Content
The immortal One is for Guru Gobind Singh sometimes the 'wholly Other,' far above human comprehension, before whom man can but bow again and again. As the succeeding waves of negative attributes roll on one may well wonder how there can be any communication with this inscrutable Being. The answer is, of course, that He of his grace has offered companionship to man, so that man does not have to understand, but only to accept and adore. Sikhism offers a new path of salvation in addition to the traditional paths of knowledge, work and devotion - the path of the Name, Naam. Meditation on the Name produces Wismad, wonder; and the object of such poetry as the Japp Sahib is the creation of the mood of aesthetic ecstasy: Sher Singh in the Philosophy of Sikhism writes: "It is the poetry and the music of the contents of the Granth revealing simple and direct truths which charm a reader of Gurbani...and can bring peace to the soul." "It is the aesthetical insight leading man through appearance to reality." Meditation on the Name is fundamental to Sikhism, and so in this opening hymn of the Dasam Granth, men are given a thousand names on which to meditate.
Read more about this topic: Jaap Sahib
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content ... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.”
—René Daumal (1908–1944)
“Women are angels, wooing;
Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.
That she beloved knows naught that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.
Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:
Achievement is command; ungained, beseech.
Then though my heart’s content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“First it must be known that only a spoken word or a conventional sign is an equivocal or univocal term; therefore a mental content or concept is, strictly speaking, neither equivocal nor univocal.”
—William of Occam (c. 1285–1349)