Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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(Guru Granth, p. 39; trans. by Gopal Singh, Vol. i, p. 40)
Men have performed millions of ablutions at places of pilgrimage;
they have made many offerings and endured great fasts.
Putting on the dress of great penitents and wearing long hair, they
have wandered in many countries, but they have not found the
Beloved God.
They have made millions of attitudes of contemplation and
prostrations, many offerings of their limbs to tutelary divinities, and
b1ackened their faces;
But without meditating on the name of the Compassionate to the
poor, the Deathless, they have at last gone to Death’s abode.
(Macauliffe, V, p. 283)
8. Pollution
If the ideas of impurity be admitted, there is impurity in everything.
There are worms in cow-dung and in wood;
There is no grain of corn without life.
In the first place, there is life in water by which everything is made
green.
How shall we avoid impurity? It falleth on our kitchens. Saith Nanak,
impurity is not thus washed away: it is washed away by divine
knowledge.
Impurity of the heart is greed, impurity of the tongue is falsehood;
Impurity of the eyes is gazing on another’s wealth, his wife, and her
beauty;
Impurity of the ears is listening to slander.
Nanak, even the pretended saint who practiseth such things,
shall go bound to hell.
All impurity consisteth in superstition and attachment to
worldly things. (Macauliffe, Vol. i, pp. 242-3),
They eat he-goats killed with unspeakable words,
And allow no one to enter their cooking squares.
Having smeared a space they draw lines around it,
And sit within, false that they are,
Saying, ‘Touch not! O touch not!
‘Or this food of ours will be defiled.’
But their bodies are defiled; what they do is defiled;