IB World Religions 1.4.2. the Human Condition: Maya, Haumai and the Five Vices Notes

1.4.2. The Human Condition: Maya, Haumai and the Five Vices

Creation, hukam and jot

1. Sikhs begin the account of the human condition with creation. Akal Purukh, the timeless being, created all living beings, and everything that happens is held to run according to hukam, God's order and will.
2. Every person carries jot, the divine light. Sikhs describe it as God's own light present inside the human being, and the Guru Granth Sahib says that the same light shines in all.
3. That claim carries social weight. Because the light is in everyone, Sikhs hold that caste, gender and birth make no spiritual difference, and practices such as the shared langar meal are meant to make the teaching visible.
4. Human birth is treated as an opportunity rather than a sentence. Sikhs describe it as the rare chance to recognize the jot and to be united with God, a chance the other forms of life are not held to have.
5. The problem is not that human beings are badly made. Sikh teaching is that everything needed to realize God is already present, so the human condition is described as a failure of recognition rather than as a fall from grace.
6. Two things block that recognition, and the Gurus name them together. Maya and haumai are why the jot goes unrealized and why people stay fixed on their baser emotions.

Maya and forgetting God

1. Maya in Sikh teaching means illusion, but not the claim that the world is unreal. It names the mistake of taking created things for the whole of reality and chasing them as though they lasted.
2. The usual examples are wealth, status, power and physical pleasure. Sikhs hold that these things are real and often useful, and that treating them as the point of a life is what turns them into maya.
3. Guru Nanak taught that maya works by making God easy to forget. A person can be surrounded by evidence of the creator and still notice only the things themselves.
4. Maya is described as attractive rather than obviously wicked. That is why Sikhs treat it as dangerous, since nobody chooses it as an error at the time.
5. Religion itself can become maya. The Gurus criticized ritual bathing, pilgrimage and outward display whenever these took the place of remembering God rather than leading to it.
6. Sikhs do not conclude from any of this that the world should be abandoned. Guru Nanak rejected the ascetic paths he met on his travels and taught that God is found in the middle of family life and honest work.

Haumai at the centre

1. Haumai is ego-centredness, and the word is built from the Punjabi for I and me. It names the condition of putting oneself rather than God at the centre of everything.
2. Sikhs treat haumai as the deeper of the two problems. Maya supplies the attractions, and haumai is the self that wants them for itself.
3. The Guru Granth Sahib calls haumai a chronic disease and then adds that the cure lies within it. Sikhs read that verse as meaning the very self that suffers is the one that can turn towards God.
4. Haumai is not the same as having a personality or self-respect. What the Gurus criticize is the assumption that the self is separate from God and more important than other people.
5. Haumai makes even good deeds work against a person. Sikhs teach that an action done for personal credit binds one further, while the same action done in remembrance of God does not.
6. The image the Gurus use most is separation. Haumai is described as the wall standing between a person and God, so removing it is the whole task rather than one task among several.

The five vices

1. Where haumai governs a life, Sikhs say the five vices take over. They are also called the five thieves, or panj chor, since they are held to steal a life away while the person is busy with something else.
2. Kam is lust, the drive that reduces other people to means of one's own satisfaction. Krodh is anger, which the Gurus treat as the reaction of a self that has been thwarted.
3. Lobh is greed or covetousness, the wish for more regardless of need. Sikhs describe it as an appetite that grows by being fed.
4. Moh is attachment, above all to family and possessions. Sikhs distinguish loving one's family, which the Gurus commend, from clinging to them as though they belonged to oneself permanently.
5. Ahankar is pride, and Sikhs often treat it as the most dangerous of the five vices. It can grow directly out of religious achievement, so a devout person is not safe from it.
6. A person governed by these is a manmukh, one who faces the man, meaning the mind or self, instead of God. The word describes a direction of life rather than a category of wicked people.

Becoming gurmukh

1. The opposite orientation is gurmukh, one who faces the Guru. A gurmukh keeps God rather than the self at the centre and lives by the teaching of the Gurus.
2. Sikhs treat the two words as directions rather than as fixed types of person. The same person may be manmukh at one moment and gurmukh at another, and the Gurus address their hearers as people able to turn.
3. The turn is not made by withdrawing from the world. A gurmukh is expected to work, marry, raise children and serve others, so the change happens inside an ordinary life rather than away from it.
4. Sikhs hold that the change needs God's grace, called nadar, and the Guru's word, the shabad, rather than effort alone. Haumai cannot be removed by a self that is made of haumai, which is why the Guru is necessary.
5. When haumai goes, the jot is realized. Sikhs describe this as recognizing the light that was always there rather than as acquiring something new.
6. Sikhs take on the discipline in different degrees. Those who have taken amrit accept the rules of the Rahit Maryada as a daily guard against the vices, while other Sikhs follow the same teaching without the formal undertakings, and both belong to the Panth.