Tuesday 9 October 2018

Why did Guru Nanak travel so extensively?



Mardana deescribs: “Baba and I were returning from one of our travels, I forget which one, there were oh so very many! 
Baba was tireless, physically strong, full of vitality. 

He wanted to see God’s whole world, all the people in their different colored skins, their cultures, customs, religions; he wanted to hear the rhythms of different languages, music, melody, song. 

And he wanted to bring all he met the message, through his words and music, that ‘we are one, we are one in, and of, the One! 

"We are all made of the same Light. Remember it! 

"Love it. Turn to it in your sorrows, as to the Sun that dispels darkness and shadows.”

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Sunday 7 October 2018

Who was Bhai Lehna in Sikh History?


BACKGROUND: GURU NANAK IS HARVESTING PADDY IN THE FIELDS AND WANTS HIS SONS TO CARRY THE BUNDLES ON THEIR HEAD. THEY REFUSE. BHAI LEHNA, WHO WAS WEARING NEW, WHITE CLOTHES, TAKES ON ALL THREE. WHEN THEY ARRIVE AT THE DERA, MATA SULAKHNI SAYS:

SAFFRON
‘But look at his new clothes stained with mud!’she screamed. ‘It’s not mud; it’s saffron,’ Baba said, quietly.”Buddha paused in his tale.
“When Baba said, ‘it’s not mud; it’s saffron,’ I saw Bhai Lehna suffused with madder colored saffron. He was dripping with it, as if someone had squirted it on him playfully. Baba was laughing aloud, and Bhai Lehna, too, looking down at himself, burst into laughter. I think Mata Sulakhni saw it too, for I saw an expression on her face that I have never seen before. It was disbelief, confusion, awe, as if something had shattered her certainties.
“What is saffron?” Aziza asks.
“It is the color that Hindus bathe the idols of their gods in,” Buddha explains.
“Is it the spice Daadi puts in the rice during Ramadan, that makes it yellow and orange?”
“Yes,” Fatima replies. “It’s very rare, precious and expensive. You know how saffron is dried? The flowers are picked and then put into burning charcoal. Saffron is a symbol for faith, which is often tested by fire. When we survive the fire we become as precious as saffron.”
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OUR TIMES #1



What will happen to a country where criminals are made judges?

Thursday 27 September 2018

When the Eternity reveals itself


MATA KHIVI... Excerpts of a story from 'Into the Great Heart'



After meeting Guru Nanak, Bhai Lehna returns to Khadur. An excerpt from that chapter:
Khivi turns eagerly to Lehna.“Something has happened to you,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes. You have never looked like this before, except when you told me you had heard Bhai Jodha singing. That day, too, you had the same look in your eyes that I can’t describe. They are glowing with fire. And where are your ankle bells?”
“O Khivi,” Lehna begins, tears gathering in his eyes. “I have taken them off to dance to the Invisible Lord and Lady of the Galaxies! I danced for the goddess in the temple, but now my whole existence will be a dance!” 

He is silent a long time and Khivi sits quietly by his side.
“I have found what my soul has been searching for, what I didn’t even know I was looking for!”
After another silence, he narrates to his wife the events of the last few days.
“When I started out with the pilgrims I had hoped I could persuade them to make a stop in Kartarpur so I could meet the author of the song that so moved me. I didn’t think they would agree, but I hoped anyway. We were delayed upon starting out, as you know, on account of some of the pilgrims being late, and by the time we broke our journey for the night I realized I was very near Kartarpur. I mounted my horse, took Amro with me, and arrived at Kartarpur just as the new moon shone brightly in the evening sky. I asked an old man and a young boy...”
And here Lehna bursts into tears. “I am so blind and full of pride! I let him lead me on as if he were my servant while I sat like a lord on my horse! I let him feed and water my horse! That’s how humble he is!”
It was a while before he could tell his wife the rest of the story about the evening he had spent in Kartarpur, the meal, Nanaki, and Sulakhni. 

After he tells her about the aarti, and sings a few lines, he stops his narrative once more to explain the impact the meeting with Nanak has had on him.
“My skull blew off and infinity poured in. No, Khivi, I cannot explain the experience. It felt like I had been living in a small, dark, sunless cave all my life and Baba’s voice and words blew off the roof of my brain, crumbled the walls and something unbounded, immeasurable and utterly mysterious poured in.”
Khivi sits quietly in his silence.
“I experienced a different way of being, of living in such an open, spacious way... my little version of ‘god’ was blown apart to include the universe and everything in it. I saw another way of dancing, Khivi, with my whole being, as if ‘I’ didn’t dance but was danced... do you know what I mean?”
“I think so. Sometimes I think I do not live but am lived through.” “Exactly. Baba calls this sehaj, that which is natural, spontaneous, like a flower, folding from the inside out. I know with absolute certainty that this is the path for me now. I have given my small self away.”
“You’ve abandoned Ma Durga?” Khivi asks after her husband grows silent. Her heart is full of trepidation and fear for her husband, herself, her entire family. Their families had worshipped Durga as far back as she can remember.
“Don’t be afraid of the unknown, Khivi. Baba says when you fear Akaal Purukh, all other fears are frightened away. And Akaal Purukh, who we mirror in our souls, is nirbhao, and nirvair: without fear and enmity.” 

The night I spent in Kartarpur I had a dream... many dreams, in fact. But let me tell you one. I am in Baba’s courtyard and it is morning. A woman wearing a sari, the moon like a bouquet of jasmines in her long hair like a stream of night, is bent over something, near her, on the floor, is the sea... the huge roaring thing right there at her feet in the courtyard! 

She is taking a jar full of water, like liquid moonlight, and pouring it on something. I go closer and see that Baba is lying on his manji, his hair open and hanging down, like this,” he demonstrates.

“She is washing his hair, very lovingly, with a lot of devotion.

She turns around, and it is Ma Durga! She smiles at me, then continues washing his hair.”

Lehna laughs long and hard.

“Ma Durga whom we worship washes Nanak’s hair, Khivi! It is a sign that she herself has led me to Nanak.”
                                                      ~
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