Can Someone Explain This Shabad From Babur Bani, Does God Care?

[Questioner]

Why can't god be cruel?If we limit god then we are limiting his powers.The abrahamic perception of god is that god does good and satan does bad.In sikhi god is both good and bad.He created the panj chor,he created death,disease,etc.If it wasn't god then who created all of the bad things?Something powerful as god?

If god was nice and happy then there should be no hate,death,famine,sickness,disease etc.Everyone would love everyone and we should not work etc.

It's not the case that God CANNOT be bad, it's the case that God IS NOT bad. The Mool Mantar tells us the basic truth that God is without hate. The Abrahamic perspective of God includes jealousy, vengefulness and wrath- for example, in regards to Sodom and Gomorrah, or the worship of other Gods. This is all scripturally based. But Gurbani makes no mention of such a God (unless you can find me a Shabad that does). Yes, we know that suffering exists and that God causes and destroys, but it does not logically follow that a hate-less and all-loving God is therefore cruel as well. Perhaps it is our perception of cruelness, suffering and evil which is flawed.

[scali]

GOD is love not the dispenser of love based on some criteria. Our will is GOD's will. We create our own reality based on our minds and experience it. Its a collective conscious of beings that bring atrocities, natural disasters upon us.

[BritishSingh]

Waheguru is everything. We must remember our purpose of being here. It is to merge with Waheguru. This is done with Naam Simran, reading Gurbani, doing Kirtan and Seva etc... Then the 10th Gate will open and you shall be free from reincarnation.

Gurbani is talking about Babur, but how about all the other people who do/did bad things such as: Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Ivan the terrible, Osama Bin Laden, etc.... How much terror did they bring? Waheguru let it happen also, therefore you can say whenever there is a war that does God care?

Gurbani tells us that Waheguru is love and that he has started the process call the universe. In this process everything is happening, i.e. Birth, Living and Death. There are wars amongst animals and plants over territory or a mate.

If we dwell on these worldly things then we miss our purpose of being here. In the shabad you mention, Guru Nanak Dev Ji is retelling history and explains that yes Waheguru watched over these terrible events, BUT you MUST always read the last lines to get the message because in the end of the shabad Guru Nanak Dev Ji is telling us just as he tells us in almost every shabad that:

We must let go of our Ego whilst we are alive then Wheguru Ji's name can grow and blossom inside you.

[TheFancyBanana]

Waheguru is everything. We must remember our purpose of being here. It is to merge with Waheguru. This is done with Naam Simran, reading Gurbani, doing Kirtan and Seva etc... Then the 10th Gate will open and you shall be free from reincarnation.

Gurbani is talking about Babur, but how about all the other people who do/did bad things such as: Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Ivan the terrible, Osama Bin Laden, etc.... How much terror did they bring? Waheguru let it happen also, therefore you can say whenever there is a war that does God care?

Gurbani tells us that Waheguru is love and that he has started the process call the universe. In this process everything is happening, i.e. Birth, Living and Death. There are wars amongst animals and plants over territory or a mate.

If we dwell on these worldly things then we miss our purpose of being here. In the shabad you mention, Guru Nanak Dev Ji is retelling history and explains that yes Waheguru watched over these terrible events, BUT you MUST always read the last lines to get the message because in the end of the shabad Guru Nanak Dev Ji is telling us just as he tells us in almost every shabad that:

We must let go of our Ego whilst we are alive then Wheguru Ji's name can grow and blossom inside you.

But if God allows those things to happen, how does it make him any better than Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin?

So how can God be caring and loving if he does these things?

[gurnam5]

I wonder if one might take another angle on this shabad. If one assumes that God is part of our being, atma as the shabad 'man tu moth saroop[ hei apna moll pacha an' states, in essence we can think of this shabad as a internal dialogue that Guru Nanak is engaged in, a self reflection, if you like. This self dialogue then really can be understood as Nanak identifying a series of moral questions. What should I one do when faced with a powerful egotistical demagogue like Babur?What power do I have to oppose the power of the oppressor? what moral responsibility do `i have given the power dynamics? And so, perhaps what Nanak is really asking us to address our own moral conscious and to contemplate how we should respond to such an oppressor. And so when he asks god, 'didn't you feel pain and suffering' he is really asking us to reflect on how we might react when we witness suffering and oppression. It is our own ego that stops us from making a moral choice to be passive or active, to confront or not confront such oppression. I know this is a rather complicated argument, but the key is not to see waheguru as some external entity sitting in witness; This is essentially a Christian idea. In sikhi, we are all potentially god. "Sabh meh joth joth he soie, tis day chanan sabh me chanan hoe". Once we grab the concept of God in Sikhi, only then can we make sense of the greatness of Nanak's teachings. The truth is that this shabad is really about oppression, just war and the need for people of faith, gods representatives on this earth if you like, to confront both the tyrant and their own ego. The first strategy is to enable them to realise folly of their actions and the dangers of ego. Failing this, then we al have a moral duty to confront with force such oppression.

As for referring back to Sanatnist Babas, this is your right but I feel all they will simply tell you what somebody has told them. For then sharda is more important than doing try khoj of the shabad. And the only way one can really do true khoj is not to be driven by our ego i.e. "I am right, you are wrong" but by a true love for gian. And so one should be is to be open to being proven wrong. So I humbly request my learned gursikh brothers and sisters to help me understand any limitations in my analysis of this shabad so that I may understand Guru Nanak's message m,ore completely.

Guru Fateh Ji

Dr Gurnam Singh

[scali]

But if God allows those things to happen, how does it make him any better than Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin?

So how can God be caring and loving if he does these things?

GOD lets you have free will to demonstrate your love. GOD does not make decisions for you or override your decisions about your life or anybody else. GOD is all in all means it includes everything, nothing is outside of it. It knows you because it is you. Its a collective conscious that wants you to understand that you are doing all this things to yourself because there is only one of you(GOD). Conscious can divide itself into millions, billions... infinite pieces (separate itself), so it can look back at itself and behold its magnificance of what it truely is. For you to experience love you have to experience what love is not, so all this happens.

[UKLondonSikh]

TFB bir'ay (as I was prevented from responding to your question directly by Admin) I would just like to echo my agreement with much of what the following respected posters have mentioned below:

The way I think of it is that the Guru's hukam is all encompassing. All the pain and suffering stems from the one, yet so does the much more powerful bliss, peace and liberation also comes from realizing the one. We strive to find peace and joy from our lives, but how could we appreciate the moments from which we derive such peace if we did not experience suffering and despair with which we could truly come to appreciate the great joys which stem from the guru. Would we have truly lived without knowing pain? Without pain, and without sadness, we would be laid waste to our ever growing egos, and even the most blissful and beneficial of events would seem horrible to us. In simple words, such horrible happenings provide perspective, and with that perspective, we gain a greater understanding of the world around us, and by extension, the true guru who has immersed himself within his creation.

I don't think Vaheguru is mean or cruel, because They are without hate completely. The Abrahamic perception of God includes characteristics of hatred and jealousy... but the Sikh view of God I believe is all loving, all compassionate and all understanding.

It's not the case that God CANNOT be bad, it's the case that God IS NOT bad. The Mool Mantar tells us the basic truth that God is without hate. The Abrahamic perspective of God includes jealousy, vengefulness and wrath- for example, in regards to Sodom and Gomorrah, or the worship of other Gods. This is all scripturally based. But Gurbani makes no mention of such a God (unless you can find me a Shabad that does). Yes, we know that suffering exists and that God causes and destroys, but it does not logically follow that a hate-less and all-loving God is therefore cruel as well. Perhaps it is our perception of cruelness, suffering and evil which is flawed.

I wonder if one might take another angle on this shabad. If one assumes that God is part of our being, atma as the shabad 'man tu moth saroop[ hei apna moll pacha an' states, in essence we can think of this shabad as a internal dialogue that Guru Nanak is engaged in, a self reflection, if you like. This self dialogue then really can be understood as Nanak identifying a series of moral questions. What should I one do when faced with a powerful egotistical demagogue like Babur?What power do I have to oppose the power of the oppressor? what moral responsibility do `i have given the power dynamics? And so, perhaps what Nanak is really asking us to address our own moral conscious and to contemplate how we should respond to such an oppressor. And so when he asks god, 'didn't you feel pain and suffering' he is really asking us to reflect on how we might react when we witness suffering and oppression. It is our own ego that stops us from making a moral choice to be passive or active, to confront or not confront such oppression. I know this is a rather complicated argument, but the key is not to see waheguru as some external entity sitting in witness; This is essentially a Christian idea. In sikhi, we are all potentially god. "Sabh meh joth joth he soie, tis day chanan sabh me chanan hoe". Once we grab the concept of God in Sikhi, only then can we make sense of the greatness of Nanak's teachings. The truth is that this shabad is really about oppression, just war and the need for people of faith, gods representatives on this earth if you like, to confront both the tyrant and their own ego. The first strategy is to enable them to realise folly of their actions and the dangers of ego. Failing this, then we al have a moral duty to confront with force such oppression.

As for referring back to Sanatnist Babas, this is your right but I feel all they will simply tell you what somebody has told them. For then sharda is more important than doing try khoj of the shabad. And the only way one can really do true khoj is not to be driven by our ego i.e. "I am right, you are wrong" but by a true love for gian. And so one should be is to be open to being proven wrong. So I humbly request my learned gursikh brothers and sisters to help me understand any limitations in my analysis of this shabad so that I may understand Guru Nanak's message m,ore completely.

Guru Fateh Ji

Dr Gurnam Singh

GOD lets you have free will to demonstrate your love. GOD does not make decisions for you or override your decisions about your life or anybody else. GOD is all in all means it includes everything, nothing is outside of it. It knows you because it is you. Its a collective conscious that wants you to understand that you are doing all this things to yourself because there is only one of you(GOD). Conscious can divide itself into millions, billions... infinite pieces (separate itself), so it can look back at itself and behold its magnificance of what it truely is. For you to experience love you have to experience what love is not, so all this happens.

[Guest Jacfsing2]

Bump. ? Why would Vaheguru let all this be part of his Hukam?

[Guest]

Cause Akaal wills it.

[Not2Cool2Argue]

This question relates to the question of Hukam too. If everything is hukam,then why are we punished for sins when they were preordained ie in hukam? The thing is we say god is everything and in everyone. But dont understand. If thru hUkam we were preordained to do bad things then in hukam there is a consequence too. If god orders he also follows.