English Translation of the Daily Hukamnama (Siri Guru Granth Sahib Ang: 651)

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Katha by Sukha Singh

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Katha by Ek Ong Kar Kaur Khalsa
 

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Katha by Gurukha Singh 

Waheguru ji ka Khalsa! Waheguru ji ki Fateh! 

sloku mÚ 3 ]
salok ma 3 ||
Salok, Third Mehla:

ry jn auQwrY dibEhu suiqAw geI ivhwie ]
rae jan outhhaarai dhabiouhu suthiaa gee vihaae ||
O man, you have been tormented by a nightmare, and you have passed your life in sleep.

siqgur kw sbdu suix n jwigE AMqir n aupijE cwau ]
sathigur kaa sabadh sun n jaagiou a(n)thar n oupajiou chaao ||
You did not wake to hear the Word of the True Guru’s Shabad; you have no inspiration within yourself.

srIru jlau gux bwhrw jo gur kwr n kmwie ]
sareer jalo gun baaharaa jo gur kaar n kamaae ||
That body burns, which has no virtue, and which does not serve the Guru.

jgqu jlµdw ifTu mY haumY dUjY Bwie ]
jagath jala(n)dhaa ddit(h) mai houmai dhoojai bhaae ||
I have seen that the world is burning, in egotism and the love of duality.

nwnk gur srxweI aubry scu min sbid iDAwie ]1]
naanak gur saranaaee oubarae sach man sabadh dhhiaae ||1||
O Nanak, those who seek the Guru’s Sanctuary are saved; within their minds, they meditate on the True Word of the Shabad. ||1||

mÚ 3 ]
ma 3 ||
Third Mehla:

sbid rqy haumY geI soBwvMqI nwir ]
sabadh rathae houmai gee sobhaava(n)thee naar ||
Attuned to the Word of the Shabad, the soul-bride is rid of egotism, and she is glorified.

ipr kY BwxY sdw clY qw binAw sIgwru ]
pir kai bhaanai sadhaa chalai thaa baniaa seegaar ||
If she walks steadily in the way of His Will, then she is adorned with decorations.

syj suhwvI sdw ipru rwvY hir vru pwieAw nwir ]
saej suhaavee sadhaa pir raavai har var paaeiaa naar ||
Her couch becomes beautiful, and she constantly enjoys her Husband Lord; she obtains the Lord as her Husband.

nw hir mrY n kdy duKu lwgY sdw suhwgix nwir ]
naa har marai n kadhae dhukh laagai sadhaa suhaagan naar ||
The Lord does not die, and she never suffers pain; she is a happy soul-bride forever.

nwnk hir pRB myil leI gur kY hyiq ipAwir ]2]
naanak har prabh mael lee gur kai haeth piaar ||2||
O Nanak, the Lord God unites her with Himself; she enshrines love and affection for the Guru. ||2||

pauVI ]
pourree ||
Pauree:

ijnw guru goipAw Awpxw qy nr buirAwrI ]
jinaa gur gopiaa aapanaa thae nar buriaaree ||
Those who conceal and deny their Guru, are the most evil people.

hir jIau iqn kw drsnu nw krhu pwipst hiqAwrI ]
har jeeo thin kaa dharasan naa karahu paapisatt hathiaaree ||
O Dear Lord, let me not even see them; they are the worst sinners and murderers.

Eih Gir Gir iPrih kusuD min ijau Drkt nwrI ]
ouhi ghar ghar firehi kusudhh man jio dhharakatt naaree ||
They wander from house to house, with impure minds, like wicked, forsaken women.

vfBwgI sMgiq imly gurmuiK svwrI ]
vaddabhaagee sa(n) gath milae guramukh savaaree ||
But by great good fortune, they may meet the Company of the Holy; as Gurmukhs, they are reformed.

hir mylhu siqgur dieAw kir gur kau bilhwrI ]23]
har maelahu sathigur dhaeiaa kar gur ko balihaaree ||23||
O Lord, please be kind and let me meet the True Guru; I am a sacrifice to the Guru. ||23||

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa!  Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh!

Today’s Hukamnama is from Guru Amardas Ji from Page 651 of the SGGS.

Katha by Sukha Singh

The hukamnama today is in the raag sorat(h). The raag sorat(h) being the raag of deep conviction, deep faith, a deep belief, and conveying this belief through the raag. The hukamnama is split into three parts. The first part is saloka mÚ 3;  the second part is mÚ 3; the last part is pauVI. The salok is the beginning part where Guruji lays the foundations of the idea of the hukamnama, and in the mÚ 3, and in the pauVi, the idea is explained and expanded upon.

rae jan outhhaarai dhabiouhu suthiaa gee vihaae
Rae jan, Oh man! Outhharaair dhabioiuhu. Dhaubiuhu, means to be pressed under. Literally means to be buried under. Outhhaarai, we can take in this context to be a mud man. You are buried under a nightmare. Suthiaa gee vihaae. Suthiaa means asleep. Gee vihaae means wasted. So Guruji is saying: Oh man! You have been so engrossed. You have been so buried under this nightmare, or Maya, that you have passed your whole life asleep. What kind of sleep is it?  It is not physical. It is spiritual. It is the sleep of ignorance. The sleep of Maya that has covered you. And what does Guruji say in the next line. Guruji is saying:

sathigur kaa sabadh sun n jaagiou a(n)thar n oupajiou chaao
Sat, Eternal Truth. Gur, Guru. The eternally True Guru. Kaa sahbadh, shabad means the word. Sathigur kaa sabadh sun n jaagiou, the word of the True Guru sun n jaggiou. Sun means to listen and n jaagiou means to not wake up. A(n)thar, internally n oupjiou chaao. Chaao means love inside. And n oupjiou means not awakened. So by not waking up to listen to the Guru’s shabad, Guruji is telling us that we haven’t woken up to the inside love which is deep inside us.

sareer jalo gun baaharaa jo gur kaar n kamaae
Sareer means bodies. This means physically, mentally and spiritually, not just the physical body. Jalo means burns. All the bodies burn: the spiritual bodies, the mental bodies and the spiritual bodies. Gun baaharaa. Gun means virtue; baaharaa means without. And without any virtue jo gur kaar. Gur means Guru; kaar means service; n kamaae means that will not serve. That body, that mind, that soul burns and has no virtue which does not do the seva, the service of the Guru.

jagath jala(n)dhaa ddit(h) mai houmai dhoojai bhaae
Jagath means the world. Jala(n)dhaa means burning. Ddit(h) means I have seen. Houmai means in ego. Dhoojai bhaae means in love of duality, in love of falseness, in love with Maya. Guruji says: I have seen that the world is burning. What is the world burning with? What is causing all this violence on this earth? Many people say that religion causes violence or other things cause violence. But what Guruji is saying is that the world is burning, but because of egotism, because of pride, because of this love of Maya. All aggression, all anger, which is burning in the world, can be linked back, can be seen coming from the root of Ego. Coming from the root of this love of being in duality. The idea of being in duality is this: living in two places at once. Believing in God for a few seconds, then not believing in God. By thinking of God, then not thinking of God. The idea is to extinguish this duality.

naanak gur saranaaee oubarae sach man sabadh dhhiaae
Naanak, Oh Naanak, gur sarannaaee, the protection of the Guru. Sarannaee means protection. Oubarae, you can be saved. Oubraae means you can be saved. Sach man sabadh dhhaiaae. Sach means truth; man means the mind.  Sabadh dhhaiaae. Shabad means the word of the Guru; dhhiaae means to meditate. This line says:  Oh Naanak! Those who fall into the protection of the True Guru, they are saved, because what happens is that the Guru gives them the true shabad, the True Word of the shabad to meditate upon. And this extinguishes the duality inside them, the ego inside them. And it stops the burning of their spiritual, mental and physical bodies.

mÚ 3

Gurm Amardas ji now says,

sabadh rathae houmai gee sobhaava(n)thee naar |
Sabadh means the word of the Guru. Rathae means to be attuned to, to be one with. Houmai gee. Houmai means egotism;  gee means is gone. Sobhaava(n)thee naar. Sobhaavai means the soul bride. Thee naar means to look beautiful. To be glorified. Attuned to the Shabad, sabadh rathae, when one’s vibration becomes one with the Shabad, houmai gee, egotism goes, because at that point, there is no egotism left. There is just EkOaanKar. Sobhaava(n)thee naar, that is what glorifies a blessed person, truthfully. Guruji says that if you want to look beautiful, if you want to truly have true beauty, then you attune yourself to the shabad within.

pir kai bhaanai sadhaa chalai thaa baniaa seegaar
gir kai. Gir means the Husband Lord. Kai bhaanai. Bhannai means in the will of the Husband Lord. Sadhaa chalai, she always walks. Chalai means to walk and follow. Thaa baniaa seegaar. Thaa means then, banaiaa seegaar means adorned with decorations. Only if we walk on the path of the will of God, Guruji is saying to us, will we look beautiful. Otherwise, we don’t, we can’t, we can’t hang onto these external decorations of the body. We have to decorate the soul.They are the true decorations. The decorations of peace, the decorations of harmony of the mind, the decoration of love. That is the true decoration, Guruji is saying.

saej suhaavee sadhaa pir raavai har var paaeiaa naar
Saej means bed, Suhaavee means looks  beautiful. Sadhaa means always.  Pir Husband Lord, Raavai means to enjoy. Har means the Lord. Var means husband paaeiaa naar means to find the naar, the soul bride. So what Guruji is saying is that the soul bride finds Hari, the Lord God, as her husband and so the bed of the mind, the bed of the soul, where the soul bride and the Husband Lord meet and become one, that is beautiful. It looks beautiful. And she enjoys her husband lord forever and ever.

naa har marai n kadhae dhukh laagai sadhaa suhaagan naar
Naa har marai. Har means the Lord. Naa means not. Marai means to die. The Lord does not die. N kadhae dhukh laggai. The Lord, n means never, dhukh means pain laggai means to suffer. The soul bride never suffers in pain because she merges into the Lord. Why? because sadhhaa suhaagan naar. Sadhaa always suhaagan means to be happy, a happy soul bride, naar is soul bride. The soul bride is always merged in, so suhaagan means to be always merged in with the Husband Lord. Because the Husband Lord is immortal, she can never, never suffer pain because she becomes immortal herself.

naanak har prabh mael lee gur kai haeth piaar
Oh Naanak, har prabh. Har prabh means the Lord God. Mael lee. Mael means to unite; lee means with oneself. Guru kai hearth piaar. Haeth means love. Piaar means affection.  Oh Naanak! This line means that the Lord God unites the soul bride within himself. But how does this happen? God gives us the love of the Guru. Through loving the Guru we find love within ourselves.

pourree

Guru Amar Das ji now says,
jinaa gur gopiaa aapanaa thae nar buriaaree
jinaa means those; gur means Guru; gopiaa means to conceal or deny. What does this line really mean? If you look at this line, how many times do we deny our Guru? How do we deny the Guru? We deny the Guru when we do something contrary to what the Guru says. That is denying the Guru. Every time we go and do something contrary to what the Guru says, we are denying the Guru. And Guruji is saying, that is the worst thing you can do. 

har jeeo thin kaa dharasan naa karahu paapisatt hathiaaree
Har jeeo, Oh Dear Lord., thin kaar, all those people, dharasan, to see, naa karahu, I do not want to. Paapsiatt, they are the worst sinners. Hathiaaree ,and murders. Oh Lord! This line says, this line of the shabad says: I do not want to see those people. Why? Because they are the worst sinners. Why are they the worst sinners?  Guruji says: Because they are the murderers. What are they the murderers of?  They are the murderers of the inside. Of the love inside them. Of the soul. Because they are the murderers of the union of the soul with the Creator Lord. They murder. They kill that union.

ouhi ghar ghar firehi kusudhh man jio dhharakatt naaree
Ouhi, they, ghar ghar fireh. Ghar, ghar means from house to house; They firehi wander> Kusudhh man means impure mind. Sudhh means pure, and in Gurmukhi when you put ku in front, it negates it. Jio dhharakatt naaree. As if, dhharakatt, means wander; naree, women. As if they are forsaken women. Those people who wander from house to  house. It means that spiritually they wander. They think: Oh well, the Guru is saying this, but I think this, and I doubt this, and I have this question, and I have that question. And through these, all these doubts, and questions, impurity develps within the mind. And they wander about as if they were forsaken.

vaddabhaagee sa(n) gath milae guramukh savaaree sa(n) gath milae.
Even they can meet the company of the holy. Milae means to meet. Guramukh savaaree, and they can become gurmukh, those who face toward the Guru, who follow the Guru through thick and thin. Savaaree, they can be reformed. Savaaree means to become reformed, to be sorted out.

har maelahu sathigur dhaeiaa kar gur ko balihaaree
Dhaeiaaa means to shower your mercy. Dhaeiaa means to shower. So shower your mercy on me, Oh Lord, so that I may meet the True Guru!  Gur  ko balihaaree. Balihaaree means to be sacrificed. Gur ko means to the True Guru. Oh God! Please let me  meet  the True Guru. Who I am a sacrifice to forever and ever. This shabad is saying do not leave yourself in the sleep of Maya. Wake up to hear the Guru’s shabad, and to love the True Guru.

rae jan outhhaarai dhabiouhu suthiaa gee vihaae ||
sathigur kaa sabadh sun n jaagiou a(n)thar n oupajiou chaao ||

Katha by Ek Ong Kar Khalsa 

In this hukam Guru Amardas is having a very true vision of the different kinds of lives that can happen when we are here on the earth.  It is said that the human rebirth is just a chance to experience God.  It’s just a chance.  It is not a guarantee that we will get there or get that experience but it’s an opportunity. Guru Amardas in this hukam is seeing the reality of that and how painful it is for people who never wake up to that chance and then how beautiful it is for those who do.  So he is describing the different tracks that we can take in life.

He starts off the first life by saying, “Oh man you have been tortured, you have been asleep your whole life.  You have been in a nightmare and tortured by a nightmare.” This analogy comes up in gurbani from time to time where people are alive but they are actually sound asleep and they are asleep to the reality of the divine inside of themselves.  So their mind creates these visions that have nothing to do with what their real identity is and it is in this hukam Guru Amardas is describing that it is a nightmare.  He is saying, “You haven’t listened deeply, woken up and listened deeply to the sound current that cuts the ego, which comes from the energy of the teacher.  Because of that there is nothing in your own body.  There is nothing to inspire you; there is nothing inside of you.”  This can happen in a life where we chase everything, we chase wealth, and we chase so many things.  It’s not that there is anything wrong with what we can receive as a human being, it’s that if we chase everything and forget to find the experience of God inside of ourselves then we have wasted our life and one day we wake up and even if we have got everything around us we find that nothing is left inside.  So Guru Amardas is really describing a psychological condition that happens for many people when they have not listened to the wisdom of the teacher and how empty they become because of that.

He goes on to say, “The body that does not practice virtue and the body that does not do the work that the Guru gives to do or the work that teacher gives to do that body burns. It’s a really painful painful painful experience for the soul to live inside of a body that doesn’t practice virtue and that does not do the work that the teacher gives a person to do.  So Guru Amardas is saying, “He is watching this universe and he is seeing that in this duality of ego everybody is burning and everybody is in pain.”  The ego is again the illusion identity, it’s an identity that is conceptual, it’s an identity that is temporary. When we do not understand the divine identity that is inside of us and when we connect with this illusory conceptual identity, that creates duality in our existence and it is very very painful state to be in.  Guru Amardas is observing that the world is in this condition, not just a few people.  So many people are just in this condition.

He then elevates it and says, “Nanak, those who seek the sanctuary of the teacher, those who seek the sanctuary of the Guru they are released from this experience of burning.  They are released and liberated from the pain that he has described earlier in the hukam.”  When the mind is meditating on the Shabad, meditating on the sound in the universe that cuts through the ego then it can experience the ultimate reality.  So he talks about this more he uses again this term to die, Rathe, that every fibre of our being is to be filled with the sound current that fills us and takes us to wisdom, the Shabad.  So when we let ourselves come into that state where we let every fibre in our being absorb that sound of the Shabad then this conceptual, temporary, illusive identity of the ego is destroyed.

Guru Amardas in the rest of the hukam is going to be talking about the soul in terms of wife or bride.  He says, “Then the wife becomes tremendously beautiful.”  When the ego is destroyed the wife becomes beautiful to her husband. Mystically speaking every soul is feminine and every soul is the bride of the God.  Then he talks about the state of the wife; when she is always walking in the way of her husband’s will then she is made very beautiful, very decorative. This is not something she does for herself, it’s not something that any of us do it for ourselves.  The analogy of the bride and husband is so important because it means that this place comes through exquisite and extraordinary love.  It’s a place of tremendous, tremendous love.  So when the wife is surrendering in love and walking the way of the will of the husband then it is the law of the universe that she becomes beautiful and decorated.  The analogy is also very intimate in Gurbani, the couch becomes beautiful.  The wife is always enjoying her husband always on the couch.  It’s not just love, it’s also the intermingling of the elements, it’s also a physical union that can be experienced.  The wife receives that hug that creative divinity as her husband blesses her in this state.  So we find that the experience of the husband inside ourselves is tremendously joyful, tremendously loving, tremendously intimate merger.  This is what the gift of a human body offers us the opportunity to experience.  Guru Amardas says, “This experience of the divine essence of the creator does not ever die and it does not bring pain. In fact it is an experience that is always bringing us tremendous happiness, always bringing the wife tremendous happiness and tremendous joy when she finds her husband as the creator inside of herself, inside of the creation.

Again talking about what a loving experience that is, “Oh Nanak, the wife will intermingle and become attached to the creator and the transcendent one. This is done through the love of the Guru, love of the teacher.”  So when we love the teacher, not as a personality or a historical memory, but when we love the teacher as the teachings themselves then the soul becomes that devoted wife who is deeply connected and deeply attached to the secure, supreme, transcendent divine being.

Guru Amardas in the last few lines of the Shabad goes to describe the polarity because planet Earth offers polarity.  We can have this exquisite, loving experience of God as our husband through the sound current or we can have the opposite experience.  Guru Amardas is saying that those people who pretend they do not have a teacher: the truth is every soul was given the Guru in some form.  For Sikhs that Guru is the Shabad Guru.  The promise for every soul was that energy of the teacher would come to one form or another.  So those who pretend that the energy does not exist, or do not acknowledge that or deny that, Guru Amardas is talking about them as having the worst, lowest form of human life on Earth.  He says, “I don’t even want to have to see that because it’s so painful.  I don’t even want to have to see those people who are denying that they do not have a teacher.”  Those people are the ones who commit the worst atrocities amongst themselves or amongst others.  They are killers, murderers, they are the ones who continually harm themselves and harm others when they deny that energy of the teacher.  They wander from place to place, they wander from home to home and their minds are completely blocked from seeing their inner divinity.  That soul then is characterized, the wife is characterized with a bad character.  What does it mean that a wife is with a bad character? It means a person who is completely self absorbed and is very selfish.  It is someone who is always making decisions based on their own gratitude, regardless of how it harms the people inside them.  This is what happens when we acknowledge the teacher; we become someone completely focused on our own gratification wondering around creating so much misery for ourselves and others.  It is truly the worst kind of human life to have.

Guru Amardas elevates it at the end and says, “ Even for these people if by some blessing, by some good fortune they come into contact with the sangat, with the company of other people, [Power of sangat is talked about in this particular hukam where being around other people who are living in a good way has an impact on a person.  No matter where they might be in their own personal development or in their own struggles just surrounding themselves with sangat has a positive impact.]  If they meet with the sangat and can learn how to surrender their mind, learn how to become Gurmukhs and can learn how to surrender themselves to follow the instructions of the Guru then they can be reformed.” Then some sort of transformation can happen for them.  It’s a transformation out of that place of darkness, out of that place of hurting other people and hurting others.

So the end of the hukam is a prayer, “Oh God by your kindness, let me meet with the teacher of truth and let me give everything I am as a sacrifice to that teacher.”  Because it is the difference between misery and happiness, the difference between being happily married and unhappily married, the difference between having peace and having pain, the difference between serving others and hurting others is whether or not the mind is trained to listen and accept the teacher, the Guru.  Guru Amardas is saying let me give everything to that teacher because it is that teacher that gets us out of the pain and the cycle of birth and death.

Katha by Gurukha Singh 

The Hukamnama today is from Guru Amar Das ji, and in this Hukam he describes three different states of being. The first state of being is people who have not woken up; People who live asleep. The second state of being, he describes the consciousness of the Gurmukh. And the third state of being he describes the state of consciousness of a Pandit. So, first he says that when you are asleep, you live in the nightmare of the world because you’re not awake to the Shabad Guru. And so you’re at the mercy of the ups and downs of pain and pleasure. You live in that duality. You live in your egoism, and the Word is not in your mind, so you’re caught up in worldly affairs and burned by your own emotions and your own reactions to things. Then it goes on to describe the state of Gurmukh, and he says that when you tune yourself to word of the Guru’s Shabad. And tune yourself means that your vibration in your mind and in your body is the same vibration that’s in the Guru’s Shabad; that the Shabad flows in you. And then you walk and act in the Will of God. And when your actions are in harmony with Gods Will, then you go beyond birth and death and you beyond the duality of pleasure and pain. So that pleasure and pain both become sweet. And there in lies happiness. And you become united with God. And filled with love; it’s the state of Bhagti. Lastly in the Pauri, Guru ji describes those who deny their Guru, those who turn their back on the Guru. And this is a very unique state of consciousness. It’s when a person knows their Guru and recognized their Guru, and then turns around and turns their back on the Guru. And he says that, when you do this, your mind remains completely confused, impure, and you have wicked thoughts and negative thoughts, and that you live completely in the worst state of consciousness of pain. He even calls Pandits murderers in this Pauri. But he ends on a positive note and says that if the destiny is there, iIf the destiny is written, then they can meet still the Sadh Sangat again and return to the Guru. And again become a Gurmukh. So he saying that even a pandit isn’t lost forever, that they can come out of that state of pain and they can still become Gurmukh. And then he ends with a prayer, and he says “Oh Lord bless me to meet the True Guru, because I am forever the True Guru’s servant, and I surrender and sacrifice myself to Him.”

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh!