INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

engaging in religious action. The word also signified an internal feeling of sincerity
and reverence (shraddha) that people experienced in the moment of performing worship.
Thus, bhavna designated both a devotional quality of one’s prior intention and a
feeling of actually “meaning to mean” something in the actual enactment of action. In
this dual sense, local Sikhs would distinguish between pure [shuddh] and impure
[ashuddh] bhavna. An elderly Sikh man explicated the difference in the following way:
Bhavna means wishes, desires and reverence. Your bhavna depends
upon your feelings. A person has desire either to give or to take. Some
people attend the gurdwara to see and be seen by other people. Others
go to the gurdwara only with a wish to thank God from their heart.
Only those people with pure [shuddh] bhavna will have their wishes
come true. If you are not clean from the inside you will get nothing.
You can do worship for the whole day, even deep meditation, but you
will get nothing. If you pour fresh milk into a dirty pot the milk will be
destroyed. You will always get the fruits of your actions according to
your bhavna. God knows what you want. If your feelings from the inside
are good, he will listen. God is not deaf. He knows what you want.
Similar to the Jain case, bhavna becomes a relevant category of an intricate relationship
between the individual worshipper, his or her religious acts, and the effects of
that action. The individual is seen as the locus of meanings, emotions, and desires
that will generate qualitatively different effects of religious action. Having “pure”
bhavna can be crucial when the acts to be conducted are highly stipulated and the
words to be spoken are formulaic and not subject to manipulation by the worshipper.
The quality of the worshipper’s bhavna does not merely work as regulator or
medium to transform action into devotional deeds, but it is also believed to affect the
expected results of the acts performed. 787 Consider again the woman who recites a
gurbani hymn to be blessed with a child. To make her ritual enactment beneficial and
result in a pregnancy her bhavna is considered imperative. Whether she sincerely
wishes for a child and recites the hymn with full devotion, or hypothetically is compelled
by relatives or family traditions to do the same, it is believed to yield two quite
divergent results. Her “pure” bhavna endows the religious action with a devotional
quality that she believes will improve her chances to be blessed with a pregnancy.
Moreover, bhavna may work as a mental means by which the woman considers herself
to be emotionally and cognitively communicating with God. Whether she articulates
her wishes for a child in a formal prayer or believes the divine “knower of all
787
An exception is those social functions and effects of performative acts which are dependant
upon conventions. For example, a wedding couple do not become less or more married in case
they complete the Sikh Anand Karaj ceremony, but lack pure intentions, sincerity, or devotion.
The couple will still be considered married if they have fulfilled the enactment. Conventions
rather than sincerity conditions will determine the effects of these acts.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008