Langar ਲੰਗਰ

Giving freely to all.

You may have noticed. No paywall has yet been erected. Additionally, I have not shared an essay every three days as I intended. I often hear throughout my travels that “Man makes plans and God laughs.” Well, this has certainly been proven to be true in my goings about. In many ways, it has become a welcomed mantra for me as our world becomes ever more unpredictable and uncertain.

Yet Who is this “God” Who laughs?

The idea of God has always presented me with an inexhaustible flame of intrigue. I was born into a Christian family and first came to know God through The Christ. But as I aged I encountered other paths to God, befriended other holy avatars and discovered alternate methods of engaging with Divinity. To this day I can’t say I subscribe entirely to one religion or one version of God, more of a polytheist I suppose. But God does seem to be “one” in the grand scheme of things, in an awe-inspiring Way that english (or other languages for that matter) can not describe. An electric rainbow force beyond human comprehension able to welcome all, assist all in the creation of all, lovingly, eternally, beyond time and space.

“God is too big for just one religion.” -Michael Franti

In the two weeks I have been in India I have come to meet God through many doors. Through unfathomably large lapis lazuli inlayed marble corridors, via sound- saturated, candle-lit rituals to The Mother, in small eye-adorned rocks humbly resting at the foot of ancient Banyan trees. Some call God Allah, some prefer the name Krishna, others find it comforting to refer to this mystery as Jahova. Indeed, there are millions of names for the Unspeakable. Yet what truly activates a living relation with a being most of us cannot see, with a force more powerful than mortal comprehension? The offering of incense? lighting a butter lamp? Adorning Shiva Ling with milk? Offering “thoughts and prayers”?

A regularly adorned Shiva Ling in an Udaipur alley.

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I grew up with the Salvation Army. Many of my childhood friends had no homes and were not sure where their next meal was coming from. The Salvations Army, a Christian organization, commits itself to remaining actively involved with people like my childhood friends. It was a common teaching of the Christ that we are not to turn a blind eye to those who suffer, that we must directly engage with the needy and do what we can to help.

I am currently journeying throughout the Indian subcontinent visiting with myriad peoples working in similar ways, to serve mankind and the Earth who generously serves us. Last week we were warmly welcomed by a Sikh Community in Punjab (Nishan E Sikhi). Immediately upon our arrival we were ushered in to a clean, comfortable kitchen and fed a delicious, organic meal. We had been journeying by bus for several days. Needless to say, we were exhausted. After our meal, we were offered a warm bed, a warm shower and even a place to wash our clothes. We were charged nothing for any of this. It was all offered freely, in the spirit of “seva”.

Offering food to pilgrims, or anyone who needs a meal is a central practice of the Sikh. Keeping alive a tradition dating back thousands of years, all travelers through Persian lands know they will find safety and a warm meal at the langar. A langar (Punjabi: ਲੰਗਰ) is the community kitchen of a gurdwara, which serves meals to all free of charge, regardless of religion, caste, gender, economic status, or ethnicity. People sit on the floor and eat together, and the kitchen is maintained and serviced by Sikh community volunteers who are doing seva ("selfless services"). The meals served at a langar are always lacto-vegetarian.

The Sikh are an often misunderstood people. Though easily recognized by their head wraps, white ropes and the swords hanging at their sides, few in the western world have an accurate understanding of who they are, what they believe in and what their intentions are. There is an extraordinary amount of information to unpack here which I cannot but begin to offer in this short essay, so I encourage readers to take the time to look deeply into this great tradition, one that I too had little understanding of until relatively recently. What I do want to focus on here however is upon two pillars of the Sikh faith which I feel could benefit us all in these strange, self-serving times. Simply put, the Sikh root their view in the soil of service and what I define as, “honorable memory”, i.e. recognition of God.

An ethnoreligious group that borrows from many traditions, the Sikh welcome all faiths, seeing all paths to god as equally relevant. Furthermore, they actively engage in works that serve and protect all beings, regardless of caste, creed, religious affiliation, or even species as they also work tirelessly to protect land, water and air as well. Where I have often found similar aspirations to serve mankind spoken of in other religions, I have not seen it embodied with as much gusto and obvious daily activation as while visiting with Sikh communities. It is deeply inspiring and firmly rooted in their foundational view of “Seva”

Sevā (also transcribed as sewa) is the concept of selfless service that is performed without any expectation of reward for performing it. To be sure, I experienced similar works while growing up with the Salvation Army. But what is unique among the Sikh is that the meals offered, the hospitality and protection they provide, etc. all can be found at any point of the day or night, every day of the year, always. An impressive amount of volunteers are constantly onsite to serve anyone who enters their gates. And their is no missionary attempting to convert any pilgrim or hungry visitor. Nothing is asked from the seeker whatsoever. Few words are even spoken at all. The visitor is merely met with a smile, then promptly offered a warm meal, a shower and a place to rest. And they are protected, quite literally, with an active patrol of armed guards adorned with actual swords who are well trained in traditional arts of combat, who are firmly dedicated to never do harm to anyone unless it is as an act of honest necessity to protect another being from being harmed by another, a service provided to all, not only members of the Sikh community.

I am reminded of the Black Panthers who, similar to the Sikh, were not ones to initiate violence, but weren’t going to simply stand by and offer “thoughts and prayers” to victims of state sponsored violence without making an actual effort to stop the harm upon innocents from occurring. The Black Panther Party, a well organized group of activists well known throughout The United States between 1966 and 1982 dedicated to serving and protecting their communities during a particularly tumultuous time in Americas turbulent history when civil-rights movements were being violently enacted and humanity was being recklessly violated (hmm… sounds strangely familiar.).

In addition to serving and protecting all, the other pillar of the Sikh faith I wnat to highlight here is Simran, or Divine Memory. For me, I find the word “God” or even the word “divine”, to be a bit outdated, misunderstood and controversial. I find a more useful term might be honorable memory. It seems that throughout the world and throughout history, time and time we find again societies generally fall for two main reasons. One, they fail to serve others and only work for the betterment of themselves. Secondly, they forget that all the impressive things they do, whether building a city, an irrigation system, an empire, a garden, a satellite, a rocket, a computer chip, a political movement, whatever, only came into being because of the generosity of That Which Gives Life. Some call Her “God”. Whatever ones religious affiliation, or even for those who claim to be “atheist”, when we forget to honor and keep alive the memory of That Which Enables the Appropriate Conditions to Come Together Which Allow Creativity to Be Birthed, we inevitably fall into amnesia and arrogance, thinking it was us who made the grand thing and not “God”, the Earth, the Water, the Spark of Life in all things, and thus we neglect to nourish all the myriad necessary agreements made long ago with this Holy Force and, lo and behold systems fail, our soils become depleted, our waters become toxic, our relations are severed, people grow fearful, the earth grows barren and scarred and societies collapse.

“Simran” is a process. In practice, it is a process of repeating Naam (sacred sounds) with each breath, with each beat of the heart. Being in the consciousness of Simran, Sikhs purify themselves by singing spiritual songs in praise of God’s Name, bestowing clarity, identity and spiritual discipline. In Sikh Dharma, it is believed that when believers infuse themselves with sacred sounds through the discipline of Simran, they receive bountiful blessings and brightness. Sikhs believe that Simran endows the believer with spiritual strength.

Indeed, the Sikh we met with possessed an undeniable vitality. Waking at 3:00 each morning to spend several hours in prayer and meditation before heading to the fields to farm or the kitchen to cook and serve pilgrims voluntarily, to teach in their schools, to engage in the political process and speak for the voiceless, to build homes to address conflicts among the community, etc. And whenever I made any comment to my Sikh hosts about how impressed I was by their farming skills, their educational institutions, their ability to organize, etc, I was each time met instantly with a bright shining smile that interrupted my praise and made it clear that God made it all possible, not any special skill they had.

I am reminded of many occasions when i have had the privilege of meeting with indigenous seed savers throughout the world. Whether done ritually in an extended ceremony or sung as we welcome in the “corn mothers”, a re-memberance always emerges that makes it clear that it wasn’t the brilliance of humans or the curious expertise of technology that allowed the food to come, but the Holy Wild, the Spirit in the Seed, The Government in The Root. We may be blessed to have seeds, but we did not make them. All life is here because of Her, not us.

Imagine a world where our foundational view for all our daily endeavors was firmly rooted in these understandings. What kind of world would blossom if we did not spend hours daily attempting to get “likes” or seeking praise from the Grammys for the works we do. What if we lived beautifully, in a way that served and protected others merely because that was what had to be done, simple as breathing.

My mother and father embodied this for me as a child. They still do. I am grateful for them, selfless servants of God. The Sikh are not the only ones who do this good work, many around the world know this view and live it daily, but to see an entire culture fully assembled around such noble views in times as spiritually impoverished as these was for me, deeply inspiring. I am grateful for them, selfless servants of God. A greatly appreciated reminder of our global, cross-cultural human capacity for living simply, doing good, being happy, and remaining dedicated to serving others well and re-membering from whence all this abundance came.

So, inspired as I am by the Sikh who freely give, I have decided to continue offering all my writings for free. No paywall. A deep bow of gratitude to all of you who generously have offered me financial support. It allows me to offer this to others, in the spirit of “seva”.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ

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#mayallbeingsbehappyandfree