Friday 22 June 2007

family


Families are weird. They come in all shapes and sizes and every person has a different relationship with their family. Some are based on love, support, care, then money, hate, arrogance or all of these things. Some keep no ties with family, Hindus at somepoint in their lives leave their families in 'search of god'...Guru Ji says..


dyiK kutMbu moih loBwxw clidAw nwil n jweI ]dhaekh kutta(n)b mohi lobhaanaa chaladhiaa naal n jaaee

Beholding your family, you are lured away by emotional attachment, but when you leave, they will not go with you.


So I believe that this means to cherish and love your family and look after them - this is a righteous act (after all we are encouraged to live normal lives as well as be sikhs). However we should refrain from emotional attachments - it won't help us in the end...we have to keep in mind what comes first..Guru Ji....but I still love my family :P



igRsiq kutMib plyitAw kdy hrKu kdy sogu ]grisath kutta(n)b palaettiaa kadhae harakh kadhae sog

when you are wrapped up in the attachments of household and family, sometimes feeling joy, and then other times sorrow;


igrsqI igrsiq Drmwqw ]4]girasathee girasath dhharamaathaa 4

The householders assert their faith in family life. 4

Guru Arjun Dev Ji siree rag 71

1 comment:

Unknown said...

A very nice point raised.

My understanding of sikhi tells me that my family include not only the people who are my relatives but all the human beings( including non-sikhs, people who do bad deeds, criminals or whatever one think is a worst person) are my family( Ref. Na Ko beri nahi baigana). when Bani says that your family will leave you it means that family is exactly going to be like the people who live around us and are not concerned about us. And this is going to happen at the most difficult time of our life i.e, when we are dying. It means that they will leave me when I am no more useful to them. Dead body is not a useful thing. People even leave their living relatives when they are not useful.

So when we say family i understand two things

1)I should be so acceptable that i have similar feelings for every person like I feel for my brother or sister. Now I have more love to share. When I see a stranger it gives me the pleasure of seing my brother. I am more happy person now. When I have that level of love and kindness I would realise that people who are tied just in close relations have false ties.

(Easy to say but Hard to do e.g,can a mother feed an unrelated kid when her own baby is hungry? Own is own , more love for own. isn't it?)



2)I should not be driven by emotional attachment towards my family to extent that I am pulled away from my Satguru. e.g, to fulfill the needs of our family we work so much that we don't have time to go to gurudwara/ do daily banis OR as in above example to feed my hungry kid I grab the food from others hungry kid. When i see every body ( family/non family) with same eye then it is less likely that i would do that.

So the bottom line is keeping a balance. Love your family but not blindly. when spending(money/love/time/attention/care) for our own family keep an eye on the needs of unrelated but more needy as everybody here has Wahegurus jot in him.

I am looking forward for the level of spirtuality Bhai Kanihya reached, where no body is a stranger, no body is enemy, every face is Waheguru.

Dr. Singh