The Vital Anjan

01/07/2024

https://vitalanjan.com/giving-taking/

31/05/2024

The Vital Anjan interviews the sevādārs of Virasati Asthan Seva about the conservation of GurSikh spaces.

The Vital Anjan: Congratulations on launching Virasati Asthan Seva. Your website describes the project as “a charity dedicated to the preservation and conservation of sites of historical and architectural importance associated with the Sikh tradition”. What convinced you this work is necessary a...

30/04/2024

Randhir Singh Bilkhu reviews the exhibition "Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King" at The Wallace Collection.

Historical artefacts are curious objects. On the one hand inanimate and lifeless, on the other they are capable of transporting you to a different time and place, shining a light on the lives of long dead individuals. Through its captivating selection of items, Ranjit Singh: Sikh, Warrior, King at t...

01/04/2024

https://www.vitalanjan.com/journal/kirtan/

01/03/2024

"How could my life have gone so wrong?
Trapped in this net my end is surely near.
I only wished to get along [...]"

How could my life have gone so wrong? Trapped in this net my end is surely near. I only wished to get along— To be accepted and perhaps belong. Now all I know is fear. How could my life have gone so wrong? I followed schools ten million users strong, And always liked the posts […]

01/02/2024

"So, if one desires to create the laudable ‘good fusion,’ one must have one’s head (one’s ego) in one’s hand. After that, at least tentatively, the conditions are set for something truly exceptional to happen, given the right orientation, sincere, honest effort, and that ever present Grace."

Cheslav 'Bala' Singh

‘…how seemingly disparate traditions can co-exist without mis-judging or excluding one another, all the while upholding their respective, distinct and dignified places.’ [1] There are few things that excite me as much as over-the-top and grandiose titles. So it was only natural that when in Ju...

31/12/2023

"Master Kanghā combs the kes of days—
disentangler of moribund yesterdays..."

Gentle Master Kanghā! Self-knottings perplex me; a thousand demerits vex me! Entrust me to your dauntlessly unyielding, illusion-rending care!  Upwards pulls time’s discerning comb, grinning death with pointed teeth. Inexorable as tāla—crowning ornament of kāla, rendered kalā to praise Akā...

30/11/2023

"My paintings reflect my own truth, and I feel they convey an accumulation of life experiences across time. Although their subject matter largely focuses on Sikh culture, I believe it is a diverse and vast subject, and that I am only at the beginning of my journey."

Harram Khurram reviews Jatinder Singh Durhailay's November 2023 exhibition "Free Flow Formings", currently on display at The Artist Room.

https://www.vitalanjan.com/journal/durhailayscontemporaryminiatures/

01/11/2023

"Unlikely as it may seem, there are two notable commonalities uniting the tippler and the sage. In the first place, both perceive the unbearableness of ordinary consciousness. Secondly, both take action in the hope of alleviating their suffering. The crucial distinction lies in the quality of their respective strategies: the tippler seeks perfect oblivion where the sage seeks perfect awareness."

As a lifelong teetotaler, I have yet to find a human whose company is improved by drinking alcohol. Conversational lucidity, impulse control, propriety, and even basic motor skills are all wont to suffer under its influence. If consuming alcohol is held to boost sociability, evidently this effect do...

01/10/2023

“The conception of active patronage I submit the Panth must rediscover involves more than furnishing those with great potential the leisure wherefrom serious work may be undertaken: it actively seeks to offer genuine enrichment, in a sense constituting a creative endeavor itself.”

I write from under the Duomo’s shade in Florence, nearing the end of my summer fieldwork. Spanning three continents, my research at Oxford on the transmission of the Gurbāṇī Kīrtan Paramparā led me to places as varied as Seattle, Amritsar, New Delhi, Pune, and Chandigarh. This week, I am in ...

01/09/2023

"An article of firm conviction with the Sikhs is that Mukti is not release from the world but liberation from its fears." —Sardār Pritam Singh Kohli

Editor’s Note: I write from New Delhi at Bhāī Baldeep Singh’s residence, where I am based for my fieldwork on the Gurbāṇī Kīrtan Paramparā. My last trip to India was pre-Pandemic in 2017, to participate in the celebrations for Gurū Gobind Singh’s 350th birth anniversary celebrations i...

01/08/2023

July's installment of The Vital Anjan features four pages of Bhai Baldeep Singh's beautiful Gurmukhī calligraphy, including a scintillating paran.

  Editor’s Note: For July 2023’s installment of The Vital Anjan, I am deeply indebted to Khalīfā Ustād Bhāī Baldeep Singh for graciously allowing me to publish four pages from his hand as they occur in my percussive diaries. There has been a precious tradition within the Amritsarī-Kapūrt...

01/07/2023

"The supreme illumination is itself the knowledge that grants supreme bliss."

If we divide all of history—depending on whether the push of certain pasts or pull of possible futures is predominant—into ages of memory and ages of imagination, the latter has by and large enjoyed ascendency since the Enlightenment. Of course, the Renaissance reminds us that ages of memory can...

01/06/2023

"Eternal honor is not won by merely laying claim to a name, but through perfecting the corresponding virtues. Our external forms are of trifling worth absent inner realization."

Upon emerging from the Kālī Veīn on the third day, Gurū Nanak did not have a temple constructed for his veneration. The Purātan Janamasākhī maintains that he instead went and sat with fakīrs, with Bhāī Mardana at his side. The people and Daulat Khan Lodi assumed some misfortune had befalle...

29/04/2023

"...the important social charisma that was portrayed by the living Gurūs was now entrusted to the Khalsa. It is important to consider that this sovereignty was not manifest within the Khalsa solely as the institution of initiated adherents or the organism that represented the Sikh ideal. In order for the social charisma of the Gurū to be upheld, a sense of sovereignty had to be imagined within each and every constituent individual of the Khalsa. "

I. Introduction* The early modern period has proven to be a vastly important and formative era in the development of political theory, notions of statehood, and theorisations of sovereignty. Jean Bodin (1530-1596) is often cited as the first European philosopher to approach the topic of sovereignty....

01/04/2023

"...man is a liminal creature, and whenever he rises not to realization of the divine, he inevitably plummets into the infernal…"

I. Beneath the stars, there is a small pool. Its source is a mighty stream older than our world. The liquid here is clear and good to drink. Other pools reflect whatever appears before them, but the elixir here is true and forever itself. II. A single drop is enough to awaken its drinker to […]

01/03/2023

Dr. Manmohan Singh Kumar reflects on the implications of Nām Japanā, Kirat Karanī, and Vaṅḍ Chakanā for formulating a Sikh understanding of political economy:

I. Introduction This[1] article briefly reviews a key set of imperatives of Sikh philosophy and discusses their implications for political economy. Sikh philosophy is deep and rich and aspects relating to political economy embedded in it are significant. Therefore, while it is impossible to do justi...

01/02/2023

"Yet five and a half centuries is not so long in the annals of the world’s religious traditions, and there remains much for us to rediscover, unpack, and build upon. Accordingly, we might profitably consider—in our respective fields and vocations, both academic and professional—what precisely it would mean to prefix them with the word ‘GurSikh’. For example, what might constitute GurSikh bioethics? What would make for a GurSikh conception of political economy? Again, what might one mean by ‘the great GurSikh novel’?

Gurū Nanak and his successors endowed the Sikhs with an extraordinary legacy. From the spiritual treasures of Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib to the rich history of the Gurūs and their disciples, there is no dearth of inspiration to guide contemporary Sikh activity. We stand five and a half centuries f...

31/12/2022

"It was not until the years of accumulated sediment were cleared, until the rāga seeds were planted and nurtured through the tāla cycles, that the soil was determined to be fertile enough to allow the Bāṇī to bloom forth through the learning of Sabada rīta-s."

In 2022's final installment of The Vital Anjan, Dr. Nirinjan Kaur Khalsa-Baker discusses aspects of Bhai Baldeep Singh's pedagogy and what his retreats have meant to some participants.

Editor’s Note:  January 2022’s installment of The Vital Anjan initiated a series commemorating twenty-five unbroken years since Bhaī Baldeep Singh began teaching the bi-annual Gurbāṇī Saṅgīta Intensive Retreats in 1997. It featured the first part of an interview in which Bhāī Baldeep...

29/11/2022

The Vital Anjan turns three today. Its 25th installment is a reflection on the relation between dough, drumming, and the GurSikh ethos.

"Like the dastāra, which cannot be donned or doffed instantly as with a cap but rather must be deliberately formed over one’s kesa every morning, the joṛī-’s āṭā represents a conscious decision to keep alive and live by the endowments of the Gurū-s."

As a glob of dough soared off my dhāmā under the vaulted ceiling of Balliol’s Hall during a recent performance, it quite literally struck me that the minor challenges of maintaining the joṛī-’s dough may be understood as preparing the GurSikh to surmount the small and great challenges of li...

29/10/2022

"Sikh poetics have generated a lexicon of recurring visual motifs that have inspired how I formulated my own glossary of tropes and surrealist narratives." —— Keerat Kaur

Sikh literature is a lush landscape of nature-inspired symbolism. The disciple’s longing for the Gurū’s lotus feet is compared to the cuckoo bird’s search for water droplets. A Sikh aspires to be like the moon—stoic and unmoved by the night—illuminated and glistening from the unseen sourc...

30/09/2022

"Not always the savviest of planners, I had somehow scheduled a Sikh pilgrimage on one of my own religion’s most important feast days. It was never my intention to trade one religious experience for another, but I chose to treat this as a victory for ecumenism rather than a failure of devotion on my part."

On the morning of August 15, 2022, I climbed the five thousand feet from Ghangaria in the Chamoli Himalayas to Guradavārā Srī Hemkunt Sāhib. Ghangaria, a small trekking village only accessible by foot in Uttarakhand, was overbooked and buzzing as I awoke on the momentous seventy-fifth anniversar...

01/09/2022

"Srī Gurū Graṅth Sāhib happily abounds with illuminating references to the concept of friendship (dōsatī, mitrāī) and especially to friends of various kinds (mīta, sajaṇa, mitra, yāra, bēlī sakhī, sahēlī)."

https://www.vitalanjan.com/journal/the-cream-of-friendship/

‘Friendship’—much like the words ‘happiness’ and ‘love’—refers to an obviously meaningful human experience that is difficult to discuss at once meaningfully and non-obviously. The difficulty is acute enough that the likelihood of lapsing into clichés on these topics is itself a clic...

01/08/2022

"...Bāṇī and GurSikh history enrich and elevate our sense of possibility, equipping us with the inner resources to navigate life with the grace and dignity befitting the divine potential in our nature."

https://www.vitalanjan.com/journal/thesoulscriterion/

It is a curious aspect of the human condition that a single object should delight one and distresses another. Consider two reasonably intelligent people seated in a modern laboratory well-equipped with all manner of measuring instruments, a plate of bitter gourd between them. With little difficulty,...

01/07/2022

"The Gurū-s are fully aware of māyā-’s illusory lure and fundamentally committed to ferrying all humans across its treacherous waves through the Sabad. It thus stands to reason that Sabad Gurū embodies the Gurū-s’ strategic counter to māyā-’s awesome power."

https://www.vitalanjan.com/journal/soap-for-the-soul/

Wisdom requires a clear view of what is essentially like and unlike. As it often proves ruinous to discriminate among entities that are fundamentally the same, there is a correspondingly great danger in conflating cases that are in reality different. Discerning which similarities and dissimilarities...