“Within and beyond the whirling, sorrowing, conflicting, noisy circumstances of our lives, at the very center of it,” Bebe Nanaki began, “is a holy place which is calm, unruffled, steady, and beyond birth and death. This place, within us, is the truest temple of all, the home of The Beloved, the only place worth making a pilgrimage to. All geographic pilgrimages to man-made places of worship are trivial and meaningless compared with it.”
Bebe Nanaki’s words and voice transported many to the sacred temple within them. A long silence followed, and then someone asked, “How do we begin?”
“By listening. Our souls are constantly calling us to embark on this long, often arduous journey. Though some, like Baba, like all enlightened beings, are fortunate and destined to embark upon it before birth, all of us, without exception, have the longing and capacity for it. We can begin with a commitment to making this journey, knowing that it takes us to our true goal and purpose, without which we are as fallen leaves tossing and tumbling about in the storms of life.”
“And then?” someone asked.
“Observe the workings of our ego that obscures this sacred space and keeps us from discovering the truth of who and what we truly are; notice how it takes control of our thoughts and feelings, separates us from everyone else, makes us doubt ourselves, others, and the everywhere-present Power that forms and informs us. We need to be vigilant to the workings of the ego, observe our thoughts and feelings, examine and evaluate them like a jeweler separating the worthless from the invaluable; be aware of our unconscious reactions to circumstances, people, events; become conscious of the pitfalls that can destroy our health, sanity, and life; steer, with the aid of our guru’s words and message, toward kindness, compassion, trust, faith, expansion, and love; surrender to our Highest Self, which is another name for the Beloved, and let it guide us Home.”
“How can the Beloved make a home in sinful beings like us?” Shai Tani asked.
Bebe Nanaki looked at her brother. So attuned were they to each other’s souls that Baba reached for his rabab, and Bebe Nanaki for hers. Without any verbal communication, they tuned their instruments to Sri Raag, a raag at once serious and playful, dramatic and sincere, strong and innocent. Bebe Nanaki explained in melodious words that harmonized with the chords of the raag that the shabad they were about to sing was written by Saint Ravidas,115 the “untouchable” saint of the fifteenth century.
“Ravidas says, ‘You are me, and I am You. The difference between us is like the difference between gold and a gold bracelet, the ocean and a wave.’ Ravidas anticipates your question, Shai Tani, and says playfully to the Beloved, ‘If I weren’t sinful, how would you have earned the title Redeemer of Sinners?’ ”
Baba began the alaap with the first note, sa, coming from a deep place inside him, like the center of the earth, and spiraling up through time and space to a place beyond; it was a sound that had a deep silence within it, that stilled and moved each open heart that heard it; a fundamental note so rich and deep it contained all the other notes, and echoed the primeval sound that birthed the cosmos with its vibration.
tohee mohee mohee tohee antar kaisaa.
kanak katik jal tarang jaisaa.
The silence that usually followed their singing in which the sense of the words were absorbed and savored, was interrupted in due time by Shai Tani, who brought it all back on track.
“But we want our Trinjan!”
“We won’t have it,” the men cried, reacting to Shai Tani. “We won’t build one.”
“Who will make you lovely, warm loees if the skills are not passed on to the future generations?”Baba asked.
Some men reiterated that the Trinjan would take time away from their wives’ duties at home. Who would cook their meals and do the dishes? Who would feed the animals? Who would light the lamps and lanterns?
“If you make your own meals once a month, clean the utensils, feed the animals, you will learn a new skill, connect with the female inside yourself, and have compassion for the heavy burdens your women carry,” Nanaki suggested.
There were loud protestations by the men that their burdens were far heavier than the women’s.
Mata Sulakhni, who was also present, said, “Do you have the burden of bearing children?”
The men quieted down and Mata Sulakhni talked at length about the travails of carrying, delivering, and rearing young. She couldn’t help but shoot a barb at the end of her talk by saying that if men left their homes to go wandering all over the world, a woman had to do it all. And here she went into many details that held her captive audience silent.
“What did you mean when you said we can ‘connect with the female’ inside us?” a newly married man asked Bebe Nanaki.
“Baba says, ‘Purakh meh naar naar meh purkhaa boojhhu barahm gi-aane. Understand, O lover of wisdom,’ ” Nanaki translated, “ ‘the female is in the male, and the male is in the female.’ ”
Nanaki could tell by the expressions on their faces that this would require further explication.
“Each of us contains characteristics of the other sex which we need to get in touch with if we want to be whole. Another human being can’t make us whole; we have to learn to be whole within ourselves.”
“If Akaal Purukh graces us,” Baba Nanak added.
“If Akaal Purukh graces us,” Nanaki echoed her brother’s words, humbled by them. Nanaki, how could you have forgotten something so important? she chastised herself.
“Or if the Guru sends you a guru, like Nanaki,” Baba Nanak said, smiling at Nanaki.
“Be our guru! Be our guru!” the women shouted.
“I have been forgetful in talking about the most important thing,” Nanaki admitted to the audience. “We cannot embark upon the pilgrimage to ourselves without a prayer to that Power who makes all things possible and right. Our own efforts will get us nowhere. Everything comes down to remembering and loving the Beloved. ‘He alone is the Life of the World, the Fulfiller of all Desire,’ as Baba says. He alone is our Guru, the One who dispels our darkness. Without Him we are helpless, blind, foolish, confused.”
“Teach us how to have good relationships with our spouses!” someone requested.
Nanaki spoke some more in her gentle, melodious voice. Above all it was the sound of her voice, form of the formless, which conveyed sense to their brains in its indelible script. Indescribable in its gentleness, love, concern, kindness, and compassion, it flowed into their ear canals like a salubrious current of invisible air, a vibration from source to source, touching their souls, lulling, moving, and awakening them to realities and possibilities they hadn’t suspected before; a way of thinking, believing, being, behaving that fulfilled to the highest their purpose for being alive.
It was this that finally convinced the men to build a Trinjan for the women. They realized in the process that they too needed a building where they could teach their sons carpentry, woodworking, and masonry; where they could meet socially and play chawpat, shatranj, and other games, laugh and joke about women. Since this meeting took place when Bhai Lehna was still at Kartarpur, listening to and absorbing the dialogue at the dera, he suggested wrestling and kabaddi, too, and the men loved the idea.
115. An “untouchable” saint of the fifteenth century. Of his compositions, forty-one have been incorporated into the Sikh holy text, the SGGS.