Five Paragons of Peace - Excerpts from the Book

[Guest guest]

Sat Nam. Here is the 3rd and final installment of brief passages

from " Five Paragons of Peace: Magic and Magnificence in the Guru's

Way. " The Aquarian vision of Yogi Bhajan Ji is a multifaceted vision

of many dimensions. In this humble work, I have attempted to convey

just a few aspects of this dawning age.

 

I hope you enjoy them - and " Happy Solstice! " to you.

 

 

1) Verdict at Amritsar

 

In the early 1920's, there was a significant movement into the Sikh

fold from the underprivileged Hindu masses. While according to their

Guru's teachings the Sikh people ought to have been free of caste

discrimination, in practice this was not always so. Sikhs who ate

and socialized with people born in a lower caste, Hindu or Sikh, were

commonly ostracized.

 

A storm was brewing in the community as many Sikhs sought to assert

and defend their social status by shunning Sikhs born in the lower

Hindu castes. The matter came to a head on October 12 1920, when a

large group of new Sikhs received the Amrit baptism in Amritsar.

 

This new wave of Khalsa felt encouraged by reformers who promised to

support their efforts against the priests of the Sikh establishment.

Fully knowing the significance of their action, they prepared Guru

prashaad to bring with them and offer at the Golden Temple. It was a

direct challenge to the caste prejudices of the priests who routinely

refused offerings prepared by the hands of members of the lower

castes. After some discussion between officiating priests and

reformers, it was decided to offer a prayer and consult the Guru.

 

The Hukam read:

 

The Lord Himself blesses the undeserving, O Sibling of Destiny,

And appoints them to the True Guru's service.

Great is the service of the True Guru, O Sibling of Destiny,

For through it, our minds become attached to God's Name.

The living God himself showers blessings.

We are useless misfits, O Sibling of Destiny,

But the perfect True Guru has embraced us in his blissful union.

Pause and reflect.

Who, who are the misfits, O Beloved,

Blessed by contemplating the True Word?

To cross the fearful world ocean, O Sibling of Destiny,

They boarded the True Guru's boat.

From a piece of scrap iron, I have turned to gold,

Touched by the Guru, the Lord of Alchemy.

Shedding my self-conceit, the Name has come to live in me,

O Sibling of Destiny, and my light is joined with Infinite Light.

I am dedicated. I am dedicated.

I ever dedicate this life as an offering to the True Guru

Who has given me the treasure of the Name.

O Sibling of Destiny, through the Guru's teachings

I am effortlessly absorbed in meditation.

Without the Guru, this state of effortlessness does not arise, O

Sibling of Destiny.

Go and ask people of wisdom.

Always serve the True Guru, O Sibling of Destiny and your self-

conceit will leave you.

Following the teachings of the True Guru, fear of God arises, O

Sibling of Destiny.

True and excellent are the things done in this fear.

The wealth of loving kindness is realized, O Sibling of Destiny

And the True Name becomes one's foundation.

I fall at the feet of those, O Sibling of Destiny, who serve their

True Guru.

Their lives are adorned, O Sibling of Destiny, and blessed are their

generations.

True is the utterance of the True Word, O Sibling of Destiny.

In it, the Guru has shown his kindness.

Nanak proclaims, One in whose heart God's Name lives, O Sibling of

Destiny,

Finds no obstacle whatsoever in their life.

(Shabd Guru, p. 638)

 

Everyone immediately recognized the meaning of the Hukam for them.

In the light of the Guru's verdict, the conservative priests

immediately tendered their resignations. Respected members of the

congregation quickly came forward to take their places and duly

distribute the sweet Guru's prashaad to the entire assembly. From

that day onwards, all Sikhs, regardless of their previous caste, were

accorded equal rights at the Golden Temple...

 

 

2) A Reverence for Life

 

In the next century, Doctor Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) embodied

and articulated the compassionate spirit of a new humanity. The

physician-sage dedicated most of his life to healing the sick at his

missionary hospital in the Congo, where he cultivated warm and

lasting relationships with birds and beasts, as well as his regular

patients. Schweitzer stated categorically, " Any religion or

philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true

religion or philosophy. "

 

Elsewhere in Africa, two understudies of paleontology pioneer Louis

Leakey (1903-1972), developed remarkable personal connections with

primate communities right in their jungle habitats. Starting in

1960, Jane Goodall (1934-) spent fifteen years observing close-up the

lifestyles of chimpanzees in Tanzania. Her colleague, Dian Fossey

(1932-1985) devoted her life from 1967 on to studying and befriending

the reclusive mountain gorillas of Rwanda. In her last years, Fossey

courageously defended their shrinking community from farmers and

poachers, before herself being murdered by their brutal human

adversaries.

 

While Goodall and Fossey were doing their ground-breaking work in

West Africa, in America, John C. Lilly (1915-2001) successfully

challenged traditional skepticism about the intelligence and

capabilities of marine mammals. He even tried, with the help of

computers, to understand the intricate vocalizations of dolphins.

It was John Lilly, inspired by historical Greek accounts of

interactions between dolphins and humans, who managed to train a

dolphin to carry a boy on its back and perform various stunt

maneuvers. His success led to the creation of a number of films (The

Day of the Dolphin, Free Willy!, Free Willy! 2) and a long-running

television series (Flipper) starring trained cetaceans. Lilly's

efforts to increase public awareness and acceptance of the acute

intelligence and friendly disposition of dolphins stimulated the

animal rights movement and a whole generation of study into animal

sensibility.

 

Around this time, a hardy group of communards settled on a windswept

tract of land on the western coast of Scotland. Against all odds and

despite expert opinion, they began growing a luscious garden in the

sand. Rather than lacing the soil with fertilizers which they could

not afford, the inspired gardeners worked wonders with prayer and

organic mulches made from waste found readily at hand. Instead of

importing toxic pesticides and herbicides, the Findhorn community

made contact with troublesome insects and moles and rampant wild

plants through prayer and negotiation.

 

With loving kindness and consideration, vexatious life-forms were

offered explanations and alternative venues where they might continue

their lives undisturbed. The success of its residents in everything

from inter-species diplomacy to growing phenomenal fruits and

vegetables, to developing a cooperative and creative community,

continue to made the Findhorn community a destination for students,

pilgrims and tourists from far and wide.

 

Much late twentieth century research served to affirm Darwin's

proposition that humans and nonhumans share a common conscious

reality, that the variance among us is what the master evolutionist

described as " one of degree and not of kind. " In Jane Goodall's

words: " Of course humans are unique, but we are not as different as

we used to think. We are not standing in isolated splendor on a

pinnacle, separated from the rest of the animal kingdom by an

unbridgeable chasm. "

 

 

3) Everything that Happens

 

In the light of Guru Nanak's teachings and all the arguments about

causality, before and since, and all the recent innovations of

technology, from the random setting on your CD player to the colorful

phantasmagoria of fractal art, we can discern a fine Aquarian

insight: God does play dice, but beautifully.

 

While politicians and zealots, profiteers and generals might appear

to dominate in the broad strokes of creation, there is an infinitely

creative spirit alive, at work and also at play in the largely

invisible details, there not to be controlled, not to be understood,

content even to remain largely unobserved. That our gruesome

imaginations necessarily depict an " Act of God " as a huge, apparently

clumsy and necessarily violent, natural disaster says a good deal

more about ourselves than it does about the One we think to

describe. The infinite Creator is in the macrocosm and microcosm

both, while our limited appreciation encompasses only a tiny fraction

of the awesome spectrum of all-that-is.

 

In the end, we find there is a reason for everything. Things don't

just happen for no reason. There is a method in the madness. Our

promise lies not in manufacturing a better reason, a better purpose,

but in becoming more perfect instruments of the awesome, sometimes

confounding, but ultimately compassionate order already here, already

pervading all existence.

 

 

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