Jul
19
Bhai Buddha
July 19, 2007 |
You remember how Bhai Buddha — The Brother Ancient — got the title. He saw his mother kindling a fire. And he saw that the smaller twigs caught fire first and the longer ones, a little later. And unlike us, the young men of to-day, who choose to live dull lives, mostly uninterested and unconcerned, that young man was much too sensitive. As the leaves of the sensitive plant are to the touch, so the little boy was sensitive to the touch of wonder. He wondered why the smaller twigs caught fire first. He was a genius. What is genius but that which responds with the sensitiveness of the sensitive plant to the Light of Heaven? He though his mother would go to see Guru Nanak seated under the shade of a tree. Seeing Guru Nanak is like touching the fire of Heaven. Seeing Him is to be kindled like a star from a star. He thought his mother would follow, but it was he who must first catch that gleam and burn with it.
With that inward realization of wonder, the young man did go to Guru Nanak.
At the sight of the Guru, he found he was wholly inflammable. His flesh and bones caught fire. The young man was called by the Guru. He heard his story and the Guru gave him the title of ‘The Brother Ancient’ — so young and yet so ancient in wisdom. Bhai Buddha is the ‘Brother’ — ‘The Sikh’.
No historian or biographer can tell us what happened then to Bhai Buddha. Ordinary history gives corpses of events, it registers accurately the dead facts which are mostly wrong. History has no testimony for our soul. You may study a friend of yours for a long time and yet find all your conclusions about his character upset by stumbling over a kind act of his to you, and that one silent act of his may discover to you that he is your Messiah. History and biography are both lies, so far as these matters are concerned. Who can report the soul correctly, which, till to-day remains unrevealed and undescribed, for it is always a surprise and a revelation. Such matters are beyond our analyzing intellects But mark the effects. The whole life of Bhai Buddha thenceford is a marvel. Living on a few grassy acres near Amritsar, with a few cows grazing by his side quietly, the ‘Brother Ancient’ lives self-enclosed, immersed wholly in the Guru. His lips pipe His Name. He fills himself with glory. The firmament revolves as a torch in his hand in the worship of the Beloved. His bosom throbs like that of a bird that trills a song. His hairs stand on end with ecstasy. His eyes are red, half-closed, rapt, vision-bound, wonder-bound, happy like the full-blown flower, and all so beautiful. And the continuousness of his kindled passion, shaking his day and night with joy, makes of him a radiant presence, a persuasive silence, a soothing influence, a peace incomparable shedding joy all around like the cloud, like the sun, like the moon, like the shade of a tree.
He lives in the wilderness, naming him. No heroic woman ever loved man more passionately than Bhai Buddha loved Guru Nanak. Constancy of love needs silent heroism. Intensity of pleasure comes to all animals during many a turn of life in this world. The sight of a woman may give that exquisite thrill ; the finding of a treasure by a poor man might give him a foretaste of the paradise, the poet may feel inspired for a rare moment at the sight of the beautiful universe, but nothing comes near the grandeur of the sublime passion of Bhai Buddha who lives like a whole universe in himself. The exterior expression of this ecstatic life is stopped owing to the continuous imbibing of the Great Reality. The language has lost all unnecessary words ; the sound has dropped the inanities of thought, the whole flesh has become the mind and having grown translucent has the opalescence of a mixed sheen of pearls and rubies. Bhai Buddha’s humanity has turned into daily food for the Divine Flower that has burst in him. Bhai Buddha is burning like a lamp at that altar of Guru Nanak. Silent burning is the only artistic expression of such an infinite kind of disciple-personality — such was the reaction of Bhai Buddha towards Guru Nanak.
Perhaps you might be led to think that, like the ancient Hindus, the ‘Brother Ancient’ had become a Saint, whose main concern was the contemplation of the pure, the Absolute, the Brahman. The type of blissful humanity, the Brother Ancient represents, is quite new. The bliss of Guru Nanak’s Sikh waves in him like a vast ocean. But it is ever in motion, and yet wholly at rest in itself. The ineffable bliss of remembrance of Him has an infinite pang which it nestles within itself. This pang of love is manifested in the life of the disciple in different ways. It might take the shape of absolute forgiveness of a sinner, for in this acute pang, man is much too sweet for any revenge which, in many forms, is known on this earth as justice. The vision of justice in the self-consciousness of the disciple is forgiveness ; there can be no other justice between man and man in the domain of discipleship, where love reigns and never hatred.
It might take the form of total self-sacrifice in peace or in war, or it might be content to live as beautiful as the lotus, doing without knowing, the greatest service to life that Pure Beauty can render.
It might take the form of a political revolution against tyranny, as it once did in the time of Guru Har Gobind and Guru Gobind Singh.
The bliss of the disciple is restless, with the human pain which moved Lord Buddha to compassion.
The Brother Ancient realizes his knowledge of sorrow when Guru Har Gobind went to Gwalior and was for a long time absent from Amritsar. Amritsar was always holy to him because of His presence, but it become holier to him in an unspeakable anguish of spearation from Him. In His absense, the Sikh worshippers came and went, but the Brother Ancient not seeing the Guru was restless, as fish out of water. The Brother Ancient lights a torch as the night falls and goes round the temple singing his pang of separation, in acute remembrance of Him, as if He had come to listen to the disciple in the Golden Temple. And He did come. Did He not tell Bhai Buddha on his return how he heard his love cries, every evening while at Gwalior ?
The Guru remains and transmutes the Torches of Separation, of the burning pain, into the Torches of Union, of the burning joy. The colour of the Temple changes. The Brother Ancient returns to his cloister and is mute again, happy like a child with the cows grazing on the turf.
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