Today’s Hukamnama is from Guru Nanak Dev ji and is found on Ang 790 of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib.

Today’s Hukamnama is a pre-psychological story or instruction for us and in it you know Guru Nanak is talking about the different kinds of realities that people can create together and you know being very clear that there are certain realities that are not worth living and other realities that you know we have the blessing to aspire to as human beings.

So, we will start with the first line and in the first couple of lines, Guru Nanak is talking about you know a divan, a court. And a lot of times when we are talking about the court in Gurbani, we are talking about the Guru’s court, we are talking about the court of the Divine or the presence of God. But, in this first line of this Hukamnama, Guru Nanak is describing a very different court and he is talking about people who live by fear really, thieves, deceitful men, deceitful women, those who are prostitutes. So he is talking about kind of a caliber of consciousness where people from a state of fear live by exploiting themselves or exploiting each other, live by deceit, live by lies and live by cheating and he says okay all these people to come together and they create a court. And, it is a court where there isn’t any spiritual sense, there no spiritual values. When we don’t have a relationship with our spiritual identity or the subtlety that comes from our spirituality, then the fear of the mind does overwhelm us. Then we only act as a thief, we only act in a deceitful way, or cheating way or dishonest way, when the fear in our mind kind of overrides everything else. Then we think “Oh my God if I don’t do this then I am not going to be taken care of, I am not going to be able to survive”.

So, he says when you have got a court of people who have this kind of consciousness, their friendships have no kind of spiritual sense about them and they eat without any kind of spiritual consciousness. The basic things that sustain us in life are food and friendships, as long as we have a meal and we have someone to share it with, you know, everything is okay. And, this kind of court is a friendship and a meal without any spiritual awareness to it.

He talks about, there is a word here “sifti sar” and sifti often gets translated as praise, but when we are talking about praising, what we are really talking about is expressing appreciation, expressing a sense of gratitude. There can be false praise you know you can praise something or someone, just to flatter them. And that’s not what sifti is about, sifti is not about kind of praise in vanity kind of way, but really just like a very deep gratitude, and a very deep appreciation. And “sar” is a word that means essence, the essence of divinity that we can taste in our lives. This line is saying this practice of having gratitude and appreciation for the essence of divinity that we can experience, the court of those who are thieves and deceitful people, they don’t know how to do this, they don’t know how to experience that essence, they don’t know how to have gratitude and appreciation for it. So they are always dwelling in the word in Gurbani “saitana”, so I guess Guru Nanak had heard that word, knew that word. But, they are always dwelling with this consciousness that completely denies the beauty and the power and the reality of the Divine.

And, these people do exist, there are human lives that are this way, and Guru Nanak is describing them. In his next line he says, all that comes from this kind of a court is falsehood and untruth. He says there can be a donkey and even if you put sandalwood paste on that donkey, still that donkey is going to find its refuge with these ashes, so it is going to want to be with the ashes, even if he has been given something precious. So, there is that group of people, there is that court of people, who don’t know how to value the chance with the human body to experience divinity and they are going to go into the ashes and that’s where they are going to feel comfortable.

He says that these people spin lies, they dress themselves with this cloth of lies, there is nothing in it, there is nothing worthwhile in that kind of life and there is no reason to take any pride in it. So even if they have got some sort of outward wealth, or outward status, if its coming from that consciousness of fear and deceit, and not knowing the essence of divinity, and not having gratitude and appreciation, it is just a completely false and empty life and there is no reason to feel good about that life.

In the following lines Guru Nanak is going to talk about those who a little more ritualistic when it comes to pursuing spiritual experience and there are people who call others to prayer, people who play instruments and singers, and he describes them, he says some of them have the consciousness to give, some of them are really beggars, they are just doing this as a way to get energy and money and support from other people.

Then Guru Nanak says they only become acceptable when “tera naam” when they experience “Your” divine identity within them, so the naam is this experience of the divine inside of us. Whatever we do in life, whatever rituals we practice or discipline we practice, it’s only when we are having that genuine experience of our true identity and the divine identity within us, then that practice becomes acceptable or that consciousness becomes acceptable.

The next line is very telling because it refers back to Japji Sahib and in Japji Sahib the are 8 paurees that talk about suniyaie and manai; suniyaie is the skill of learning how to listen very deeply and manai is the consciousness that can accept what you hear when you listen deeply. In Japji Sahib Guru Naank says that this is really the path to spiritual awakening, to spiritual awareness, is to learn how to listen, because when you can listen and you can hear Truth in yourself and in everything, then to trust that experience and to be able to accept what it is that you hear when you are in a state of very deep and neutral listening. In the next line of this Hukamnama Guru Nanak is saying for those people who know how to listen and they can trust and accept and obey and flow with what they hear when they listen, those are the people I am a sacrifice to, those are the people that I will anything I can to help. So now he is kind of describing a very different kind of consciousness, he is describing a meditative consciousness that can listen, that can trust, that can accept. It’s those people who are going to then create a different kind of social reality than the ones he talks about at the beginning of the Hukamnama; it is a very different reality than what the thieves and the deceitful people create, when you have people who know how to listen and trust.

In the last few lines of the Hukamanma Guru ji again describes that the different realities and we decide in our own lives where we want to live. He says people who are really attached to the play of the maya, they all are caught in a sort deceitful perception of life and all they can do to walk that path of being attached to maya, all you can do is create deceit and falsehood. The truth of our lives is that we are divine in form and we have the subtlety to experience that, but when you get really attached to all the sensuality and the play of the physical reality, then you are just living a false life and you walk in a false way.

Then people who get very attached to their own sense of what’s “mine”, haumai, the ego, they create a lot of quarrels with each other and the world will die in that quarrelling, so it’s a painful life to be quarreling with each other from the sense of ego and the attachment to the maya and it is something that kills the world.

But, in the last lines Guru Nanak elevates and says that the gurmukh, the one who flows with the integrity of Guru’s words, prevent their quarrelling, their quarrelling is ended. By following the instructions of the guru and learning the subtlety and the sensitivity and the awareness to see the divine in all, that habit to fight with each other over our territory and what’s mine and my attachment to maya, all of that is stopped. And, instead we start to enjoy seeing that one light that one divinity in everything around us. Then that becomes a completely different experience that the human body can have, rather than deceiving, lying and having that sense of spiritual identity or place, through the Guru’s instructions the quarrelling ends and we just see the one light in everything and it becomes a much more beautiful refined experience of life. Then we recognize that One consciousness inside of every soul and all the fears that we experience in life, all of sudden that awareness the One in everything and everyone, is a boat that can take us across our all of our fears. When we are blessed with this experience we can see the light inside of ourselves and we can merge that light into the divine light of everything around us, and then feel ourselves merged into that divine essence and divine identity that we have awakened to thru the Guru’s words; so those people living that life then create a very different kind of court, a very different reality than the people that Guru Nanak talks about in the beginning of the hukam.