Salok Sheikh Farid Ji

Sheikh Farid Ji

The saloks (verses) by Sheikh Farid are recorded without a rag or musical mode. Saloks are generally couplets with exceptions, and are used to offer words of praise. Sheikh Fariduddin Masud Ganjshakar, popularly known as Baba Farid Ji (1178-1271 CE), is one of the fifteen Bhagat contributors to the Guru Granth Sahib. He is also known as the pioneer of Panjabi-Sufi literature. The title ‘Sheikh’ can be understood from two angles: it is a religious title, like a preacher or a minister, and it denotes a particular social and political position of high status. Sheikh Farid self-identifies as a Sheikh, which suggests that he acknowledges his position of privilege and influence. He is also a self-identified Muslim, a Sufi who follows Shari’a, or Islamic law, so he is deeply rooted in a particular religious and legal system. His saloks often comment on the reminder or the Divine’s Praise in that system or refer to it implicitly. These saloks draw on cultural understandings of marriage ceremonies and wedding traditions to explore the idea of death as a kind of universal ‘wedding’ that all seekers eventually experience. These saloks urge the seeker toward devotion to IkOankar (One Creative and Pervasive Force, the One), and offer personal and global reflections on the true purpose of life as an effort toward that devotion. These saloks explore that which causes forgetfulness—attachment to transient things and relationships—and offer remedies, including the cultivation of virtues, remembrance, devotion, and humility. We are reminded that our time is limited and that we ought not to delay nurturing a connection with the One. We develop an understanding of how we might experience the bliss of connection with IkOankar, how we might reflect on what it means to be a devoted one, and how we might use the rest of our time here wisely—how we might make these lives fruitful before the day we are to be ‘wed.’ 

In the first stanza, Sheikh Farid uses the example of a bride’s marriage as an extended metaphor for the death of the seeker. Traditionally, the wedding date was fixed by a priest based on religious texts and was essentially unchangeable. Once fixed, the bride’s side would prepare for the baraat, the wedding party, to come take the bride away. Sheikh Farid equates Death to the moment of the wedding. It, too, has been written for us from the beginning. In a worldly sense, on that day, the groom would see the bride for the first time. In a transworldly sense, this day is the first time that we ‘see’ Death. We might hear of, speak of, or experience death in many ways before it comes for us. But still, we fear that day, when the inner-self is taken away. Sheikh Farid emphasizes, the written moments of wedding do not change. There is nothing we can do to prolong our lives, to avoid the inevitable ending. These inner-selves are brides, wedding the groom of Death. When a bride leaves her parents, she weeps. When we leave this earthly realm as the parents’ house, for the hereafter as the in-laws’ house, we, too, weep. We do not know where we are going! We do not know what our condition will be there. We do not know what we will have to face in that unknown place. There is nothing to do other than face Death. 

Sheikh Farid ends the stanza with a couple of rhetorical questions, inviting us to reflect more deeply. Having sent off our inner-selves with our own two hands, to whose bosom may our bodies run and cling? Where can we go to find comfort? There is nothing to be done other than face Death. Sheikh Farid invokes the Pul-Sirat, an Islamic imagery of a narrow bridge over hell that one must cross to reach heaven in the afterlife. It is said to be thinner than a strand of hair and sharper than a sword. He asks, Have you not heard of it with your ears? We are urged into awareness that there is something beyond this life. Death is calling us and we will all have to go. Let us not be looted while we stand here. What does it mean to be looted by the call of Death? This is when our fear of death robs us of our awareness, of our preparation, and steeps us in spending our time in ways that are not fruitful. We are robbed of virtues in favor of vices, of time, of remembrance, of the cultivation of the self. Let us change the way we live so that when we come to face the unknown thing, the thing that we only hear about, we will be prepared. Sheikh Farid is urging us: do not waste your time. Do not waste the opportunity of this life. Will we heed this call?