“The Name of My Beloved: Verses of the Sikh Gurus.” Translated by Nikky Guninder Kaur Singh. Published by Harper San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in association with International Sacred Literature Trust, 1996. 249 pages.
According to the International Sacred Literature Trust who collaborated with the publication of this book, “The Name of My Beloved” offers the first contemporary translation of a collection of scriptures chanted daily by Sikhs throughout the world. Translated by the Sikh scholar, Dr. Nikky Guninder Kaur Singh, this volume offers us the essence of Sikhism.
The introduction consists of a discussion of Guru Nanak’s philosophy, “Ikk Oan Kar” which, translated, would read “One Reality Is.” There is an informative account of the 10 religious books from the “Adi Granth, First Book by Guru Nanak to the Tenth Book,” and a commentary on translating the verses. The translations are of morning prayers, evening prayers, hymns devoted tonight and death, and to marriage. According to Sikh theosophy. All forms are informed by the Formless. Thus, says the First Guru, “You have a thousand eyes yet without eye are You… a thousand faces yet without a face are You … There is a Light in all, and that lights You.”
Between the Ultimate and the individual, there is no duality. To Western thinkers accustomed to separating ideas and pure forms from everyday phenomena (only the idea of the formless rose is real, the rose that can be smelt and touched is temporary, imperfect and, therefore, unreal), the Sikh perspective with its fluid connections between the physical and the metaphysical comes as a surprise. The gurus, writes Singh, use an endless variety of images to evoke our connection with the Divine Reality. One of the most beautiful ways in which they describe human beings’ special relationship to this Reality is through the language of intimate relationships; “My mind and my body yearn/but my lover is far away in foreign lands … Nanak says the bride is truly wed/when she is embraced by her Beloved.” Singh points out the use of the female language of desire describing craving for knowledge as androgenic, having to do with both sexes, not particularly male and female. “As we bunch into the twenty-first century,” she writes, “the Sikh message of love and the equality of men and women can offer a new meaning and new authenticity to our goals of cultural and sexual equality.”
Article extracted from this publication >> August 14, 1996
