In around the
last eight or nine months, I had a lot of friends move away. Within that
time I also grew to understand the importance of sangat, and what belonging and
acceptance really feels like. It became uncomfortable for me to settle for
distant friendships, not just physical distance but more spiritually and emotionally
where there was no understanding for my journey. Recently, I wondered what gift
lied in this period of comparative isolation and solitude. On one hand, I felt I grew to
understand that I was not happy spending my time gossiping, lost in the sea of
maya. On the other, I felt that I have not yet reached my merger with Waheguru
either, to have the bliss of that contentment. I found myself in between, in
the space of longing for that merger, knowing that I cannot turn back either, no matter how far I still have to walk. I
knew that there must be some gift in this space too, as hard as it is.
As I mentioned previously, knowing that the
mind is separated from God is in itself a gift. So many people wander lost, not
knowing the path or the game of the mind. I wondered, though, what else I was supposed to learn from this. The Hukamnama today at the Gurdwara explained: “Does anyone
know, who is our friend in this world? He alone understands this, whom the Lord
blesses with His mercy. Immaculate and unstained in his way of life (Pause). Mother, father, spouse, children,
relatives, lovers, friends and siblings meet, having been associated in
previous lives; but none of them will be your companion and support in the end.
Pearl necklaces, gold, rubies and diamonds please the mind, but they are only
Maya. Possessing them, one passes his life in agony; he obtains no contentment
from them. Elephants, chariots, horses, as fast as the wind, wealth, land, and
armies of four kinds- none of these will go with him; he must get up and depart
naked. The Lord’s Saints are the beloved lovers of God; sing of the Lord, Har,
Har, with them. O Nanak, in the Society of the Saints, you shall obtain peace
in this world, and in the next world your face shall be radiant and bright”
(Ang 700). From this, I recalled another shabad “O dear friend, know this in
your mind. The world is entangled in its own pleasures; no one is for anyone
else. In good times, many come and sit together, surrounding you on all four
sides. But when hard times come, they all leave, and no one comes near you. Your wife, whom you love so much, and who
has remained every attached to you, runs away crying, ‘Ghost! Ghost!’ as soon
as the swan-soul leaves this body. This is the way they act- those whom we
love so much. At the very last moment, O Nanak, no one is any use at all,
except the Dear Lord” (Ang 634). It is from these Hukamnamas that I understood
that my lesson in solitude is about moh (attachment).
“One who looks
upon all with a single eye, and knows them to be one and the same - he alone is
known as a Yogi” Ang 730
Giani Sant Singh
Ji Maskeen writes about moh in his book, “Five Vices and Four Eras” (1). He
explains that moh can be converted to a virtue. We must first understand what
it is. Moh is to call something “mine”; for example, my wealth, my house, my
child, my husband/wife, my beauty, or my power. The problem in this is
identified using the following example. He explains that if there is an
epidemic, and many fall sick, you will not be sad because those that are
“yours” are not sick, yet when an object breaks that is “yours” then you become
upset. This shows us that attachment results in a vary narrowed mindset. This
leads to suffering and pain because we are afraid to lose what is ours, which
WILL be lost because the world is transitionary, and everything must leave one
day. He explains that in attachment, our kindness is limited because only those
who are “mine” are our world. Without attachment a person becomes limitless
like God, with unlimited kindness and love because the whole world is equally his own, as God's creation. When we are stuck in ego, in “mine,” in maya,
then we forget all belongs to God. Giani Ji gives the example of how Guru
Gobind Singh Ji sacrificed his whole family by moving beyond mine, to see that
they belong to God. This would not have been possible if he had moh for his
family- his parents, or his children. Another example is when Guru
Nanak Dev Ji gave Gurgadi to Bhai Lehna Ji (Guru Angad Dev JI) instead of his
sons (2). These examples show us how to move beyond attachment into love, just
as Bhai Kanhaiya Ji served the Mughal soldiers with water and medicine because
he saw God in all. Our love should be the same for each person. Avtar Singh Ji describes,
“The ideal
stressed by the Gurus in this regard is that one ought to live in the world
just as the lotus flower lives in water. The flower is in the water and is yet
unaffected by it in the sense that it does not sink in the water. Similarly,
man should not renounce the social context but at the same time he ought not to
be attached to it” (3).
I realized that
my lesson here was that instead of being attached to people or even outcomes,
it is important to remember that there is balance in this also. I spent so much time attached it was hard for me to see it without this time and space on my own. It is hard to
escape the pull of moh, but the Guru Jis did not ask us to be detached either.
We don’t have to go out and live in the jungles or mountains away from
families. Rather we live our life and relationships in such a way as to
remember that the body has temporary associations that leave when it dies, and
that our best friend sits in our mind: “If the True Guru abides within my mind,
then I see the Lord, my best friend there" (Ang 1087). Realizing that sometimes no one else will be there by you is a very painful lesson, but it teaches us to get closer to God. When we realize God in each person, and there is no other to be served and no limit
to the love, like Bhai Kanhaiya Ji showed us.
“By serving the True Guru, worldly attachment
is completely burnt down and man remains detached in his home (Pause).” (Ang
29)
References
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