In this charming frank personal appreciation of the Japji, the author admires the Sikh morning prayer for the 'absence' of any kind of moralising in it and it's author's attitude of charity towards the bad and the wicked.
To those who have made a study of Guru Nanak, the man and the Prophet, this appreciation will be the reminder of two very interesting traits in his character;
(i) absence of fanaticism even on behalf of goodness; and
(ii) his refusal to leave evil to themselves.
Guru Nanak once met a burglar and asked him not to break into people's houses. When the latter pleaded that counsel was impossible for him to comply with, Guru Nanak suggested to him the following alternatives:
(i) Do not lie.
(ii) Do not harm unto a man who's salt you have tasted
(iii) Do not be the cause of suffering unto the poor
The burglar promised to accept these mottos. He entered a rich baron's house, collected valuables worth a hundred thousand rupees, was tempted to partake of sugar in the cupboard, and, tasting found it to be salt, left behind all the goods ready and packed.
The baron, to guard against repitition of the occurence which may be more effective in depriving him of his property, collected the poor of the vicinity, and began to subject them to severe persecution. To stop the suffering of the poor, the burglar reported himself to the baron. He did not need to burgle thereafter.
Guru Nanak associated with the wicked as freely as with the good. He proclaimed that the wicked, like the sick, deserved greater attention. The story of Guru Nanak's life is a long story of encounters with the wicked and the fallen ones. --Editor, The Sikh Review
It might be best at the outset to state my personal bias regarding this. I am fundamentally out of sympathy with most that goes by the name of religion, and I have special aversion to such teachings as the virtue of faith and the idea of cosmic God who rewards the just and punishes the unjust. These are Christian teachings. In so far, then, as the Morning Prayer departs from these - and it does at several significant points - I can appreciate it.
In relation to God, the prayer stresses three main things: His being Truth, His Bounty, and His inscrutability. The equation of God with Truth permits some interesting reasoning. We all have felt the impotence of reason and bookish knowledge - that these do not lead to Truth. The equation then, of God and Truth, leads us to say that God is not to be found in books or by reasoning. From here there is the regrettable - to my mind - transition: it is by faith, right belief that you will find God.
I like that God is shown having no fear or hate - and bountiful to all. There is freshness and freedom from moralism here; there is no dwelling on how God will destroy the wicked and cast down the evil doers. Indeed, in the impressionistic lines:
There is no count of fools who will
not see,
Nor of thieves who live by fraud,
There is no count of despots practising
tyranny.
There seems to be no resentment and a spirit of acceptance - none of the moralistic, "This should not be!"
In the prayer then, is an absence of moralism regarding the evil; regarding the good, the believer, there is of course a multitude of benefits mentioned. Perhaps this is only because the prayer is a joyful one and evil-doers are damned elsewhere, but I would not like to find this.
To show God as inscrutable has, I think, several positive features. For instance, prayer is thought of as cleansing the soul, rather than as moving God. A second example is the idea of the inefficacy of words - that they do not bind God.
Lastly, regarding God's bounty, and the praise of Him - the latter seems to be almost pure joy - something I like a great deal. There is complete absence of the sublimated resentment toward the wicked, toward a God who takes away life and of the self-pity in suffering that show through the perfervid "Praise the Lord" of the evangelical Christian.
