English Translation of the Daily Hukamnama. (Siri Guru Granth Sahib ji. Ang: 721)

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Waheguru ji ka khalsa! Waheguru ji ki Fateh!
 
Today’s hukamnama is from Guru Nanak Dev Ji in raag Tilang from page 721 of Sri Guru Granth Sahib
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In the hukam today Guru Nanak is offering a prayer, and talking about the experience of death, and the attitude that we can get into of not acknowledging death, not recognizing that death happens for all of us, and the mistakes that we make in the face of ignoring that death is a reality. The Hukam is really very humble, its a prayer to the Divine and in it, Guru Nanak is really speaking from sort of his own weaknesses, his own human, very human psyche and he will do this a lot in Gurbani where he will speak from the most vulnerable, most human, most flawed part of himself as a way to help us kind of  acknowledge the weaknesses  we have inside of ourselves and then through the Gurbani, through the prayer, he allows those weaknesses to be expressed and then shows us a way to elevate ourselves out of those traps of the mind or those shadows that we all have to deal and wrestle with.

    So the Hukamnama starts off with the Mool Mantra, which is a reminder of the Divine identity, a description of the Divine identity and a reminder that we can experience that through the gift of the teacher. And then he begins by saying that, "I offer one prayer to you, Creator. Please listen to it." So he’s asking for  God, for the divine to listen to him, sort of listen to his condition, to listen to the problem- what it really is. And he praises the Divine and talks about how true and pure and kind and amazingly wonderful the Divine is and really acknowledges that higher power that he has.
    So then he begins to talk about death and he says, the world is a very temporary place and mortality- the experience of death- is an absolute certainty for every single person who comes to the planet. He is asking his mind, or telling us in our minds, that we should know this as an absolute fact, a total certainity, that the world is temporary and death has to come for each and every one of us. But then he also acknowledges that in a very humble way, how difficult it is for the mind to accept that, and he says even though the angel of death is holding the my hair on my head, its like right on top of me, still I’m not willing to know and accept the reality of death in my mind. So the mind is very resistant to the experience of death and likes to deny or pretend to say its not in the future. So Guru Nanak is humbly acknowledging that the human mind really resists accepting the fact of death. While we are alive, we spend a tremendous amount of energy creating earthly security for ourselves, and we create it through our family and we create it through accumulating wealth and we create it through planning schemes and we are constantly trying to create our earthly security.
    And in the next lines, Guru Nanak is going to acknowledge the way that we create this earthly security and reflect it back to us as none of these things, none of these people are going to help you cross over the experience of death. So your spouse, your children, your parents, your siblings- when it’s time for the mind and body to fall away and the breath has one last prayer to speak, none of these people- that we pour so much energy into creating a sense of security with- not one of them will be there to hold our hands and walk through it with us. And none of them will be there to rescue us from the experience. So its a reminder that even though we have relationships, ultimately, when the moment of death comes, the only relationship that counts is the relationship our own soul has with the divine energy. All these other relationships will have absolutely no influence or impact in that last moment.
    And then he talks about that while alive, night and day, he is constantly lost in the search for wealth, and constantly trying to envision schemes that will bring him some kind of profit in a way thats not good for other people. And again, acknowledges this in himself in a way that we may acknowledge it in ourselves as well. We do this, we spend so much time to do this and think about how we are going to get money,  and how we can plan our own progress and success. Then, Guru Nanak goes into a place of regret, saying, "Gosh. I have lived my life this way and I’ve never done any good deeds. The human body was given to serve, to clear the  Karma, to meditate and  to experience the divine and when we use it to create security to focus on wealth, focus on schemes, we miss the opportunity of what the human life can give us. And he acknowledges that my condition is that I’ve never done the right actions that my human body was given to me for. And because of this, I am so unfortunate- I am really poor actually- because of that. I’m shameless and I haven’t done my duty to my own life, to my own God." He says that he’s without fear of God- the phrase gets translated as ‘fear of god.’ what does that mean? Fear exists in us as people. We can be afraid our boss; we can be afraid of what our friends are going to say about us; we can be afraid of what our spouse thinks of us. But really the proper fear to have is to be afraid that the soul doesn’t live the path that the Creator sent into the human body to live. And Guru Nanak is saying in this line, that "I’ve lived life but I haven’t been afraid of the right thing. I haven’t been afraid of missing the chance to experience the divine in form."
    So after acknowledging all of this humility- that the mind doesn’t know how to accept death and that siblings aren’t going to be there and I’m wandering around in greed and planning wrong things and I’ve never done anything right. I’m absolutely unfortunate because of this.
    At the last line, Nanak turns it over, and this is the prayer: "Let me be your humble servant, O God. Let me become the dust of the feet of your slaves." And so, he’s praying and asking the Divine to listen to this one prayer. He’s not even saying, "help me understand death."  He’s just saying "The only prayer I can ask is let me be the dust of the feet of your slaves." That is the path that Nanak lays out for us to transcend all these problems of our mind that keep us ignorant, and keep us bound in darkness.

Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh!

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Yak araj gufṯam pės ṯo ḏar gos kun karṯār. Hakā Kabīr karīm ṯū bė­aib parvarḏagār. ||1||

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Ḏunī­ā mukāmė fānī ṯehkīk ḏil ḏānī.Mam sar mū­ė ajrā­īl girafṯeh ḏil hėcẖ na ḏānī. ||1|| rahā­o.

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Jan pisar paḏar birāḏarāʼn kas nės ḏasṯaʼngīr. Ākẖir bi­afṯam kas na ḏāraḏ cẖūʼn savaḏ ṯakbīr. ||2||

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