Guru Nanak

Remember one thing, at some point, Shri Chand Varga also said that our grandfather was the grandfather of our grandfather.

Guru Angad said the following, Baba Nanak used to say to Shree Chand, that my father is Guru Nanak.

Guru Angad said, if your father is Guru Nanak, then why don't you go to your father's place and ask him for money.

So this is also something to think about, that how much money we have to spend here.

Because you have to get rid of pride.

Guru Nanak says very interestingly.

He says, Sadho man ka maan tyago.

Kaam grodh sangati durjan ki.

And Sikhism is an interesting mix between Islam and Hinduism.

So Guru Nanak, it's the, they wear like the swords and stuff.

Actually, you know, the British kid that was stabbed, the guy that had the Kapoor, his sword, they have the 5Ks, the Sikhs.

He was Sikh.

So they were surprised.

I knew about the five Ks.

I knew about Guru Nanak.

I knew about their customs.

And he wasn't the only one.

From Muhammad to the Buddha to Guru Nanak, many religions owe much of their popularity today to early charismatic leaders.

And because of this, the boundary between an institutional religious leader and a charismatic unofficial one is often kind of blurry.

Let's go to the Thought Bubble.

The text concludes with this line.

It says, Nanak, this is the opportunity to meet the Lord.

Why don't you remember him in meditation?

And just to quickly clarify the authorship here, the text states, says Nanak.

Manak was the first Sikh guru, but subsequent gurus, including Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, who wrote the specific text, they use the name Nanak in their writings.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

That self-importance, me, me, me.

Guru Nanak categorically teaches you meditation is the opposite of me.

Your ego and the divine name are in conflict with each other.

Both cannot exist in one place.

And this leads on to the question around what type of meditation should we be doing and how long should we be doing it.

One of the things that we have been taught again and again from the yogic traditions is that you need to silence your mind.

Guru Nanak's tradition does not look to silence your mind.

And I think this needs to be clarified.

So you translate cons as stages.

Now, why did you go with stages rather than rounds and does changing some of those words risk impacting the philosophy that Guru Nanak Dev Ji is proposing and the reason I ask that in relation to this is because with realms you could argue Guru Nanak Dev Ji is providing some type of cosmological order and then if you say stages I guess it kind of is the same but it doesn't necessarily carry the same meaning so how do you balance all of that and then also try to get as close to What some people may argue is the original meaning, although even that is down to interpretation.

So one of the things that I did was when I was looking at the Barney, what was important for me was in translating this, I wanted to find a way to make the verses have a sequence.

And in the Japji Sahib, what I would look at is when you look at the entire verse, what is the one question that it looks like it's answering? So that's how I would place a question before it.

So then the next verse is asking the question, well, what are these steps? And you realize that then the khans can be presented as steps rather than a cosmology.

We can go into a conversation about cosmology.

I fundamentally don't believe Guru Nanak is presenting a cosmology.

I believe he presents a philosophy that works regardless of your cosmology.