HAVE you ever said the words “Om” or “Satnam” in greeting fellow Malaysians on their holy festival day? It’s a felicitation of peace. But in large swaths of Malaysia, God-worshippers avoid words that are used in the greetings of some other faith communities.
The rakyat do not live as a united global community, but rather as many disparate groups holed up in mental silos. All too eagerly we display our mental tags – “Christian”, “Hindu”, “Muslim”, “Buddhist,” and a few more. Quite an addition to ethnic tags such as “Chinese”, “Indian”, “Malay”, “Kadazan”, and “Lain-Lain”.
Without these tags we feel lost, and should we find ourselves in a crowd wearing a different tag, we feel uneasy. And the fear of compromising our faith is very obvious in that we almost never step foot into another place of worship. Nor do preachers deliver congratulatory sermons to their regular audiences in celebration of another founder’s birthday.
Every few hundred years, some greatly enlightened personages are born to lead the people in breaking down these silos of fear and confinement. Guru Nanak, whose birthday 550 years ago is celebrated this month, founded the Sikh faith. Malaysians pay a lot of attention to the big religions and tend to overlook the smaller ones. Hence, most non-Sikhs never hear any verses from the Sikh scripture, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib.
Guru Nanak was born into a highly fractured religio-political environment: India at a very unstable social period. He brought to the people of India and the world a heavenly reminder of what life really is and who we really are, if only we remove these mental tags that separate us into factions.
Almost towards the end of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib is this poignant verse: “Life is like the meeting on a riverboat, of persons who shall not meet again”. On any riverboat journey 550 years ago, without life jackets and marine police to rescue the capsized, you wouldn’t rock the boat; you wouldn’t fight; you would be peaceful and respectful towards everyone.
The primacy of human oneness is highlighted almost from the start, as Sri Guru Granth Sahib counsels in an early page: “Make the brotherhood with all the highest sect of yogic order ...” Brotherliness is explained in a later page as the art of peaceful living without considering anyone to be enemy. “As long as he deems one man an enemy and another a friend, so long his mind is not at rest”. A further verse urges wronged persons to remain unstirred in the face of enmity. “To deem friends and enemies all as the same: this is the symbol of the true way of yoga”.
We should be a united global community on the riverboat of life. So why is there so much racial and religious discord in the world including Malaysia, despite the strong grip of religion? Sri Guru Granth Sahib lays bare the truth in plain words, sparing no one’s feelings. “Everyone worships God while abiding in ego, and so one’s mind is saturated not with God, nor one gathers peace”.
What type of worship does God really want from us? “This, yea, is the Lord’s worship, that one loses one’s ego”. Yes, this is it: your real enemy. When the ego reigns supreme over persons and communities, society will face ruin. “Indulging in excessive ego, the entire world has perished”. Hence, the Sri Guru Granth Sahib issues frequent admonitions to faith communities that get embroiled in disputes.
Nor does it spare individuals who become proud through book learning, religious dressing, and ritual performances. The art of praying is simply: “To see God in all: let this be one’s daily prayer ...” And the most welcome news – although to some it may be the most discomforting – is that salvation is in your own mind. What must you do to be saved? Slay your ego, says Nanak. “When I am, You are not”, Sri Guru Granth Sahib explains. “He alone attains to the gate of salvation who stills his ego from within himself”.
If we self-centredly advance our personal and group interests at the expense of brotherhood with others, we end up without God. Only when you erase yourself does God appear.
The writer champions inter-faith harmony. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
