Birthday of founder of Sikhism Guru Nanak Dev Ji

November 19^th, this year, will be celebrated as the birthday of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the first Guru of the Sikhs. Born in 1469, He expressed his teachings in form of hymns, with some of the major prayers being the Japji Sahib most of which still exist and are widely sung and heard. All of them were collected in the Adi Granth by Guru Arjan, the fifth Sikh Guru, in 1604.  A member of the Khatri (trading) caste , Nanak was not a typical Sant, yet he experienced the same spirit of God in everything outside him and everything within him. Guru Nanak, and other Sikh Gurus emphasised bhakti (‘love’, ‘devotion’, or ‘worship’).  In the Sikh perspective, the everyday world is part of an infinite reality, where increased spiritual awareness, leads to increased and vibrant participation in the everyday world. Guru Nanak described living an “active, creative, and practical life” of “truthfulness, fidelity, self-control and purity” as being higher than the metaphysical truth.

Through popular tradition, Nanak’s teaching is understood to be practised in three ways:

Vand Shhako  (‘share & consume’): Share with others, help those who are in need, so you may eat together;

Kirat Karo (‘work honestly’): Earn an honest living, without exploitation or fraud; and

Naam Japo  (‘recite His name’): Meditate on God’s name, so to feel His presence.

The birthdays of the 10 Sikh Gurus are celebrated by the Sikhs worldwide as GurPurab.  The GurPurab celebrations commence 2 days prior to the birthday with a 48-hour non-stop reading of the Guru Granth Sahib (the holy book of the Sikhs) in the Gurudwara. And on the birthday, morning processions begin from the local Gurudwara that go around the block and are joined by joyful devotees singing hymns in praise of the Guru.

Osho has spoken at length on Guru Nanak in His discourses. The book Ek Omkar Satnam (in Hindi) is dedicated to Guru Nanak. Its English translation is available as The True Name Vol.1-2.  Osho says “When Nanak speaks there are only two ways open to you: either you merge into Nanak’s color and attain to satisfaction, or else you are bound to become restless. To be near a person like Nanak is like standing next to fire. Either you burn yourself as Nanak burned, you turn into ashes as Nanak did, you lose yourself as Nanak did — like a drop falling into the ocean; or, the only other alternative is to color Nanak’s words in your own shade. This is very easy, for we never actually hear what is told to us, but hear what we want to hear. We infer meanings that suit us. We don’t stand on the side of truth; we make truth stand on our side; we make truth follow us. The difference between a genuine seeker and a false seeker is that the legitimate seeker follows truth wherever it might take him — whatever be the outcome — even if everything is lost, even if life is lost. He is ready to lose his all. The inauthentic seeker bends truth to follow him; but then it is no longer truth, it is falsity.”

Drop the idea of God and suddenly you will feel a freedom, a spaciousness, an expansion and a great responsibility. There is just nobody above you. You are the highest peak of creation, of existence, of life. There is nobody above you. A sense of great responsibility arises in you. To me that is what makes you religious. You start feeling responsible for all the animals, the birds. How can you be violent to them? How can you go on eating meat? Impossible. You are the highest in consciousness, and this is what you are doing to poor animals? You cannot afford to do it. With responsibility, your humanity becomes awake. For the first time you can raise your head and you can stand straight. Freedom and responsibility come together.

And when the joy of freedom and the joy of responsibility meet, it is so great that I have called that moment, the moment of ecstasy. Then you are so blessed that you can bless the whole existence. Your very being is a blessing, a continual blessing to everyone far and near, man or animal You cannot misbehave even with a rock. You will be respectful without any regard to whom it concerns. Your respectfulness will be simply there, unaddressed. You will be grateful just because so much freedom, so much responsibility, so much joy, and so much ecstasy, are born to you. How can you avoid feeling gratitude?

People ask me what, in my religion, will be the place of worship, of devotion, because they think worship and devotion are impossible without a God. I want to say to you that they are impossible with a God. The whole idea of God is so ugly that I cannot be devoted to such an idiotic hypothesis. I cannot worship God, I don’t see any reason to worship Him. To me devotion is the refined quality of love. It has nothing to do with to whom. It is not a question of to whom it is addressed: Jehovah, God, Jesus, Buddha. It is not a question of it being addressed.

Devotion is a quality in your heart. You feel full of reverence for everything that is. You feel a great love for all that is. It is not a question of whether the person is worthy of it or not… because love is not a business. It is not a question of whether the other is worthy or not, the question is whether your heart is overflowing with love or not. If it is overflowing it will reach to those who are worthy, it will reach to those who are un-worthy. It will not discriminate at all.

The cloud is full, and it showers. Do you think it showers on good people’s forms only, and avoids bad people’s forms? — that it showers only on good Christians, good Hindus, good Jews, and it simply does not shower on the form of an atheist? It simply showers because it is so full.

Devotion is overflowing love. Ordinary love is addressed to somebody. That is the raw quality of love, not yet refined. It needs some object, and it is in a very small quantity — that’s why lovers are so jealous. There is a reason behind it which they may not know. They may think jealousy is not good, and of course it is not good; but why it is not good they don’t know. They think jealousy is not good, but that is not the point. To have such a small quantity of love energy, that is not good — -and out of that, as a by-product, comes jealousy.

The woman is afraid her lover may be loving some other woman too. And he has such a small quantity of love, how can she afford for him to go to some other woman? If he goes to some other woman then she remains starved, because she knows him and how much love he has. It is not even enough for herself, so how is she able to have a project of share-a-home? — no.

The man is so afraid that if his wife is just laughing with the neighbor, that is enough to make him boil within, because he knows how little laughter she has. If she is wasting it with the neighbor, then what about him? So if she is happy with the neighbors — laughing, smiling, gossiping — and when the husband comes home, she is Lying down; she has a headache…. Strangely enough, as the husband enters the compound, immediately the wife starts having a headache. Just a moment before she was laughing with the neighbor, but her husband — the very word gives her a headache. “So he is back again — the same rotten old fellow.” But the real problem is because both have such a small quantity of love — and both are aware of it. And you know that if love is given to somebody else then your share is lost. It is like share-a-home, but you don’t have any home anymore — somebody else is sharing it.

Devotion is love overflowing. Even when there is nobody, it is overflowing — to things, to tables, to chairs, to walls. It is just overflowing; it is not a question of to whom. And this you have to understand. It is a fundamental law of my religion: As awareness grows, simultaneously love grows. They cannot remain separate, they move together. If you can grow in love, you will grow in awareness. If you grow in awareness, you will grow in love. It is easier to grow in awareness because there are very definite, scientific ways to grow in awareness. With love it is difficult, because it is a very slippery thing, it slips out of your hand. Awareness you can hold tight. But don’t be worried: if you are growing in awareness, simultaneously your love will always keep on the same level as your awareness. This is my experience.

I never say a single thing which is not my experience. I have not ever seen in me a single inch of difference between awareness and love. Just let your awareness go higher, and love immediately moves to the same level. They always keep the same level. When awareness is at its peak, love overflows; and that overflowing love is devotion. And when love and awareness are there, are you just going to sit and not do anything? Perhaps once in a while there will be a man like me who will simply sit and do nothing; but most probably everybody is going to do something. And that something will come out of awareness and love. I call that act, worship. Whatever you do – you cook food, you clean a floor, you chop wood — whatever you do, your awareness and your love is showering. It is worship. No mantra is needed, no prayer is needed, no God is needed. In my religion there is a place for devotion. There is a place for worship. But there is no place for God at all.

I am keeping everything that is essential and discarding everything that is non-essential. The priesthood was interested in the non-essential because that non-essential could be used for exploitation. The essential cannot be used for exploitation. The essential will destroy the priesthood immediately. If your awareness grows and your love becomes devotion, one thing is certain: you will not be a Jew, you will not be a Hindu, you will not be a Mohammedan. Your awareness cannot allow such stupidities. Your love, your devotion, will not allow you to go to a temple, to a mosque, to a gurudwara, to a synagogue, to a church, because it is simply idiotic, just Oregonian. There is no point in going anywhere. Wherever you are, your devotion is flowing.

Wherever a religious man sits: There is the temple. There is the church. There is the synagogue. A small, beautiful story…. The founder of Sikhism, Nanak, was one of those beautiful people for whom I have immense love. He was a simple man. He had just one disciple, and that too because he loved to sing. All his teachings were delivered in singing, spontaneous singing — not like a poet composing — and his disciple would play on a simple instrument just to give some music to what the Master was saying. Nanak traveled — he is the only Indian teacher who traveled outside India too. Mahavira and Buddha never went outside their state, Bihar, not even all over India. Shankara went all over India but not beyond India’s boundaries. Nanak is the only exception; he went to Arabia. He reached Mecca, where the sacred shrine of the Mohammedans is, the black stone, Kaaba…

Nanak reached Kaaba. Mohammedans could not believe it because they could see that he was a great teacher, but when night came he slept, keeping his feet towards the Kaaba. That is very disrespectful. The keepers came and said to him, “You being a great teacher, this behavior seems to be very unlikely. You come from India where people know how to be respectful, and yet you are keeping your feet towards our sacred stone? You are hurting our feelings. To us this stone represents God, to us this stone IS God; so please turn your feet in the opposite direction.”

Nanak said, “I knew you would come, hence my feet are towards the Kaaba. Now you want me to turn them in the opposite direction?” They said yes. Nanak said, “You do that – but remember, YOUR God may be just confined to this stone, MY God is not so confined. Wherever you move my feet He is there.”

The story — which must be just a story — is that they moved his feet, but wherever they moved his feet the Kaaba moved. This must be a story because stones, even if they have fallen from the sky, are after all stones. And man hasn’t that much sensitivity: you can’t expect from a stone that it will move. But the story is beautiful. It simply says that wherever you are, if you are full of awareness and devotion the temple is there, the shrine is there. In fact your overflowing love creates a shrine around you. You move with it wherever you go.

Bodhidharma was asked, “If you are thrown into hell, will you resist?”

He laughed and said, “For what? — because wherever Bodhidharma is, there is the lotus paradise. I will be immensely happy because my entry into heaven or into hell is exactly the same. I am Bodhidharma. If I enter into hell, hell will be immediately transformed into a heaven. I would prefer to go to hell, because otherwise who will transform it?”

My religion has devotion as part of awareness. The meaning of devotion is of love, not towards a God, but towards all that is. My religion has worship; but then worship is not a certain chanting of mantras, prayers, Ave Marias…. Worship is your creativeness with a heart full of love and a being overflowing with awareness. And then whatsoever you do is worship. Or if you happen to be a man like me, lazy, then not — doing is your worship. I have never felt for a single moment that I am not a worshipper. My worship is just not to do anything: Just to sit silently, doing nothing. And the grass grows by itself… and real grass!

Source:

Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse Series: From Personality to Individuality Chapter #11

Chapter title: God — the phantom fuehrer

9 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

References:

Osho has spoken on Mystics like Sai Baba, Dadu, Farid, Gurdjieff, J. Krishnamurti, Kabir, Nanak, Patanjali, Rumi, Sahajo, Saraha, Socrates, Tilopa, Valmiki, Zarathustra and many more in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Sermons in Stones
2. Come Come Yet Again Come
3. The Hidden Splendour
4. Beyond Enlightenment
5. The New Dawn
6. The Sword and The Lotus
7. The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty
8. Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries
9. Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 1
10. The Path of Love
11. The Book of Wisdom