GURBANI

Death as the Awakener

Reflections from Sikh evening prayers

Recognising life is temporary

From the first flutters to form our heartbeats in the womb, to the first pulses of respiration from our lungs, the rhythm of our life begins. And so, Gurbani often addresses all humans as ‘prāni’, meaning a living, breathing being, who exists on prān or breaths. Through a simple rhyme, one striking verse then tells us how brief life is: ‘ham ādamī, ik damī’. From a Persian word for man, ‘ādamī’ is associated with Adam, the first man in the Abrahamic traditions, yet since ‘dam’ (rhyming with ‘sum’) also means ‘breath’ and the initial long vowel sound ‘ā’ means ‘come’, ‘ā-damī’ seems to point to our mortality as well, for we live as long as our next breath will arrive. And so, the verse informs us, we exist ‘for one breath’ or ‘ik damī’; life’s end is a single breath away – and its length is but a breath in Time’s flow.

We may anticipate that life will stretch from childhood and youth to adulthood and old age, yet we do not really know when this last breath will come in the story of our life, or that of our loved ones. As Jap Ji Sahib reminds us, the ultimate power (‘jor’) to live or die is beyond our control: ‘Jor na jīvan, maran na jor’. Beyond whatever we can do, practically and prayerfully, there is a higher Will, the hukam, that directs the course of reality. Before death, we must all, eventually, bow. By confronting us with our mortality, Gurbani urges us to consider what it means to truly live, so we may meet both life and death with courage, contentment, selflessness, and peace.

Living for the Divine Name

In the evening prayer of Rehras Sahib, we hear the line ‘Ākhā(n) jīvā(n), visrai mar jāou’ – ‘I live when I utter the Divine Name; forgetting it, I die’. To be alive, then, is to truly remember and live in praise of life’s Divine Source; to neglect it is to become spiritually dead.

Whether we appear religious or not, when the mind becomes spiritually lifeless, it can easily become clouded by the ego and its vices. In this state, we are ‘phantoms’ of our true self, or ‘betāl’ – a word which, broken down, also means ‘out’ (‘be-’) of ‘rhythm’ (‘tāl’). Out of harmony with the Divine, we live untouched by the music that would spiritually awaken us. This again explains why God is often evoked as ‘Harī’, to signify the sacred force bringing vitality and abundance (‘hariā’ means that which has become green), which also removes or destroys.

Death, in this sense, can rejuvenate, for Gurbani speaks of those who ‘die in the shabad’ (‘sabad muai’) and become spiritually liberated. By diving into the realm of sacred wisdom, they shed the hold of ego and emerge as a ‘jīvan mukat’, spiritually liberated in the midst of life. Enacting this very process was the willing act of sacrifice, then re-emergence, of the Panj Pyare, whom the tenth Guru initiated with amrit, meaning ‘elixir of immortality’.

ਸੇ ਮੁਕਤੁ ਸੇ ਮੁਕਤੁ ਭਏ ਜਿਨ ਹਰਿ ਧਿਆਇਆ ਜੀ ਤਿਨ ਤੂਟੀ ਜਮ ਕੀ ਫਾਸੀ ॥
ਜਿਨ ਨਿਰਭਉ ਜਿਨ ਹਰਿ ਨਿਰਭਉ ਧਿਆਇਆ ਜੀ ਤਿਨ ਕਾ ਭਉ ਸਭੁ ਗਵਾਸੀ ॥

They are liberated, they are liberated,
For whom, by meditating on the Infinite Creator,
the noose of Death is broken.
Those who meditate on the Fearless One,
those who meditate on the Fearless One,
For them, all fear of death departs.

– Guru Ramdas Ji, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, ang 11

Becoming fearless

As Rehras continues, it evokes God as the Fearless One, whose remembrance can free us also from the fear of death. The Gurus were aware that it was upon this very fear that the followers of different religious traditions would base their practices, be it for the soul to avoid a worse incarnation and secure better conditions in a next life or to escape from hell and win a place in paradise.

Since ancient times, Yama or Yamarāja was the deity of death in India, otherwise known in Punjabi as ‘Jamm’ (rhyming with ‘sum’), whose soul-collecting agents, the ‘jamdūt’, are fearsome to those who had led a corrupt life. For some, he was also ‘Dharamrāj’ who pronounces judgment on souls, by assessing the accounts delivered by Chitragupta, the record-keeper of our lifetime’s conscious and unconscious thoughts. This deity was later also conceived as two entities, ‘Chitar’ and ‘Gupat’, whose role symbolises for Sikhs the work of our conscience, encouraging self-regulation that lessens reliance on external forms of surveillance and disciplining.

Gurbani also refers to Azrael, the ‘angel of death’ from Islamic tradition, alongside references to hell (narak) and heaven (svarag or baikuntth). Drawing on narratives of the afterlife that were familiar to the different people they engaged with, whilst noting this was ultimately a mystery known only to God, the Gurus drove home the need to live with integrity and accountability, to distinguish qualities that generate hellish or heavenly states within and around us, and to not regretfully waste the diamond-like gift of human life before we leave. They pressed the point that, when the time for us to answer for our life comes, the vices which posed as our mind’s friends desert us like traitors, but the virtues remain by our side like true sajan or friends.

Achieving liberation

Across cultures the world over, death has long been personified with different names. In English, we might use a capital ‘D’ to characterise death as Death, as we would use a capital ‘T’ to characterise time as Time. It follows that the oneness that interconnects all things may then be called the One, and that people may ‘personify’ the power behind existence, by naming its essence as God.

In India, closely linked to Death was Time, or Kāl, whose flow also terminates life, hence the Gurus highlighted God as ‘Akāl’ – beyond Time and Death. As they engaged with established notions of the afterlife, the Gurus seemed to take, as a given, India’s ancient principle that the eternal self, or ātmā, incarnates across a hierarchy of life forms, whose vast spectrum, ranging from matter to vegetation, animals and humans, was captured in the phrase ‘chaurāsi lakh jūn’ meaning 8.4 million species.

Whilst the soul contains God’s spark, it carries imprints from our karam, our deeds in thought and action that bear future consequences, where good karam bring the possibly of muktī, or liberation from the cycles of rebirth. Rather than prescribing karam as calculated efforts for personal salvation, the Gurus made seeking to live as an expression of the Divine the basis for a life of good deeds that was genuine and unconditional. They also highlighted the role of Divine grace, through words like kirpā and mehar (as well as the Persian term karam), beyond our human efforts. Muktī, as they saw it, was not to be pursued as a goal, but it would arise from seeking the ultimate goal: to live in oneness with the One.

ਰਾਜੁ ਨ ਚਾਹਉ ਮੁਕਤਿ ਨ ਚਾਹਉ ਮਨਿ ਪ੍ਰੀਤਿ ਚਰਨ ਕਮਲਾਰੇ ॥

I seek neither rāj nor muktī –
not worldly power, nor even spiritual liberation.
My mind seeks only the love found in bowing, God, to Your lotus feet.

– Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, ang 534
190

At the threshold

At the threshold of the transition marked by death, fear inevitably emerges. In Sikh life, in many ways, this is calmed. Alongside understandings of the soul’s onward journey and the possibility of merging with God in this life and beyond, there is a collective awareness of legendary Sikhs over history, who were able to heroically face death, spurred by ideals of seeking to go beyond oneself to serve others and to remain untouched by fear or hate.

As much as we may learn about death from a clinical or philosophical perspective, the passing of loved ones brings us the very human experience of profound grief. As the extent of our emotional bond with a person is revealed to us, the heart’s journey must be endured as an almost physical one of pain and gradual healing. It is here that the words of gurbani, as well as singing through kīrtan, bring comfort and steadiness in the slow process of letting go, drawing on the values of acceptance, detachment, patience, and hope.

Sohila: Preparing for our departure

Through the life-enabling jyot or inner light, the body composed of the ‘panj tat’ or five elements was sustained; with the jyot’s departure, the five elements then separate, the physical body disintegrates, and the soul seeks to return to its origin, just as rays of light or streams of water touch and merge with their source.

At the close of each day, the night-time prayer, known as Sohila, is based on the style of traditional songs that would be sung in the home of a bride, in the evenings prior to her wedding. Blended in these songs would be sadness and uncertainty, along with anticipation and hope, as they expressed her trepidation at leaving the familiar faces of loved ones, whilst she sought everyone’s blessings for happiness in her future abode. This night prayer reminds us that death’s call comes to all eventually and must, in the end, be welcomed, like a wedding invitation that sets the day of departure of a bride from her family home. All we can then wish for are blessings from our loved ones, that uniting with the Beloved will be possible.

ਉਰਵਾਰਿ ਪਾਰਿ ਮੇਰਾ ਸਹੁ ਵਸੈ ਹਉ ਮਿਲਉਗੀ ਬਾਹ ਪਸਾਰਿ ॥…
ਨਾਨਕ ਸਦਾ ਸੋਹਾਗਣੀ ਜਿਨ ਜੋਤੀ ਜੋਤਿ ਸਮਾਇ ॥

On the shore of this life, and on the shore beyond, the Divine Husband dwells
Like a bride, my soul would seek to meet and hold Him, close in my embrace…
O Nanak, those souls become the blessed and fulfilled brides,
Whose inner light merges with the Divine Light.

– Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, ang 157