time. 

Getting to know the Treasure of Sweetness

If the feeling is that we were in constant conversation with Sheikh Farid Ji, it is important for us to understand who he was in the world. Born in 1178 CE to a long line of Qazis (Muslim scholars, priests, magistrates) as ‘Masud,’ he was later given the title ‘Fariduddin’ by his spiritual teacher, meaning ‘the greatest and most incomparable pearl of religion (din).’ This later became shortened to ‘Farid.’ His full name of honorifics, titles, and pen names is Sheikh Fariduddin Masud Ganjshakar, where Ganj-i-Shakar means Treasure of Sweetness. This, to me, is the essence of the figure whose work we worked so closely with. This sweetness permeates each line. 

These titles are important in helping us understand where Sheikh Farid Ji was coming from. He was a Muslim of the Chishti Sufi order. He bore honorifics that pointed to powerful and authoritative Sufi lineages, legal authority, scholarship, social identity, and caste background. It is with these titles and this weighty legitimacy and authority that we can better understand his utterances. How does a Sheikh, visible and present, authoritative and exemplary, reflect on his personal relationship with the Beloved? How do we square the title of Sheikh and choose instead to refer to him as Baba Farid Ji—swapping out positionality for intimacy and affection? What can we learn from the Treasure of Sweetness? 

Becoming Genuine 

In these saloks, we find ruminations on appearance, performance, hypocrisy and genuineness. I imagine that maybe there were times that Baba Farid Ji felt like a fraud or an imposter in the same way that many of us do—that there must have been times when he was being lauded as having this intimate and incredible personal and experiential connection with the Divine while feeling disconnected and separated. 

I imagine that he understood the thing that frustrates me—that walking these paths toward the Beloved does not mean we have reached the apex of true virtuousness or divine-like qualities. That to walk this path also means we will stumble and struggle and experience new ways that the duality within us comes to rear its ugly head.

Baba Farid Ji says: 

O Farid! There is a musalla on the shoulder, a robe around the neck; scissors in the heart, jaggery in the mouth.
Outside appears to be light; in the heart is dark night.¹

The imagery of this stanza has stuck with me for the better part of a year. Baba Farid Ji reflects on this external presentation: a prayer mat on the shoulder, a robe of wool or cotton on the body. What does this garb afford him? Power, authority, and legitimacy. The external becomes a way to avoid or ignore the inner work. Sometimes, it encourages pretense and performance. I might go through the motions of doing my path, or going to the Gurduara and listening to kirtan (singing of Gurbani). I might engage with my work and make videos and talk about Bani, but what are the parts of me that are pretending? In what ways am I not being genuine about where I am in my relationship with IkOankar? 

And even as I grow, even as I change and move toward the One I love, what are the ways that I fall short? Am I presenting myself one way with scissors in my heart? Or, even worse, am I presenting myself one way with scissors in my heart and jaggery in my mouth? 

This is coming from Baba Farid Ji—the Treasure of Sweetness. This is the name he was given by those who saw that quality in him. But he shakes himself and us out of this and says we may speak sweetly, but it is not enough to utter sweet words. We may speak sweetly and harbor jealousy and anger and greed. We may speak sweetly and be steeped in duality or otherness, ready to inflict harm on others. 

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be visible and present in Sikh spaces—what assumptions are made about us because of the way we look, the way we engage, the affiliations we have? And what assumptions do we, too, make about others based on the same markers or categories? What do we gauge about the piety or reverence or closeness of one’s connection with the One based on these things? How might we lean further away from judgement and move towards Grace? How can we have grace for others and for ourselves? 

Becoming Patient

Baba Farid Ji offers us one clear thread to pull at: cultivate patience. Several of his saloks remind us of the importance of this quality. When we were working on them, I remember wondering why there were so many lines on this one virtue. How many ways can we be told of the value of patience? The more I thought about it, the more I understood the ways this particular lesson is hard to learn. I think about the number of times I have felt like I have reached a new level of patience only to be faced with something later in my life that shows me how much more room I have to grow into an even vaster and gentler and more compassionate patience. I feel life teaching me this lesson again and again. It is a hard one to learn. Baba Farid Ji says: 

If within there is a bow of patience, a bowstring of this patience,
and an arrow of patience; then the Creator does not let it go waste.²

Even as we walk the path of devotion, we as seekers spend so much time steeped in expectation. I find myself wondering why I do not feel connection even as I have been devoting myself to particular practices or disciplines or efforts. I lack patience. I compare myself to other seekers. Why are they feeling connection when I am not? I sometimes wonder if something is wrong with me. Baba Farid Ji reminds us that everything is patience in this relationship with the Beloved. I think a lot about the imagery of the bow. The more the bow is stretched, the farther its arrow flies, and the deeper the arrow is able to pierce. The ‘stretching’ takes time and patience and strength. Maybe it is ok to bear that slow stretching, that discomfort of committing to a particular ‘target,’ of waiting to pull back and release the arrow at just the right time. If we can cultivate patience in tandem with our devotion, there is no way IkOankar will let all that effort go to waste. In fact, Baba Farid Ji takes it a step further: 

This patience is the purpose; O being! If you affirm it,
having grown, you will become like a river; you will not become a stream, having broken off.³

This patience is the purpose of life. I have been thinking a lot about what this could mean. I might say the purpose of life is love, or devotion, or something that feels more vast and all-encompassing than just ‘patience.’ But maybe there is something to this—when we are truly patient, when that patience becomes firm within us through practice and effort, we find a kind of contentment that ripples through every aspect of our lives. Maybe patience becomes the purpose of life because it teaches us how to pull ourselves out of our negativity, our tendency toward duality, and our vices. 

If I was truly patient, I would stop chasing the temporary and the material. If I was truly patient, I would be able to quell my constant thirst. If I was truly patient, I would be compassionate and understanding of others. I would not walk around presenting myself one way, speaking with false sweetness, while holding scissors in my heart. If I was truly patient, I would endure separation with grace and humility. 

In patience, just as in love, we expand and deepen. We flow like rivers into the ocean. We learn to move with all of the motions of being alive—to roll with the punches, to remain steady even in that movement. A river has depth. In its flowing, it remains calm and silent. We can become river-like—vast and generous and gracious to all. When our patience breaks, we become small and narrow-hearted and selfish, cut off from the ocean, unable to ‘meet’ the vastness from which we come. 

If I am full of pretense, it is in part because I am steeped in duality. If I am speaking sweetly without sweet intentions, it is in part because I am feeling separation. If I am unable to be genuine and compassionate and generous, it is in part because I have not yet become truly patient. 

Becoming Genuine and Patient in Separation 

In the quiet ebbs and flows of time, in the movements of my life that range from steady to tumultuous, I have waded my way through feelings of separation, longing, and union. Sometimes it feels more like I am trudging. There are times when the One I love feels so far from me that the relationship feels like an impossibility. There are times when I can feel a thin and almost paper-like veil between us. I navigate this play, often enduring great pain and suffering in the ebbing, in the separation. 

I used to think that I was an imposter because of this constant movement. I used to think that it was this lack of connection that made me full of pretense. How can I be genuine in my work, in my life, in how others perceive me, if I did not feel closeness in my relationship with the Beloved? How can I be genuine if I am feeling such a deep sense of separation? 

Baba Farid Ji says: 

Separation, separation is called bad, O separation! You are the sultan.
Farid (signature): The body in which separation does not arise, consider that body a cremation ground.⁴

How generous is this reframing! This separation rules us. It permeates every aspect of our lives. It is caused by our own forgetting—a symptom of our entanglement in greed, lust, anger, attachment, and ego. Ruled by this separation, we feel powerless, and we suffer. But separation gets a bad rap. 

The body in which separation does not arise, consider that body a cremation ground. 

When we do not feel this feeling, when we are not made tender by the pain of our forgetting, we are numb and desensitized, lifeless and desolate. When separation is alive or awakened within us, it is because there is deep love present within us. 

When we are so in love, so devoted, so aware of our Beloved that we cannot bear to be apart, that is the separation Baba Farid Ji reflects on. Without that awareness, without those pangs, so many of us come and go without a sense of how separated we truly are. 

This feeling is painful. It can rule us. But it is also a sign of our awareness, of our very existence. In another salok, Baba Farid Ji speaks of separation from the perspective of a human-bride: 

Today, I did not sleep with my husband; each part of my body aches. Having gone to the duhagans, ask them, how does your night pass)?⁵

I think about what it is to be in love in a worldly sense, and to be physically separated. We do not have to go to sleep and will ourselves into remembering the one we love. We do not wake up in the morning and will ourselves into thinking of the one we love. These things happen on their own because of how deep the relationship is—how much that remembrance is a part of our very beings. In a transworldly sense, in our relationship with IkOankar, is this pang of separation not a form of remembrance? Is this pain itself not a reminder of the Presence of the One, even if we cannot feel it in a moment? Each part of the body aches. What is this, if not a form of remembrance? 

Maybe I can learn to be patient in my separation, to await the Beloved, knowing that it is only a matter of time before I will feel the Presence. Maybe I can become genuine in my separation—honest with myself and my sangat (community), about how I am struggling. Maybe I can understand the pain of separation as a reminder of devotion—as proof of life. And maybe in that transformation, I can speak with true sweetness, flow with depth and steadiness, and embrace all things with the vastness of the patient river. 

References

¹   ਫਰੀਦਾ  ਕੰਨਿ ਮੁਸਲਾ  ਸੂਫੁ ਗਲਿ   ਦਿਲਿ ਕਾਤੀ  ਗੁੜੁ ਵਾਤਿ ॥
ਬਾਹਰਿ ਦਿਸੈ ਚਾਨਣਾ   ਦਿਲਿ ਅੰਧਿਆਰੀ ਰਾਤਿ ॥੫੦॥

²   ਸਬਰ ਮੰਝ ਕਮਾਣ   ਏ ਸਬਰੁ ਕਾ ਨੀਹਣੋ ॥
ਸਬਰ ਸੰਦਾ ਬਾਣੁ   ਖਾਲਕੁ ਖਤਾ ਨ ਕਰੀ ॥੧੧੫॥

³   ਸਬਰੁ ਏਹੁ ਸੁਆਉ   ਜੇ ਤੂੰ ਬੰਦਾ ਦਿੜੁ ਕਰਹਿ ॥
ਵਧਿ ਥੀਵਹਿ ਦਰੀਆਉ   ਟੁਟਿ ਨ ਥੀਵਹਿ ਵਾਹੜਾ ॥੧੧੭॥

⁴   ਬਿਰਹਾ ਬਿਰਹਾ ਆਖੀਐ   ਬਿਰਹਾ ਤੂ ਸੁਲਤਾਨੁ ॥
ਫਰੀਦਾ  ਜਿਤੁ ਤਨਿ ਬਿਰਹੁ ਨ ਊਪਜੈ   ਸੋ ਤਨੁ ਜਾਣੁ ਮਸਾਨੁ ॥੩੬॥

⁵    ਅਜੁ ਨ ਸੁਤੀ ਕੰਤ ਸਿਉ ਅੰਗੁ ਮੁੜੇ ਮੁੜਿ ਜਾਇ ॥
ਜਾਇ ਪੁਛਹੁ ਡੋਹਾਗਣੀ ਤੁਮ ਕਿਉ ਰੈਣਿ ਵਿਹਾਇ ॥੩੦॥