The teachings of the wild: Nanak in Forest, Nanak on Foot

In these times when intolerance towards a different narrative, idea or opinion is becoming endemic, it serves one well to go back to Guru Nanak’s spirit of interrogating dogma itself. It might not seem evident at the face of it, but like fanaticism and blind faith, tolerance and questioning too go hand in hand. While for Nanak, if Talwandi, his birthplace was where arcane customs and rituals were made and enforced, the surrounding forest of Nilianwali was where they were unmade and questioned.

So, it all began in a forest. And it all began with a question.

The “janam sakhies” or the birth stories, which have been a part of Punjab’s oral tradition mention the proximity of a forest surrounding Talwandi. In our current imagination that allows for a very limited agrarian landscape of Punjab confined to cultivated mustard fields, it is not easy to imagine the splendour of a forest close to Lahore. But then, that was 15th century Punjab and much has changed in the landscape and its flora & fauna since then. There is a mention of a wilderness, profuse flowering of phulahi, jand and khejri, where nilgais, deer, hares and partridges commonly roamed the thickets. And for the young Nanak the mystery of the forest held a deep attraction. 

Again and again, child Nanak would repair to this unspoiled wilderness, sometimes unnoticed, sometimes noticed, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly. And apart from being a distinct geographical space, the forest offered an alternate “viewpoint” that stood outside the confines of restrictive worldview of the village community. The long hours that Nanak spent in the forest, away from the small talk of his village was perhaps the first encounter with his own mind, not willing to be bound within limited village mores. And in the forest he had several encounters with ascetics and ‘holy’ men who had renounced the material way of life and were on some self appointed mission. It was also in the clearing of the forest that he had first met the Muslim scholar Sajjid Hussain and learnt about Sufism. The whys and hows leapt at him like beasts from the jungle, happily for him disrupting the methodical predictability of the village steeped in caste and religion. So not only did the jungle allow him meditative moments of stillness but also the space of encounters with the wild as well as the “other.”

Guru Nanak was an intrepid traveller. Starting in 1507, over twenty-three years he covered vast tracts of distance, on foot, long journeys, called Udaasis, in four directions: North as far as Tibet and China, the South as far as Ceylon and East as far as Assam and Burma. His companion, the rhubab-wielding Mardana, a Muslim, was endearing in his total commitment to the Guru, his love for music, and the foil he provided to the spiritual quest of Guru Nanak. He was the innocent one, embodying child-like simplicity and getting lured by good food, comfort, and material trappings on the way, while Nanak walked on with a spiritual purpose. They sang and played music, collecting little sangats, congregations, keen to hear of a new perspective.

Why these journeys are important, apart from the fact that these were grand by themselves in their sheer scope, is because these encounters with people of different faiths and belief systems, provided him the opportunity to question the prevailing traditions. Along the way he questioned rituals, arcane customs, and hollow beliefs on both sides of the religious divide. He wore robes that were a combination of the dress of Hindu sadhus and Muslim faqirs, which itself was an act seeped in rebellion. So somewhere all the binaries were coming undone.

Importantly, the language he employed to oppose was not steeped in vitriol, hatred or disrespect, but was one of patient disagreement, sometimes to the extent of devising little plots to unravel the ‘truth’ unequivocally. And, these were touchstones against which he was pitting his own ideas. By and by these travels and attendant questioning laid the foundation of a new faith. So while his journeys threw at him the material, the ‘what’ of his questioning, the forest showed him the ‘how’ of questioning- the ‘what’ and ‘how.’ 

The fountainhead of this spiritual quest was, thus, a jaunt in the woods in his formative years. The encounter with the unknown, the courage to relinquish the expected for the ideal. Eventually, the stepping into the forest was also the stepping out of the given societal bounds. The fascination with the forest was the fascination with the organic and the unspoiled, a retreat into the natural. To see things as they were before society engendered its norms. To be able to extract the essence from the highly contorted. But of course it called for courage to venture on the path beset with unknown dangers. 

To understand the implication of this quest better, one has to situate it all in the 16th century when contact and travel of all kind was extremely arduous, and at most times, not within the realm of possibility. So Nanak really can be seen as the original backpacker who eschewed institutional support and mainstream affiliations. He walked on with a purpose to discover, in times when insularity was the only choice most people had and they lived and died within the prescribed worldview of their limited provincial confines. For Nanak this transcendence happened with the expansion of his consciousness and, the wild became a vital gateway to that.

This little tale of the guru in the grove holds many messages for these fraught times.

The author teaches English Literature in a college at Chandigarh and has been a Fulbright scholar. She writes on literature, aesthetics and culture.