IB World Religions 7.1.1. Nirguna God, Ik Onkar and the Word: Bani, Shabad and the Guru Notes

7.1.1. Nirguna God, Ik Onkar and the Word: Bani, Shabad and the Guru

God as nirguna

1. Sikhs call God Akal Purukh, the Timeless Being, and hold that God is the one Creator of everything that exists. They describe God as nirguna, one and formless, without the qualities or shape that would let anyone picture God.
2. Nirguna does not mean distant. Sikh teaching holds that the same formless God is present inside creation as jot, the divine light, so God is beyond every form and yet closer than anything a person could imagine.
3. Because God has no form, Sikhs use no images and no statues. A Sikh place of worship contains no picture of God, only the Guru Granth Sahib in which God's Word is held to be present.
4. The tradition also declines to fix God's gender. Sikh scripture speaks of God as father and as mother, and Sikhs treat both as human words reaching for something no human word contains.
5. Everything that happens is said to run by hukam, God's ordering will. Sikhs still hold human beings responsible for how they live inside that order.
6. This account of God is taught as revelation given to Guru Nanak, who lived from 1469 to 1539. Sikhs present it as something disclosed to him rather than as a conclusion he reasoned his way to.

Ik Onkar as symbol

1. Ik Onkar is the symbol Sikhs use for God as one. It joins the numeral one, *ik*, to *onkar*, the one being or sound from which all creation comes.
2. It stands at the very opening of the Guru Granth Sahib, the first thing any reader meets. Sikhs take that placement as a statement that everything following depends on it.
3. Writing a numeral rather than a word is deliberate. A numeral cannot be made plural, declined or turned into a picture, so God's oneness is stated in a form that resists decoration.
4. Ik Onkar opens the Mool Mantra, the short statement of belief that begins the scripture and that Sikhs treat as a summary of everything the scripture teaches.
5. Sikhs put the symbol almost everywhere: over gurdwara entrances, on the cloths that cover the scripture, on jewellery, on wedding invitations and in the hallways of homes.
6. Sikhs also read it as a summary of practice. If God is one, then every person shares a single source, and the equality Sikhs teach follows from that arithmetic.

Bani and shabad

1. Sikhs call God's Word bani and shabad. Both name the same revealed utterance, and the tradition separates them mainly by medium: bani is usually the Word spoken or sung, shabad is usually the Word written.
2. The compound gurbani names that Word as it came through the human Gurus. Sikhs define it as the divinely revealed words of God uttered by the ten Gurus God chose.
3. Sikhs do not treat the Word as information about God. They hold that God is present in it, so hearing bani is contact with God rather than a report about God.
4. The Word therefore has to be sounded rather than only stored. Kirtan, the meditative singing of God's Word, is the central act of Sikh worship for exactly this reason.
5. Because the Word is God's rather than the Gurus' own, Sikhs hold that it loses nothing when ordinary people repeat it. A child and a trained musician are carrying the same Word.

The meaning of guru

1. Sikhs define Guru from its parts: *gu* for darkness, meaning spiritual ignorance, and *ru* for light, meaning spiritual understanding. A Guru is that or the one which takes away the darkness and brings the light.
2. The definition is deliberately wide. It says what a Guru does rather than what a Guru is made of, so the title can rest on a person, on the Word, or on God.
3. Sikhs count ten human Gurus, from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh, who died in 1708. They are held to have been chosen by God to utter God's Word, and they are not held to be divine.
4. Sikhs do not worship the Gurus. Honouring them is understood as honouring the Word that came through them, and Sikhs hold that the Gurus themselves insisted on the difference.
5. God is also called Guru. Waheguru, wonderful Guru, is the name most Sikhs repeat in meditation, and it addresses God as the one who does the enlightening.
6. What passed from Guru to Guru is described as one light in different bodies. Sikhs say the same jot was in all ten, which is why the later Gurus signed their hymns with the name Nanak.

The Word as Guru

1. Guru Gobind Singh ended the line of human Gurus. Before his death he installed the scripture itself as his successor, and Sikhs have called it the Guru Granth Sahib ever since.
2. The move follows from the definition of Guru. If a Guru is whatever removes spiritual darkness, and the Word is what removes it, then the Word can hold the office once the human channels are complete.
3. Sikhs therefore treat the scripture as a living Guru rather than as a book about past Gurus. It is not consulted as a record of what earlier teachers happened to think.
4. Sikhs express this by saying the shabad itself is Guru. The volume is where the Word is found, and the Word is what does the teaching.
5. Because the Word rather than a person holds the office, Sikhs hold there can be no further human Gurus. There is also no priesthood standing between a person and the Word.
6. Sants, holy men and women respected for learning and devotion, are honoured in some Sikh communities. Sikhs are careful to say that a sant is a teacher and never a Guru.

Hearing the Word today

1. The Word is met daily rather than weekly. Devout Sikhs recite prescribed bani in the morning, in the evening and before sleep, at home as often as at the gurdwara.
2. In the gurdwara the Word is read aloud from Gurmukhi, the script the Gurus used. Congregations in Britain, Canada and East Africa often follow with a translation so that the meaning travels with the sound.
3. Kirtan keeps the Word in its sung form. Musicians called *ragis* lead the singing, and Sikhs treat the singing itself as the worship rather than as an accompaniment to it.
4. Sikhs who have taken amrit into the Khalsa undertake a fuller daily discipline of bani. Sikh communities contain both initiated and non-initiated members without either ceasing to be Sikh.
5. Private practice centres on the Word too. Nam simran, meditation on God's name and whole being, is practised through the working day rather than reserved for a set hour.
6. Because the Word is held to be God's own, Sikhs teach that God may be found in other faiths as well. Recognising truth elsewhere is treated as consistent with holding the Guru Granth Sahib to be its clearest form.