IB World Religions 7.1.4. the Community and Its Disciplines: Panth, Sangat, Khalsa, Gurdwara, Langar, Sewa Notes

7.1.4. The Community and Its Disciplines: Panth, Sangat, Khalsa, Gurdwara, Langar, Sewa

Panth and sangat

1. Panth means path, and Sikhs use it for the worldwide Sikh community: everyone who follows the path the Gurus set out.
2. Sangat names the local community, the congregation that gathers where the Guru Granth Sahib is installed. Sikhs speak of keeping holy company, and the sangat is where that company is kept.
3. Keeping such company is treated as a discipline rather than a social preference. Sikhs hold that a mind takes the shape of what it sits among, so the sangat supports a person's turn towards God.
4. Kirtan, the meditative singing of God's Word, is the sangat's central activity. It is done together because Sikhs hold that the Word works on a gathering as well as on an individual.
5. Sikh communities today are spread across Punjab, Britain, Canada, the United States, East Africa and South East Asia. Local sangats differ in language, music and custom while holding the same scripture.

The Khalsa

1. The Khalsa is the body of Sikhs who have taken amrit, the initiation into full commitment. The word means pure, and it also carries the sense of belonging directly to God.
2. Guru Gobind Singh founded it in 1699, and Sikhs describe that moment as the Khalsa being realised on Earth.
3. Amrit sanskar, the initiation ceremony, is conducted by five initiated Sikhs and centres on amrit, sweetened water stirred with a double-edged sword while prescribed bani is recited.
4. Initiation is chosen by some Sikhs rather than required of all. Sikhs who have not taken amrit belong to the Panth and worship alongside those who have.
5. Khalsa Sikhs take the names Singh, lion, and Kaur, princess. The names displace caste surnames, and Sikhs describe this as removing the marker by which people were once ranked.
6. Khalsa Sikhs undertake to keep the Rahit Maryada, the Sikh code of conduct, and to wear the five Ks. The commitment is renewed daily rather than completed at the ceremony.
7. The Khalsa also carries authority in Sikh thought. Guru Gobind Singh directed Sikhs to the Guru Granth Sahib for spiritual matters and to the Khalsa for temporal ones.

The gurdwara

1. A gurdwara is any place where the Guru Granth Sahib is installed. The word means the Guru's door, and the definition turns on the scripture's presence rather than on architecture.
2. This makes the category wide. A purpose-built hall in Southall, a converted house in Vancouver and a room set aside in a family home all count while the scripture is properly installed.
3. There is no consecrated building and no priesthood. Any Sikh who can read Gurmukhi may read from the scripture, and the granthi who usually does so is an appointed reader rather than a clergyman.
4. Gurdwaras are open to anyone. Visitors of any faith may enter, provided they cover the head, remove their shoes and leave tobacco and alcohol outside.
5. Sikhs treat the gurdwara as a community centre as much as a place of worship. Many run language classes, welfare services, sports clubs and advice sessions alongside worship.

Langar as shared meal

1. Langar is the meal freely available to anyone at a gurdwara. It is cooked, served and cleared by volunteers, and it is offered without charge and without expectation of return.
2. The food is always vegetarian. Sikhs explain this by the requirement that the meal be edible by everyone who might come, whatever their own dietary rules.
3. Everyone sits on the floor in rows to eat. Sitting at one level directly challenged caste ranking when the Gurus introduced it, and Sikhs keep the arrangement for the same reason now.
4. Langar is not charity aimed downwards. A wealthy donor and a person with nothing eat the same food in the same row, and the point is the equality rather than the relief.
5. Sikhs trace the institution to Guru Nanak and its systematic development to the Gurus after him. They treat it as teaching by arrangement rather than by argument.
6. The scale is now considerable. Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar serves tens of thousands of meals a day, and Sikh volunteers have run langar at disaster sites well beyond Punjab.

Sewa as altruistic service

1. Sewa is altruistic service given to anyone, offered to God and to humanity without regard to the recipient's birth, gender or religion.
2. Sikhs distinguish three kinds in practice: service given with the body, service given with the mind, and service given from one's material means.
3. Physical service is deliberately unglamorous. Sweeping the hall, washing dishes and cleaning visitors' shoes are the standard forms, and prominent Sikhs perform them alongside everyone else.
4. The point is what such work does to the ego. Sikhs hold that service bringing no status starves haumai of the recognition it lives on.
5. It rests on the doctrine of jot. If the divine light is present in every person, then service given to anyone at all is service given to God.

Kirat karna and vand chakna

1. Kirat karna means earning an honest living by one's own effort. Sikhs treat work as a religious obligation and reject begging and living off others as a spiritual path.
2. The requirement rules out certain livelihoods. Earnings from exploitation, dishonesty or gambling do not count as kirat karna however large they are.
3. Vand chakna means sharing one's wealth with those in need. Many Sikhs give a set proportion of income, commonly a tenth, to the gurdwara and to charitable causes.
4. Sharing is understood as returning rather than as donating. Sikhs hold that what a person earns comes ultimately from God, so giving passes on what was never wholly theirs.
5. With nam japna these two make the three duties of Sikh life: remember God, work honestly, and share what you have.
6. The three are meant to be inseparable. Sikh teaching treats meditation without honest work, or work without sharing, as an incomplete life rather than as partial success.
7. Together they explain what the community structures are for. The Panth, the sangat, the Khalsa, the gurdwara, the langar and sewa are where these three duties are practised rather than institutions with a separate purpose of their own.