I know a lot of
people who are superstitious, follow rituals and black magic. It’s everything
from donating specific items during the new moon, to wearing special bracelets,
having pandits tell horoscopes, to a story I heard about half a pomegranate
being buried in the soil of a plant at the Gurdwara! Unfortunately a lot of us
have forgotten what Guru Nanak Dev Ji has taught us. In the search for easy
solutions to get what we desire, we blindly follow what people tell us to do
instead of Gurmat. In the Guru Granth Sahib Ji it is written, “The mind is
diseased with doubt, superstition and duality” (p. 416).
There are many
sakhis about these topics, for example, the well-known Sakhi about the Hindus
throwing water towards the sun to reach their dead ancestors. I’m going to
share the Sakhi about the Janeau here. A janeau is a thread that’s tied around
the neck of a Hindu boy. Without this thread, the boy is considered of the
lowest caste and is not allowed to read holy texts. Thus it divides people into
castes. Brahmins wear cotton jeneau, kshatriyas wear hemp and vaisya wear wool.
It allows one of these castes to get an education and marriage. It is also worn
for protection against gods/goddesses. At the age of 9, Guru Nanak Dev Ji was
at an age to have this janeau tied. When the ritual was started, he asked the
priest why this was performed and the priest explained. Guru Nanak further
asked why women were not allowed to get the janeau, and the priest explained
that women are only allowed to get a janeau through marriage, and a husband
wears it for her. He insisted that these were all the rules according to the
scriptures and that Guru Ji was committing a great sin by questioning the holy
books. To this Guru Ji replied that it is important to use our intellect to
question what is written in order to gain an understanding of the religious
texts or we will not learn. Guru Ji pointed out that the janeau is
discriminatory and we should not divide people among castes. He also pointed
out that such a physical thread cannot help us achieve our purpose:
“Make compassion the cotton, contentment the thread, modesty the knot and
truth the twist. This is the sacred thread of the soul; if you have it, then go
ahead and put it on me. It does not break, it cannot be soiled by filth, it
cannot be burnt, or lost.
Blessed are those mortal beings, O Nanak, who wear
such a thread around their necks. You buy the thread for a few shells, and
seated in your enclosure, you put it on. Whispering instructions into others'
ears, the Brahmin becomes a guru.
But he dies, and the sacred thread falls
away, and the soul departs without it.
He commits thousands of robberies,
thousands of acts of adultery, thousands of falsehoods and thousands of abuses.
He practices thousands of deceptions and secret deeds, night and day, against
his fellow beings. The thread is spun from cotton, and the Brahmin comes and
twists it. The goat is killed, cooked and eaten, and everyone then says, ‘Put
on the sacred thread’. When it wears
out, it is thrown away, and another one is put on. O Nanak, the thread would
not break, if it had any real strength. Believing in the Name, honor is
obtained. The Lord's Praise is the true sacred thread.
Such a sacred thread is
worn in the Court of the Lord; it shall never break.
There is no sacred thread
for gender, and no thread for woman.
The man's beard is spat upon daily. There
is no sacred thread for the feet, and no thread for the hands;
no thread for
the tongue, and no thread for the eyes. The Brahmin himself goes to the world
hereafter without a sacred thread. Twisting the threads, he puts them on
others. He takes payment for performing marriages; reading their horoscopes, he
shows them the way. Hear, and see, O people, this wondrous thing. He is
mentally blind, and yet his name is wisdom.” Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 471 (translation on
discoversikhism.com).
This is a
well-known sakhi but I feel that a lot of people don’t actually incorporate
what it teaches us. We listen and nod and continue to look for people to give
us what we want, and tell us what to do. Yet we read in Japji Sahib daily, that
God is the only giver. Sometimes people even take it one step further and say
if they read a certain number of prayers in this timeframe, they will get what
they want. The ironic thing is that instead of reading quickly for the sake of
reading, if we sit down and understand the Gurbani, it tells us everything we
need! We would stop searching elsewhere. Let’s remember to be patient, follow
Gurmat, and put in the effort towards our life purpose instead of blindly following superstitions and rituals.
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