Concept · 1469 CE · Delhi Sultanate and Mughal
Sikhism
- Also known as
- an Saíceachas
- Gurmat
- Gurmat
- Kalasinga
- Nanakism
- nasin sewi Siki
In the late fifteenth century, amid the fertile plains of the Punjab, a spiritual path emerged that defined itself not by conversion or the possession of exclusive truth, but by the lifelong pursuit of learning.
The Punjab of the late fifteenth century was a land defined by its borders, a fractured green plain where the expanding horizons of Islamic Sufism met the ancient, structured landscape of Hindu devotion. In 1469, in the village of Talwandi near Lahore, a child named Nanak was born into the Khatri caste. He arrived in a world already vibrating with the quiet rebellions of wandering mystics—the poet Kabir, who mocked the hypocrisy of both temple and mosque, and the saint Ramanand, who had begun to dismantle the walls of caste among his disciples. But where others saw a conflict of rival dogmas, Nanak experienced a singular, dissolving clarity. Following a period of deep meditation, he emerged with a simple, revolutionary pronouncement that bypassed the theological battle lines of his era: "There is no Hindu, there is no Mussalman."
This was not a call for syncretism or a casual blending of faiths, but a radical assertion that God transcended the human vocabulary of division. Nanak spoke of Ik Onkar, the One Supreme Reality, a singular, formless, and all-pervading spirit (Nirankar) that was simultaneously within everything and entirely beyond time (Akal). To Nanak, the ultimate purpose of human existence was not to secure passage to a distant heaven or to escape to a quietist nirvana, but to achieve jivanmukti—liberation and spiritual enlightenment within one's own lifetime. The primary barrier to this union was haumai, the blind ego, which bound the soul to maya, the temporary illusion of the material world. This illusion was not the physical world itself, but the false values humans mapped onto it, driven by the panj chor, the "five thieves" of lust, anger, greed, attachment, and pride. The remedy Nanak offered was deceptively simple: nam simran, the continuous, meditative remembrance of the divine name, and a life of active, ethical engagement. "Truth is the highest virtue," he famously observed, "but higher still is truthful living."
This philosophy rejected the spiritual efficacy of asceticism, empty ritual, and caste segregation. Rather than retreating to the mountains to find God, Nanak insisted that the spiritual life must be lived within the secular household. He walked thousands of miles across southern Asia, preaching that every human being, regardless of birth, possessed the eternal right to seek divine knowledge. To ground this radical equality in daily practice, his successors instituted the langar, a community kitchen where prince and peasant, Brahmin and untouchable, were required to sit side by side in rows on the ground and eat the same food.
Connected to
- followsHinduism
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