Anand Karaj

It is the search of love.

This search for love is one of the most powerful forces on earth. And yet we spend more time and energy learning how to drive an automobile than we do understanding how to manage and harness the longing for love, the pursuit of it, and the fulfillment of it. 

Shri Guru Ram Das showed us a way.

Guru Ram Das  gives us a way to prepare ourselves for marriage. Both the earthly marriage of husband and wife, and the heavenly marriage of the soul with the Divine One.

In the Lavaan, Guru Ram Das continues the lessons. Giving us practical instructions on the attitude one needs to have towards marriage. On the gifts that can come when the marriage is based on following the teachings of the Shabad Guru. And, by the Fourth Round, expressing the tremendous ecstasy that happens when, through marriage, we learn to merge into Love.

The fundamental reality that the Guru teaches is that the Light of the One dwells in all. We need to recognize it in ourselves first, and then recognize it in each other. And when our mating rituals take place in that Truth, in that Reality, then the frequency of peace and awareness it creates can bring the Divine down from the Heavens. Can cause Heaven and Earth to merge into One.

Marriage is not about what we desire. It’s not a promise that life will unfold according to our dreams, to what we want, to what we hope for. The Sikh marriage is a commitment to work out our karmas together under the Guru’s guidance, protection and instruction. That is the work that brings us to Anand – to bliss – to the state where every action reflects the reality of the soul. Not that we should be rich or not rich, have status or not, be successful in the world or not, have children or not. It’s a total surrender. We give ourselves to the Guru, we clear our karmas together, and in that process, our awareness changes, our consciousness changes, and the Love of the One is born within us. Together we merge into that Love, that One. That is where marriage can take us, if we commit to each other and to the path and teachings of the Shabad Guru.

The Anand Karaj and the Anand Sahib are also very related. Marriage is the work by which the adults realize the state of Anand. And the Anand Sahib is the guidance given by Guru Amar Das to the child about how to live life from the purity of the self. Parents and children together, as a family, as a unit, pursuing this study of how to live in the world from the reality of their own Spirit. If successful, that family unit would become so complete, so satisfied – there would be nothing outside of itself that it needed. These souls, at the Guru’s feet, clearing their karmas, building a life of truth, compassion, service and understanding. What a world would come from such a family.

What a world once came from those kinds of families.

Guru Ram Das’s words in his shabads are very powerful and mystical. There is so much happening in just a few words. And also between the lines – how they relate to each other and reference each other. It’s difficult to capture all that is being conveyed in translation. It’s as if Guru Ram Das is writing a ceremony of initiation into a totally different mystical reality.