ikonkaar There are many sakhies of Guru Nanak Dev ji where he has,by giving examples,denounced ritual-bathing in so-called "holy" rivers and sarovars,then how is it that sarovars were built in gurudwaras and various heeling and soul-cleansing powers attributed to them.
Jasbir ji,
Guru Fateh.
I like your thought provoking questions with which you love to nudge people and that is necessary in Sikhi because the name itself suggests the journey of learning for a Sikh.
As the title of this thread indicates it is a 'ritual bath', which is futile.
Let's say for the sake of this argument that Sarovars are built in Gurdwaras for the purpose of the ritual dip. Let's talk about the
Sanctum Sanctorum of Sikhi, Harmander Sahib which is built around a sarovar and has four doors.
If Guru Ram Das ji's intention to build the sarovar was that people should take a dip in it then it means he was deliberating contradicting and flaunting at what Guru Nanak Dev ji said in Jap- which for me is the foundation stone of Sikhi.
And that would be impossible because our Gurus were all one Jyot, meaning that Sikhi is idea based way of life unlike personified deity based other dogmatic religions.
It means that Jyot is the evolution of the idea/message of breeding goodness within.
This is the reason that as we evolve, Gurbani gives us the priviledge to take a glimpse of another angle that we never imagined existed and that angle acts like our inner mirror.
Coming back to taking a dip in the Sarovar, allow me to share my personal story about it.
In the year 2000, I took both my kids to visit my ailing Mum. Jaskeerat who is 19 now was 10 years old and Trimaan was 5. I took them to visit Amritsar with my Massi ( my mum's sister) who was living with my Mum in Ferozepore, my home town.
I have always shared Sikhi with them since they were kids so asking questions by them and myself trying my best to respond to their queries was and still a norm in our house but now its Sikhi spectrum has a wider horizon which also involves everything else in our daily lives of Miri-Piri.
The idea was to go and visit Harmander Sahib and take a dip in the sarovar. Trimaan being 5 was very excited because he saw lots of other people doing it and he thought it was fun. Trimaan and I took a dip and Jaskeerat went with my Massi to do the same in the ladies enclosed section.
When she came out, she was very angry and she wanted to sit down and talk to me about this ritual. We sat for about 30 minutes going back and forth while Trimaan went along happily with Massi ji after having taken a dip in the biggest 'swimming pool' of his life.
Jasbir ji, my 10 year old American born daughter showed me the futility of this ritual that I had not thought about it before. This also proves how our visionary Gurus eliminated hierarchy. We just have to open ourselves to learn from anyone and anything.
The other ritual which is related to the same thing is about sipping water. A special place is constructed at Harmander Sahib where people go and take a gulp or two from the sarovar water. Some bring with them empty booze bottles to fill with this so called 'Amrit'. Plastic bottles are sold in the shops outside the Gurdwaras for this purpose. There is a special 'seva' at Bangla Sahib where the sevadaars stand with a kettle kind of utensil to offer water and people go their in a very humble manner and take a sip.
All these things contradict the beautiful message of Gurbani and become mechanical rituals which our Gurus were against and Gurbani tells us that.
The reason we do not get it is because we have become wonderful parrots of Gurbani rather than trying to understand it and make it our inner GPS, so it can lead us out of our inner labyrinths of lives in which we have been stuck for a very long time.
Thanks for the wonderful question.
Regards
Tejwant Singh
