Bani Mahala 9 - Rag Jaijavanti

Guru Teghbahadar Sahib

In the fourth composition, Guru Teghbahadar says, Your life will pass away, will pass away in vain, O being! Night and day, having listened to scripture, you do not understand, O ignorant! Death has arrived; where will you run, O being? The Guru takes an intimate and direct tone, calling us ignorant or foolish, and creating a mood of urgency to mirror our own desperation. The Guru urges us to understand that even in our constant attempts to read religious texts searching for answers or guidance or a way out of our current state, we are still unable to figure out the reality of life. We are still unable to figure out that these lives will pass away quickly, that they have passed and will continue to pass us by, that we have wasted our time in these bodies, that death has already arrived, that we have nowhere to run. 
 
Your life will pass away, will pass away in vain, O being! We think these bodies will be here forever. We tell ourselves this lie in every moment. The Guru reminds us that the bodies that we have thought to be permanent will become dust or ash. So knowing this, knowing that all things other than the One are temporary, why is it that we still do not recite the Identification of the All-Pervasive, IkOankar (One Universal Integrative Force, 1Force, the One)?  Why don’t we Remember the All-Pervasive, the only Eternal? The Guru continues with a direct and urgent tone, calling us shameless fools. Although the tone may seem harsh, the Guru echoes the way we tend to speak to ourselves, especially as we feel anxiety compounding on itself toward the end of our lives. We speak this way to and about ourselves, and we understand that there is a shamelessness to our lack of understanding. There is shamelessness because we have been told so many times that drastic action needs to be taken to shake ourselves out of where we are and work toward the understanding and behaviors that we want to have. 
 
Your life will pass away, will pass away in vain, O being! The Guru offers guidance: we ought to bring the devotion of the Beautiful into the heart and renounce the pride of our minds. This is the saying of the one who serves IkOankar. This is the saying of the Guru. It is by bringing this devotion within that we will be able to make this stay on earth comfortable. If we want to make the rest of our lives comfortable instead of anxiety-ridden and frantic about how to get out of our current states, this is the way to do it. We know that as life passes, our sense of urgency increases. We see that we are arriving at the end, and we worry about what will happen to us when we go. Will we be punished? Will we be rewarded? Did we do enough good? Will we be forgiven for the moments when we have fallen short? Instead of worrying about what will happen after we go, the Guru urges us to take steps toward making the rest of the time we have here, on earth in these human bodies, fruitful and comfortable. This is the most important time. 
 
We have spent our time ignoring the reality that life will pass away and has been passing away, that we are running out of time, and that in the end, we will not be able to escape death. Even those among us who claim to be enlightened still think they can solve their temporariness, still convince themselves that the body is permanent. The Guru has used words that we might interpret as harsh or direct, but there is a deep understanding throughout, that this is what ails all of us, that the Guru understands where we are and how difficult it is, and that the Guru also understands the step that needs to be taken, the one that is difficult to get ourselves to take. We have arrived at this point after much urging; we have known what it is to be shameless, ignorant, without understanding despite how often we have been urged and guided. The Guru ends with a hopeful and even victorious tone, knowing that we have been urged to walk this path again and again, that time has passed, and that there are things we have not done despite being urged. We may convince ourselves that it is too late, but the Guru says, why not try to get settled now, even with the little time we have left? Let us live in this world and live in it comfortably, no matter how little time there may be. Let us live with assurance and contentment and comfort and purposefulness and understanding. Will we take that single step, even at this stage?