04/11/2019
ਕਾਵਿ ਸ਼ਾਸਤਰ ਅੰਕ-15-18 ਰਿਲੀਜ਼ ਸਮਾਗਮ(ਚਾਰੇ ਜਿਲਦਾਂ)
8 ਤੋਂ 12 ਨਵੰਬਰ 2019
ਚਿੰਤ ਅਚਿੰਤਾ ਸਗਲੀ ਗਈ
ਪ੍ਰਭ ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਨਕ ਮਈ
Many difficulties en route to Truth-Harjeet Singh Gill
The cosmic vision of Baba Nanak is presented in the opening statement of Japji. There is but one unique Creator — who is beyond time and space, who has no form or figure. This Creator is denominated as Sach, Truth. In the beginning was Truth. It is the rhyme and reason of all ages: past, present and future. When it will be all over, this Sublime Truth will inhabit the Cosmos, the Brahmand.
“Sach khand wasse Nirankar”. The Nirankar, the Formless, dwells in the realm of Sach, the Truth. In the associational dialectic, where there is Sach, there is Nirankar or where there is Nirankar, there is Sach. Sach and Nirankar are equivalent concepts. They can never be disassociated. In Sidh Gosht, when the Siddhas ask: “Kis wakkhar ke tum wanjare”, quick comes the reply: “Sach wakkhar ke hum wanjare”. Baba Nanak was in communion with the Truth. He surcharged the whole universe with this Sublime Truth. He lived in and fought for Truth in every action, in every faction. In the very beginning of the dialogue, after the usual salutations, Baba Nanak delineates His discourse: “Kia bhawie Sach suchha hoe, Sach sabad bin mukt na koe”. Wandering in jungles with all metaphysical precautions and austerities leads you nowhere. It is a wild goose chase that has led many ascetics astray. The concept of Sach, religious purity — that was employed by most of our religious traditions to divide the society into pure and impure, into higher and lower classes, even into male and female — was ruthlessly denounced by Baba Nanak. It is only Sach that is the criterion of all classifications, of all such divisions. In the same Sidh Gosht, Baba Nanak says: “Sach bina suucha ko nahi”. ‘The ultimate criterion, the sublime concept of Truth, is the only criterion that differentiates the pure from the impure, the sacred from the profane’.
What the times demanded
In 17th-century France, Jean-Jacques Rousseau explained the ills of his times in terms of an imagined history of mankind. Once upon a time, human beings lived in jungles, in nature, where there were no families, no haves, no have-nots. There was no concept of mine and yours. Then began the struggle and strife over property, over areas of domination that led to the creation of different classes, of rulers and ruled, of conquerors and the conquered. And slowly it continued until the modern times. All our inequalities and discriminations are due to this progression in history.
A little later, another French philosopher, Étienne de Condillac, followed the same discursive strategy to explain the problems of the understanding of the language. In the beginning, at the zero state of language, a word corresponds to a given object. As the linguistic community grows, the particular names, signifiers, refer to a number of similar but not identical objects, as the word, man, for numerous men, all different from each other. From the concrete references, we move on to abstract words, truth, beauty, justice. With the same signifiers we refer to a number of similar objects, referents, universals. The creativity of the author lies in creating different conceptual contexts to underscore specific significations. This is how we attempt at discerning the discourse of Japji which is a unique construct, a conceptual construct with a series of micro concepts, the Paurian, whose context enables us to arrive at the true significance of Baba Nanak’s enunciations.
