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Guru Nanak Dev Ji Didn’t Come to Create “Just Another Religion” | Bhai Satpal Singh

Name: Guru Nanak Dev Ji Didn’t Come to Create “Just Another Religion” | Bhai Satpal Singh
Uploaded: 2026-09-18T14:00:08+00:00
Duration: 2 h 26 min 35 s
Channel: BoS TV
Description: Meditation und Selbstreflexion können Sikhi zu einer inneren Praxis machen: Beobachte deinen Geist, prüfe dein Verständnis an Gurbani und nutze die Lehre …

BoS TV2:26:35 7.906 Aufrufe veröffentlicht 18. Sept. 2026 Auf YouTube

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I think we do a disservice to Sikhi by just saying it's just another religion. It's the fifth largest religion.
We demote Sikhi when we just say, oh, there's all these other religions, we're also a good religion.
I don't think Guru Nanak Dev Ji was doing that. He never was trying to convert people into Sikhi.
And I don't think we've understood Sikhi in that way, that we are not trying to sell you another religion.
What we're trying to do is we're trying to say, whatever religion you belong to, we have a wisdom that can elevate that.
keep your religion but genuinely make it about connecting with the divine don't make it just
tribalism which is what most religions have become we don't play those games we're
there is light in all but you just don't know how to bring that light out of you oneness resonates infinitely eternal truth is its name
you know there's so many people who grow listening to job just who don't know what it
means and these are now people in their 40s 50s 60s i get parents coming to me all the
time saying i know japji sabot by heart but my are asking me what it means and i don't know what
to tell them but i just want my kids to learn to repeat it as well and they're saying they don't
want to learn that unless they know what it means but it really is for the whole world and i
think as a Sikh community i feel we haven't done to actually bring it out to the wider world this
is why this wisdom is written in such a way you feel like carrying on.
Because there's a beauty to how it's being said. It's not just technically accurate,
it's also poetically beautiful. So then you realize how amazing Bani actually is,
Guru Granth Sahib Ji's poetry really is. It's so clever in how it pulls at your heartstrings,
but it's also teaching you. It's also giving you wisdom at the same time.
How do you create a song that has wisdom as well? That's what the gurus managed to create.
You listen to one parcharak for one angle and then you listen to another
for a completely different angle. Why should we try to compete with each other?
I think that's a very unhealthy way to look at each other in the panth.
And for me, that analogy of seeing the panth as a jigsaw puzzle and everybody has a part to play,
I think that's a really healthy way to look at it. It's been quite a while.
I don't know if you remember back in COVID time, we were speaking then as well
and we were trying to get into podcasts, but I think you were just really busy.
So finally, we've got you here today. Thank you for having me.
So I'm sure many of the Sangat already know who Parasat Parasinghe is. Nanak Naam has been around for quite a long time, very similar to Basics of Sikhiya.
In terms of, I think Basics started in 2011, 2012 and you started in 2013? Yeah, I think Basics started with March 2012 and we started in January 2013.
So yeah, very simple timeline. There you go and we'll speak quite later on but also
I found out recently that you went to the same school as Guru Guru Nanak Singh Ji as well.
Yes. Yeah, I knew him all throughout high school as well
before he got into Sikhi as well. Oh, wow.
Is it Langton? Langton School, yeah.
Yeah. Good buddy.
So it would be nice because, you know, Guru Guru Nanak Singh Ji, you just launched an amazing project
which we'll speak about on Siddhi Japji's side. But I thought it would be nice to start just a little bit
about your journey. Who is Nanak Nanak?
Who is Siddhapal Singh? You know, your upbringing and, you know,
your path towards Sikhi. yeah I mean for me depends how far back you
want to go I spent my early childhood in India moved to the UK when I was eight years old
and grew up in a Gursikh family so we always had a relationship with Gurdwara with Sangat kept
Kesh our whole life learned Japji Sahib as as kids and grew up in the UK had
my education everything here grew up going to Sikhi um being inspired and learning more for ourselves
i think there was a big sort of point in my own life it's sort of late
teenage years where i was inspired to want to more than just what you had been taught
from your parents but actually wanting to inquire discuss different ideas with different people more so
i think for me my love for saki kind of grew in my late teens even going and being
a seva daur at sort of kids camps and summer camps and things like that at 19 i was a blessed
with amrit and from that point onwards it was just lifelong kind of love and passion for sikhi
i remember choosing my university based on the size of the Sikh society i was literally looking
at which ones had the best Sikh societies at times um which is like your Sikh association
group student body groups and at the time [london it was Brunel it was like i just] want
to go to that that that university um within sort a year of joining i became part of
that Sikh society eventually became president of that ran that for a number of years as well so
there's there's been a lifelong sort of love and passion for Sikhi and learning and it was in those
kind of formative years that I really started to learn more about meditation and self-reflection,
becoming just aware of spiritual wisdom outside of even kind of the kind of the Sikh focus, kind of the wider Indian kind of philosophies
and that to me was pivotal that point at which I started to really introspect look within myself
look at my own mind try to understand who I was what my relationship with my mind was what is
ego and then constantly dipping back into Guru Granth Sahib Ji Bani and saying is this what I'm
practicing is this what Bani is saying and then constantly trying to make Sikhi something that
was actually using to learn about myself further and for me eventually that became such a
journey such a healing process for myself such an enlightening journey that you realize so many
things about yourself that i felt like i wanted to share that perspective rather than a
that i was hearing in the gurdwaras which is a lot of stories about the past for me what was
more fascinating was what is Bani actually saying about who we are what is the nature
connecting with God actually looked like what is that kind of personal journey and that to me was
an it was an element that I was feeling wasn't kind of spoken about much let alone in sort of
the early sort of 2010s there was very little education online on YouTube so for me with my
background in IT I just felt that there was a natural kind of progression for me to take
I had been learning and actually put it on a YouTube channel. And I created a YouTube channel called Nanak Naam in 2013.
And in 2016, I left my work in IT to then follow this full time. And it's been more than 10 years now that we've been just going as far as we can
with bringing the teachings of Gurbani, not just to the Sikh audience, but also to communities all around the world.
and you can definitely see that i'm going to get by in terms of even just the different types of
platforms you've gone on uh i think it was that was it called bear by six because it's like that
was fantastic right in terms of you know going on to kind of more mainstream uh podcast channels
stuff as well and loads of questions came out of the stuff that you're saying g so if we just
back a little bit um you spoke about being [the president um at Brunel university uh the Sikh]
so and you spoke about your journey to Sikhi was that kind of happening at the same time did you
feel empowered to want to become the president because you wanted to start bringing back change
was you seeing things in the university students that you wanted to kind of now you know be a part
of making that I think I certainly didn't set out to become president of the Sikh society for me I
just wanted to be involved I just wanted to help out so in my very first year I was just
involved with the Sikh society and at that time the president was in his final year so when he was
going to be moving on and leaving university then he said would you like to do it and it was
at that time and the role of the president was almost like chief organizer it wasn't like you're
a pracharak or anything like that it was about can you organize the the student bodies you know
even if it was like a paintballing event or you know like a bowling event or something like
can you organize weekly meetups where you try and find different speakers to come in and then you
bring them on board and it was just kind of being somebody who was dedicated enough to want to run
the Sikh society and I think for me what was interesting about that is sometimes where
[speakers didn't turn up then because your Sangat] were already invited and they were coming then
have to just kind of stand and do whatever you could so the very early stages of learning
public speaking pretty much started around then as well and you mentioned that at 19 you
amrit were you the first in your family to take amrit and like what was it that really
you to take that step yeah i i have to give credit to my mom she um could see from sort of
my teenage years that i was getting more and more into sikhi and more inspired by and she
saying you take amrit you should take amrit um in my immediate family yes i'm i'm the first one to
um but certainly not in my sort of grandparents and and my lineage i come from a lineage
in our family uh and that's why my mom had seen that in her previous generations and she
something in me and she said uh take um and i remember you know hearing that at the age of
and i was like well that's not cool i don't really want to do that you know i i had my own ideas of
what it meant to take Amrita. I think by the time I was 19
and starting to get involved more with kind of Sikhi camps, I'll tell you a funny story, actually,
what broke that about. One of the first Sikhi camps I was invited to as a sevadar,
I was 18 years old, and it was a children's camp
run by the Sikh Missionary Society in Southall. And as a sevadar,
you were a group leader of children, maybe sort of 9, 10, 11 years old.
I used to go to this, so you might have been one of the kids. You only seek you out.
And as part of being a Seva Dao, so when we were young teenagers, 10, 11, 12, 13, we were, my sister and I were taught by my parents how to do card and, you know,
read Chepchi Sahib, how to, you know, memorize Rera Sahib and so on and things like that. and then as you were a little bit older in my
mid-teens I kind of dropped it so by the time I got to about 18 I had probably forgotten most of
my sort of bunnies and I remember going to the Sikhi camp and part of the Seva was that every day
a different group had to sit on stage and do part and it was the turn of my group and
I remember being totally embarrassed that I didn't know to do any of my part I'd forgotten all of it
and I remember asking 10 11 12 year olds in the who knows how to do part and sitting them forward
in front of the mic and me sitting right at back of the stage even though it was our group's
turn to do do the art and that actually had an impact on me at the end of that Sikhi
camp going home and thinking look you look like a but you don't actually how can you be a
thing that doesn't actually even know how to do parties so that inspired me like I was going
home after that and just every day and do and that's the great thing about going to Sikhi camps
is that you get into a routine you wake up and you're doing part
you're doing the Rehras you're doing the Sohila Sahib in the evenings
so when you come home that has a little bit of a lasting effect on you
and I just started to learn again from scratch
doing Varnis and Vart again so much so that by the following year
by the time I was 19 I just fell in love with the whole thing
and I had taken Amrit by the time the next year so a camp had turned up
So that's a little bit about how I got inspired into it. And did you always tie the mala like this?
No, not at all. No, I just had a regular, the star, that everyone in my family sort of ties.
All my dad's side, my mom's side, the family are all sort of wearing more sort of traditional Punjabi style, the stars.
When I went into high school that I started seeing a few of my friends wearing this, what we call the Kenyan pug.
or around the world they call it the uk book which is this kind of folded one which is very sort of
[neat lug so um i remember being at Sikh] society events in the early 2000s going to various
week events around universities and i remember seeing sings with the malay for the first time
and i was like that's beautiful i want to look like that you know it felt like for the first
time i was looking at people who look like the paintings of the gursikhs and the
I don't think a lot of people today appreciate that even if you go back 20 years, it was very
rare to see a Dhamalla. I grew up most of my life not seeing a Dhamalla. If you watch videos of
Gurdwara programs in the UK from the 90s, you see recordings, you can find them on YouTube,
you will not see a Dhamalla, you will not see a Bala. That was the childhood that I grew up with.
There was not these just massive people, crowds of people all in the Manli and Bani. The only time
you might have seen it was if you saw
a Ghatkabu then you might have seen it
but otherwise on a day to day
so it wasn't common for people to wear them
on day so when I finally
started seeing them in my sort of
late teens I was really
inspired by that to me there was
something there was a pull
and I thought I want to look like that
It just shows the power of Sangat
when you speak about the Sikhi camp experience
when it comes to reading Bhart
and that's what Sangat does
in terms of if there's somewhere
where you feel that you're lacking
[then Sangat goes] show that
and show you a way forward
in terms of getting you back
on the path to the breathing part
and taking Amrit and you spoke about
I'm guessing in your 20s
you had different experiences
you started to delve more
into Gurbani and you mentioned
something about being healing
as well so if you don't
want me asking was there something
that happened to you in your 20s
where you kind of came towards Sikhi
because generally just generalizing
people in the world they go towards
you know world endeavors careers which it sounds like you did progress in that as well
but what really pushed you in this direction did something happen or was it just a natural thing
no i don't think for me i'm i count my blessings and i feel very blessed that i i have grown up
a very stable home a very loving family environment and so i don't have sort of a trauma story about
something that happened to me that sort of led to to that although you're absolutely right
A lot of people come into Sikhi because there's something that's sort of shaken them in their life.
I think for me, healing was about realizing an aspect of yourself that you didn't even know. And for most of my childhood growing up, Sikhi was about things on the outside,
practices that you have to do, history that you have to learn, knowledge that you have to familiarize yourself. And it was nothing transformative on the inside.
It was more just about being a Gursikh who could do Keetan on stage, play Tabla, who could read the Bhanis, who was doing the speeches at the age of 9 and 10, standing on a podium at Sikhi camps and doing speeches about Gurudev Bahadur Ji,
Shaheed. All of those sort of things. I grew up with all of that. But I think for me,
when I started to introspect and learn about just sitting still within my own self and noticing what was coming up, the healing part of it was realizing that there were layers to your own mind that you didn't know you had.
and that to me was exciting it was scary it was something that i felt like it was untapped it
almost like you it's like discovering a door or a room in your house that you never knew you had
and you've lived in the house your whole life and nobody's ever opened this one door and when you finally look behind that that
curiosity just grabs you and that to me that curiosity about introspection and looking within
myself and meditating and then having the comfort of knowing that you had Bani there to
kind of guide you around what exactly it is you're seeing what are these various stages within your own
self that you can kind of go down that to me was just fascinating and I it felt like
I had discovered something that nobody in my upbringing had said was was possible there was a version
of Sikhi that wasn't being talked about which was this self-discovery you know you mentioned as well
before that you had to kind of go of like the Sikhi thought process or into
like Indian spirituality and stuff and there was this gap but then why do you think that gap
existed I don't know I feel like as a community there are sort of norms there are things that
we become comfortable with but now over time I've obviously discovered that those those things aren't
gaps they're just not as prominent so if we take even like the uh the uh the
nirmala sangat they talk a lot about this and the of the mind it was just that growing up that
wasn't what i had been hearing you know i must admit as a child you just go to the gurdwara
you listen to keetan i love to listen to keetan but i didn't know what any of that
meant and then you're listening to katha and as most children at that time when you hear the Katha
you get up and leave you think there's nothing you know interesting for you because
Katha is you know in a language that you're not familiar with I was a big fan of
music and Keetan so I would listen to Keeftan a big fan of Tabla
I would always position myself that I could see what the Tabla player was playing that's where
it grabbed my attention as a child but it was only
when I started learning meditation that I was thinking why have I not heard
about this I've been to camps I've been to this why have i not heard about this thing so i feel
like a lot of the time as a sangat as a we're very good at presenting the traditions
and the history but we're not necessarily good at actually going a lot deeper so i
had to find this elsewhere like i agree it's rare to find in today's world the idea of going
to guru god and the average pujab is said being told that you're hating me god like like
you said it'll be stuff that they don't understand also that it's a language and they're not
connecting to it and you know we all see the nan karji's at the sukunisai parts where
they're just sitting against the wall and they're just having their conversations right it's not that
level of engagement yeah um so how did learn this then in terms of was this was
a conversation with somebody is it a book that you read about this element of meditation and
you know opening that door that you never existed i think for me i was introduced to it um
by a gorsik who was not very well known but he almost took me under his wing and started teaching
me an area of sikhi which i just felt had not been something that i was exposed to and
he was showing me shabads like the whole idea of you know
He was saying, let's actually look at this. The idea of you are, oh mind, you are, you know, one with the divine.
Go and search within yourself. And I was fortunate enough to have that guidance.
And at the time, it was just kind of dipping into certain ideas. And he said, go have a look at this, read this.
You know, I was introduced to what is, I mean, understandably a very controversial figure.
Rajneesh, I was introduced to his Japji Sahib translation, and I guess I'm just Osho, yeah,
and his Japji Sahib translation, again, was just a massive eye-opener to hear Japji Sahib translated purely from the perspective of introspection. What does it actually mean?
What do these different stages actually mean? He definitely gets things wrong, according to traditional Sikh understanding, and he's also a very,
very controversial figure. I think for me i have always learned you know one
of the things my my mother always taught me which was just take the good from anywhere that you
go you know i don't mind going to different and being i'm very comfortable with saying i
don't agree with this part of what you're so i'm just leaving that to one side but
there are other things that you're saying and i'm gaining value from that i think today we're very quick
to just put people in boxes and just say he this person is all good or all bad and i
was never brought up that way i was brought up you know try and take the gun out of
everyone you know there's always some good in there for me i just ignored the scandalous side of of
of rajneesh osho and i was like not interested in that i'm like that that's that's not what i'm
here for but when i'm reading his books when listening to his lectures there's something there there's
some value in there you know i think And Sun Singh Muskeenji has quoted him before as well.
So take the good where you can, but just have that self-awareness to recognize
where there's some things that you don't necessarily gain value from. How did you get that self-awareness then?
Where you were able to test and know like, this is something I do want to connect with.
This is something maybe I don't know. For someone who's new and trying to discover this path for themselves.
I felt to me that everything that I was reading outside of the Sikh space was just to help me understand Sikhi better,
help me understand Gurbani better. So if it was helping me understand Gurbani better,
I was like, great, I'll take it. If it wasn't, if it was something talking about something else,
then I was like, okay, that's not helping me. So I was sort of cherry picking the bits that were helping me.
So being grounded in Sikhi and being brought up in a Gursikh household really kind of meant that you never lost that kind of,
Like your roots were pakeh, your roots were firm within the Sikh tradition. So it was anything that can kind of help you understand that further.
That's kind of my philosophy. And then how did it come to us nodding on then?
How did we get this nodding on from introspection? What made you think that actually, you know what, I want to grab a camera
and I want to start making videos and speaking to our people about what you just found out yourself?
Yeah, it's all very sort of organic. I was like I said I was involved with the
Sikh societies every now and then you have to stand and and say something and talk about Sikhi and
then we were involved with Sikhi camps quite a lot in my early 20s myself and a group of
Sangat from West London and East London are quite heavily involved in Sikhi camps and again if a speaker
didn't turn up you might be told all right know that speaker's coming half an hour late
you but everyone's sitting in their seats so you say something you know so you kind of
built that idea of standing up and and and some ideas that you had not that you were
an expert on anything but you know we're all samgat members all six just helping each other
all students kind of teaching each other whatever we've learned so that idea of public speaking just
very slowly grew and grew so every now and I'd be invited to Sikhi camps. And in 2013, Shepherds of Gurdwara,
which I was quite close to and had kind of grown up with as a child, the Gurdwara committee had a changeover and there
was a new young committee that were very keen to have new speakers, new ideas. And I was invited
by one of the committee members um to come and do uh some classes and i remember saying yes to
thinking that i was invited to go sit in a small classroom on the side and maybe there was a
people and he said you know for the next couple of weeks once a month come and do a talk
something and it was only on the day that i actually learned that that i was actually invited
to go settle the good on a stage and so i was like okay i'm i'm gonna be invited to do something
a good or say it's not an interactive thing and i had done this a few times before i camps
so the idea was let me just bring a camera along you know whatever cheap video camera i had you
know i i shudder at the the very early videos fanatic arm channel because i had no idea
um picture quality sound quality you know it was whatever sound was being picked up by by the
camera so that's kind of how it started it was just i was going to camps anyway i was speaking
anyway so the idea was very much that why don't we put something together and put it online
but it was with the background of everything that i was learning was really having an impact on
like i was so fascinated by the idea that you can learn so much about your mind and you could
so much about how to manage your emotions when you were able to meditate and create a distance
between you and your anger and your frustration and your thoughts you're able to sit back
just be comfortable even if frustration arises even if anger arises even if lust arises you're
able to create this distance and i i wanted to share that i was like this is something
too good to keep to myself and i remember in my pre sort of pre-2013 2010 2011 when i was
on the train going to work i was doing one of either two things either i would use the hour
of sitting on the train i was just in meditation just literally in meditation in vaidra simran in
samadhi of any sort you know however i understood it or i was writing actually video title ideas
from about 2011 i had this idea that i wanted to put something on online and i would just be
there writing video ideas about you know this would be an interesting video this would be
interesting video and I remember looking at the all the other passengers on the train and
at people from all different communities and thinking I wonder what this person is
through I wonder what Guru Nanak Sikhi would would say to help this person or that
so that's kind of how my idea formulated very early on that whatever I was experiencing
not exclusive to Sikhs that was something true of the human being of the human nature and if
true and it's working for me firstly i can help bring this out to the Sikh community but also to
the wider community like everybody should have access to this information about the mind
the self about the higher nature of the self so i was writing down video ideas from about
and i remember seeing uh online what was available and i think back then probably sick net were
only channel that were doing anything in english and they were doing a good job there were some
videos out there but what was very clear to me was that there's so much more that can be done
i think 2012 i saw paithi garaj singh then had a similar idea and he started a channel and i
like okay this is this is a go this we're able to do this like i'm not the only one that's come
with this idea that you could just train the all that you can kind of take your training and and
and bring that to the sangha you know you know i like we said i knew paithi garaj singh and
knew that he wasn't sort of claiming to be some sort of jnani he wasn't claiming to be some sort
of expert he was saying look this is what i know this is what is helping me can i bring some clarity
and i think i went with the same attitude i had no sort of illusions that i was some jnani
somehow i was i was wise or anything like that it was just if you're inviting me to sit on a stage
and talk about sikhi then i'm just going to share what i understand as another student as another
student of the guru this is what the guru is showing me maybe i can bring value to you so
nanak nam was really just brought out brought born out of the idea that there was a need
content online and um even the idea of writing videos down video titles and stuff is that linked
to your degree as well or was you studying at university no i i did i studied computer
at university but there was almost no teaching back then around seo or social media or
like that there was nothing like that so that was more what i was seeing as i went into my
professional life so i graduated from university i think something around 2004 and then going into
a working life and seeing the very early stages of social media start to become a thing so
job i was in you know we were sitting in the it department that there was this conversation
marketing digital marketing what is this thing called social media so i very much
the first time hearing the word twitter and someone says have you heard of twitter i
no i don't know what it is and then learning about what this thing is you know learning what facebook
is um seeing the the start of youtube and just looking and saying oh video and i think
going to be important at some point you know so it it wasn't part of my my education but it
that'd be the world that i was in in my profession was it digital marketing then they use in yeah
i i spent a lot of time in digital marketing i actually worked for a number of charities
before um and trying to think about how to take the charity message back then you know a lot of
the charity promotion was either done um through letters that they would post to all of their uh
mailing list or it was a magazine and then we had you know this this very small it department and
we were being told can you come up with a digital marketing strategy and i didn't even know
those words meant back in sort of 2007 2008 and it was trying to work out what does
marketing mean for this charity that i'm working with so it's very much in the early stages of
social media that i was kind of exposed to those things and had to ask those questions for
benefit of my employers and so i was now understanding digital marketing
how charities work and how charities think and then slowly slowly was the idea that actually
I could put something like this together myself. I guess the barcha that we do at Gurkha
we always have it grounded in Gurma to the best of our ability and our knowledge.
But definitely when we look at non-economic the marketing element is fantastic
because we love doing marketing as well. So whenever we look at the videos you made
over the years in the progression like you said from the first videos
where you're just sitting there with a camera and how you've done that.
If you don't mind just for a few minutes just talk about marketing
because I think it's such a powerful tool that you know people are starting to realize that
actually if you use this you can help get message out more especially for social media to me
right yeah i think for me because in these stages there were no other blueprints there was no
one that we could copy there was no one we could look at within the Sikh community that
was doing video online i had to look elsewhere had to look online and i and i had to
i think that's probably been one of my strengths like don't mind learning from anywhere i kind of touched upon
that before so i'm looking at you know the i remember the rise of jay shetty in sort of
2017 2018 and looking at viral videos that he making i thought that's interesting i could use that
idea and bring my my message in in that format uh i remember in 2018 being one of the
very first to deliberately make a viral uh and that video still kind of goes quite viral these days
it's a one a little short three minute video was taken from a lecture uh called guru nanak's
greatest message a lot of people can still share it especially whatsapp yeah so it you know it
it starts with guru nanak didn't believe in god guru nanak knew god so that's a powerful kind
of opening line so looking at things like what's first line that they're using what grabs
your attention so i remember intentionally making viral thinking if i get it right i know this is
going to go viral uh and then we you know edited that and then got that out in time just for
guru nanak's kutpura back in 2018 and sure enough it went viral and every time something like that
happens you come back and you learn something more and i'm i'm always looking at what various
kind of communities are doing what are just various different things that are working online you know
right down to even you know social media influences you know gary bainer chuck looking at
his video style game okay he doesn't use in his instagram reels and then telling my editor
we're going to stop doing thumbnails from now on because that's not adding any value so it's
just constantly looking at it at who's doing interesting online and then like why can't the
bunty use that why can't we use those that seem to be working all over the world surely
if it works there it would work for us so always just kind of looking at outside to see
what can what what can we bring into into community it's so funny because we do a lot of
the same similar stuff where we look at like these the most famous people out there who are using
these type of techniques and we try and model for how could we use it for the month and
just one thing uh you're very good at doing is getting the message out there but bringing quite
an emotional response to some some people and know sometimes it is brings a lot of controversy
over the years but where do you draw the between like clickbait and like giving authentic
videos and titles and packaging i think different if we look at the early years every
viral had to be constructed every viral you had to i remember for that very first viral that we
talked about i was sitting at a one hour lecture and editing that myself and going and just picking out
what i would do is i would look at the line the entire lectures and go that sentence
really hit hard that sentence on its own some value in in there like you sometimes
you have to over explain some things but you hear a single sentence and go that sentence just
says it all so i would then go and pick all of those and then construct a story within
that so even though the lecture i might have one thing here and one thing there in the lecture
in the viral i was like that's a good start gonna start with that so it doesn't have to kind
of map in the exactly same way and then spending ages looking at music you know which bit do
you say something where you want to increase the slightly the volume of the music in the background
and so it really kind of makes that that kind of carry more i understood that there was
that's how things went viral is that you have understand the emotion behind it even though the
viewer or the listener won't know that that's what's happening it's kind of you have to do
that you have to create that emotional response within people. But it's always then to inspire them back to Gurmukh,
back to what the Bani is actually saying. So in those days, every click, everything was intentional.
But nowadays, we're in a different world where reels are just being created on a daily basis.
Back then, we weren't creating many virals. We were just looking at the key good purups and saying,
which good purup can we make something for? But now you can click things up very quickly.
So there's a lot less of a decision-making pros and i think that part part of
the the compromise there was today in order to viral it's not about just taking one thing there's
no one hit wonder it's about consistency so now create clips on a daily basis and 99 of them
are amazing sometimes you know the tools that you use you can be using ai tools to be
creating clips these days sometimes it'll put things and you'll think okay that sounds fine and you
put it online and it has a totally different to what you'd intended and then you go back
and you have a meeting with your team and what are the comments saying why did they say
that how how did we miss that and then constantly learning so what we've learned today is that
as a team we now are very responsible with every clip that goes out we say if if there's
any clip that can be taken negatively if there's any clip that can be made where people can get
the wrong impression we just kill that clip no how much as a team we think oh that's really
good i really like what we've said in that that if it if if it can be misunderstood we just said
we just kill it we just cancel it we just it'll never go out but we've had to learn that the hard
way we've had to learn that from so how did you deal with like because a lot of people
nowadays making content starting on the journey they get a lot of critique right criticism yeah so how
do you personally deal with that and like as a team deal with it i tell you i i there was
a very distinct moment this is going back a few years where Ravi Singh from Khalsa Aid,
who I've met with many times, I've sat down and spent time with him.
I've heard his incredible stories and the amount of dedication,
the amount of things that he's done that the songers don't even know.
I was sitting across the table and learning from him. And then I would see people criticizing him online.
And many times I remember seeing this kind of just groups getting together
and starting to criticize him online. and in the initial years I remember thinking oh
you know that that'll go away but as he more successful and more famous the criticism
increased I remember one specific moment where I saw okay this criticism's coming back and and it
was just a little bit of a light bulb moment for me and I had a team meeting with with
with my editors and my marketing team and I said i've realized something criticism isn't going to go
away the more popular you become the more criticism we should expect because at that time we
were of the mindset oh no like some we done something wrong again the criticism has come and
we saw that as a negative thing and now realize that that's inevitable i'm not saying that
it's a positive thing i'm not saying it's that we get that criticism we always learn from it
we always learn uh what could we have done better what should we have said what shouldn't we have said
but how should we have edited it so that that that intention that we wanted to to bring
that video out with um actually gave that rather than than the wrong message but eventually
i realized that the the more popular you the more your videos get spread and looking at how
Ravi Singh from Khalsa Aid has dealt with it as well i realized that criticism is has
to be something that you become comfortable it is always going to be there you can
just you know humble yourself every time it goes and try to not to make those mistakes again
but not to somehow be defeated every time every it happens and i think i realized once i
became comfortable that this is this is something that's going to be there you know gurbani talks about
ninda as well people are always going to criticize you you know i love this line that if
you are being criticized you should not reduce your and that's one of the principles that i've
taken on board like i'm when there's negative i'm never going to go in there just constantly
try and like like start entering into online in online discussions about these things it's just it's not
it's not my it's not my way of working and you know one of the things that I
thought about in those days whenever you know it's you're getting a lot of kind of pushback a
lot of feedback sometimes you're tempted to go in and start leaving comments and I said to myself
you know what every day you put a video you get hundreds of positive comments and you've never
once felt to go and say thank you to people so why when 99% of the Sangat are
giving you positive responses do you not say anything there but when somebody is saying something bad
you feel like you have to defend yourself and i had the mentality that if i ever
want to defend myself against the critics first you to go and say thank you to all the
people that have actually given you blessings and we so many amazing messages that come on a
daily basis saying you've changed my life thank for the work that you do and we just kind
of like brush it off okay thank you you're fine then we move on and i think that's a good thing
in a way that you don't you don't build an ego about all the positive praise that you're getting
but then don't build an ego about all the negative praise
that you're getting as well. Just kind of try and stay
almost detached from both of them. There's a funny video online
about how even the golden temple has like one star reviews
and people complaining despite the golden temple
feeding so many people. So you can never win.
It's true. You don't leave reviews
very often about things that you like but if there's something that you don't like
then you think I've got to warn everyone I've got to tell everyone
Right But that's not necessarily
The right attitude Because
Why wouldn't you go And praise all the things
That are good You know
It's like they say You know
Bad news Spreads fast
That's just That's just human nature
That was amazing And the whole marketing stuff
Thank you for sharing that because it's cool to see
just the way it's like you're creating a story
with the different kind of clips coming together
and you've done so many things Guru Kipa
when it comes to Nadakna in terms of different styles of videos
you know looking at different topics
maybe like you're saying you've watched other channels
and thought you know what
we can do this but put Guru Nanak's message
on there right and put that spin on it
so you know let's walk now towards
the project that we're speaking about so when it comes to Sibi Jakti Sai
Eight years It's taken you eight years
To complete this project So
Just Why Japji Sahib?
Why did you If you just tell us the background behind
Why you decided to do this project When it comes to the English
English translation of Japji Sahib So
You're right that For me
I was never Comfortable with just one video format
I was always looking at What is missing
That Needs to happen within the Sikh space
and I remember very early on trying to google Japji Sahib in English on YouTube and
there have been many translations many web pages that you can read or maybe pdfs that you can
download on a book format there was almost nothing online even going back five or six
and you could type in the Quran in English and the whole Quran in English is made as an audio
for audiobook on on youtube you can type the pavakita in english and it's there you can type
in the quran in punjabi and it's there and i thought we're missing something in the
world where if somebody's trying to type in Guru Granth Sahib in English because they're genuinely
curious about what does sikhi teach why as a community have we not done that so i'm always
looking at what seva can we do for the community to help spread Sikhi, not just within the Sikh
world, but even outside. What a tragedy it would be if somebody is genuinely curious about what Gurbani says, but they're not able to find it in a format that they're looking for.
So in the early days, I decided, having done a full lecture series on Japji Sahib anyway,
that I wanted to find a way to translate Japji Sahib and put that available online.
Was you having the same thoughts when you were doing the lectures or was it after this?
I think that was certainly afterwards. At the time when I was doing the lectures on Japji Sahib,
the idea was very much that I just wanted to put this in a book format and just kind of have all of the commentary available.
That's still something I want to do. I was very pleased to have the opportunity to do that,
say about to bring the commentary of Japji Sahib but I wanted to create a translation of Japji
Sahib that was available in an audio format and when I would read the existing translations
English of Japji Sahib they would not go into the kind of depth that the tikas were going
so I felt that there is so much more to every line of Japji Sahib than the current
translations were making available. You know, when I was going through the commentary, I was
looking at tikas like Garb Ganjami Tikka, Kabhi Sattok Singh Ji, looking at Bhai Veer Singh,
looking at Fareed Kaur Tikka, looking at Gyani Kaur Bachan Singh Prindra Wale. And they go into
so much depth that there was something missing in the existing English translations of Japji Sahib.
So I thought, look, I've already done this entire commentary, gone through all these tikas.
even in doing that i've had to translate every line anyway so i had a full translation by
time i finished that series anyway that i thought let me try and make this into a format that was
available online but when i in the early stages what i realized was that the translations
i had done that was for my benefit that was for me to have a translation of every word and
it into a sentence but it didn't read very well as almost like a like a barney it didn't read like a
in a poetic in a poetic form or in a in a even a form that was um made for reading rather
made for a learner or an interpreter you know i had written down the whole translation
for myself more as a as a academic or somebody studying it but it didn't read particularly well
so i thought okay let me go and try and do this and then that's been that sort of eight
project to try and come up with a version that actually reads well that actually works
um you know one of the things i always say that if if guru rana pasha was here alive in in a
form today would he consider creating something in english and i feel like you know if he was
born and brought up in the uk maybe he would write something in english what could that look like how
do you keep that message there of course you know one thing i'm always very clear on like who are
to translate Bani like what what gun do we have that we're gonna we're gonna try and do that but
it's if you if you go down that line of thinking then you will never do any qurta if you go down
that level of so much humility that says i don't know anything then basics of sikhi wouldn't exist
none of that wouldn't exist because you just constantly kind of breaking yourself down to say
i'm not good enough to even say all this stuff so i think you've had to i've had to kind of overcome
that a little bit to say even if i know my my own limitations there's still some value that it's
going to bring the sangha you know there's so many people who grow up listening to japji sahab
who don't know what it means and these are now people in their 40s 50s 60s i get parents coming
to me all the time saying i know japji sahab off by heart but my kids are asking me what it means
and i don't know what to tell them but i just want my kids to learn how to repeat it as well
and they're saying they don't want to learn that unless they know what it means so
something there that's kind of missing and i felt let me let me try and put something out there and
for no other reason even if just anybody from outside various communities around the world are
able to get translations of all the other grants from the different traditions why shouldn't they
be able to access Barney as well you know Barney really is for the whole world and I think as
Sikh community I feel we haven't done enough to actually bring it out to the wider
well definitely in terms of English resources available within Sikh scriptures is not much
available right compared to like the Hare Krishnas and so on they've got so much available
and like you said the main aim
is to spread the message of Sikhi
and to bring Gaudi back
to Sikhi and Guru Bani
and so far when you look
at the video it's doing that
in terms of the comments
or you know even people
some of them say stuff like
I've never read anything like this
before in English and you know
when I listen to myself definitely
the translations are fantastic
the poetry is amazing as well
it's you know
even just researching something
in an academic way to do this course on it is quite hard but then to take that and turn it to
poetry that's it makes me feel tired thinking about it so how are you because i think you
you you four times like you know what made you stick with it you know and not give up because
you know generally i have a personal rule which i try to take the history of like if i can't
something three times then maybe it's a sign i'm not going to do again you went to four
i bet you it's my own personal thing so what made you want to continue after eight years
well in those eight years to do this project and not think you know what maybe i should do this
these other things are working for me anyway the youtube channel is working you know good
to get by you've traveled the world yeah you've done lectures everywhere and they'd be very
successful why did you stick with this and not just think i'm not going to do it now i think
there are certain things there are many projects that i've started that i haven't completed and
i've never seen the light of day but there are certain things where i realized it's still not
done it's it's still not out there and i feel like i the work that i do is almost work
needs to exist so i'm very happy if somebody had created a poetic rhyming Japji Sahib out there
say please everyone read that one like i don't feel like i'm not trying to stamp my own
or anything like that what I'm looking at
and saying this still doesn't exist
and the
kind of feeling that I have is
if Guruji has given you some understanding
don't just sit on it like it's our duty
as a Sikh you know
Gurbani is talking about Guru Nanak Dev Ji is giving us
an instruction there that as a Gursikh
you have to be somebody who's practicing it
but also willing to to share that with other people and so if you have an understanding and
you're just sitting on it i that that i'm not doing justice to it i i can't show my face to my
guru if i'm not sharing what the guru has given me and that's kind of what's just kept me going
again and again it's i just look at it and say it's still not there it's still not
so i was very much of of the the mindset and upai jigara singh was also of that mindset which
you know just do it now and ask questions later it just needs to be done you know one very
comment that that got left on on this chapter style video it said is it is this approved
the sgpc and i thought you know what if somebody had to try and go down that route of trying
get approval the amount of red tape that you had to go through you'll never get done it will never
get done eight year right it would be an eight year project trying to get approval i don't
links with with with the sgpc like i i'm not interested in in trying to do that and you could
say that about any sikhi project is this approved by them is this approved by them and again
of these channels would exist no resources would exist if you had to try and go down that
so i understand what they're trying to say is is is this validated is this authentic can you how do we know that we can trust this and
for me i say that if if you look at my body of work that i've done before that i feel like
i've spent enough time with the Bani that i feel i can do this and i at no point do i say it's
the best at no point do i say that this is the only one that you should be listening to but there
is you've got to give some credit where somebody's that has done work for for a long time eight
years was just on this Japji Sahib project but previous to we've you know gone through the entire lecture
series so there is that you know there's something there and even in the lecture series in
those i talk about which tikas i'm i'm borrowing from so there's a lot of kind of research that
goes into it's not just me kind of just sitting one day in my living room going oh let
me just translate the whole adeptus out and just down any old words that come to screen
like anybody who's done translation knows there's a huge responsibility that comes with that and every single
word you got to go about looking at mahan kosh looking at all of these different sources saying
have i got it right have i translated it right and to do that on a word by word basis
and then to try and make it rhyme you know that's probably why it took me such a long time but
i'm very pleased with what we produced at the end and you know you had multiple versions before so
what went wrong with those that you felt you needed to try again it was more about so
the the rhyming poetry was probably only came in last version prior to that i was never trying to
make it rhyme i was just trying to make it make sense like i would read it and say
does that does that actually make sense does that sound like the bani and what i would do is
i would give like a completed version to some friends mine and said look if you just had to read this
one morning you had to get up and you wanted to read jeb jisab in english could you read this and
the feedback i was getting time and time again was that this is confusing like i'm not able to
follow it even though it's all in english there's about it didn't flow very well and i felt like oh
this is why bani is in poetry this is why this wisdom he's written in such a way that you
feel like carrying on because there's a beauty to it's being said it's not just technically accurate
it's also poetically beautiful so then you realize how amazing Bani actually is Guru Granth Sahib Ji's
poetry really is is that it's so clever in how it pulls at your heartstrings but it's also
teaching you it's also giving you wisdom at the same time how do you create a song that has
wisdom as well that's what the gurus managed to create you know i think about this this this uh
people think that these are just songs but the managed to put the highest wisdom in the format
of a song so what i realized there was that i did in my english translations was going
to help people if you didn't actually solve that final puzzle which is how do you actually
make it interesting enough that they feel like want to carry on reading and i think that
poetic element that beauty element was missing and i before you tried to even approach a poet to help
you and then what how did that go like yeah it's just a very good friend of mine who
writes poetry another Gursikh and i remember years ago sitting with him over dinner one day saying i've
got this project idea i want to do this and he having tried to do some even like
simple Mool Mantar poetry he said what i've realized there's too many compromises they can't be done
and i'm just one of those people that take no for an answer like you know i respect
him for saying look i don't think that you can justice to the bani by having the added
um difficulty of trying to make it rhyme too many compromises that you have to make and
and only by going down this process you realize every translation is a compromise translation does mean
you are going to have to compromise in way or another and then adding poetry there is that
element there as well so but i think for me the reason i took so long was i didn't i
didn't want to compromise as much as possible i wasn't trying to do a sloppy job and just quickly get it
out the idea was once you put it out and i you know this when you make videos once you put
it out you can't edit it you can't you can it but you can't change what you've said so sort
some skill like do it take your time and do thoughtfully and you know in the eight years
you'll be working on this is it eight consistently or was it taking breaks you know how
did you balance that with the rest of the that you're doing as well yeah so in the
eight years it's even while i've been doing my work this was just something that a project that i
would pick up every now and then i would go to it and try and do it you know i remember
in one of the early years um i remember i think probably about 2017 2018 uh i was invited to a
camp in canada and i remember the the cap organizer had booked my flight and i remember sitting on
the plane and it was really weird the plane a very small plane like you know the kind of
small planes that you take if you're going one hour hours from here this was a small plane and it
was going to canada and i genuinely thought i was sitting on the wrong flight and then they make
the announcement oh this is a flight to toronto thought well i'm on the right flight and i sit on
my seat and there's no tv screen in front of me and i thought this is definitely something i've never
sat on a plane for an eight hour flight where there's no screen in front of me there's
no wi-fi or anything like that luckily i had laptop i remember even then sitting on the
plane thinking right but guruji's giving you an opportunity carry on with your translation so i'd
be sitting there on the plane just try translate Japji Sahib further and further so any opportunity
that I had I would go back to it you know there was I'm not trying to suggest
in any way that I've been working on this for eight years because all the other Nalik
Nal projects have been happening in the background well well you know with the Alok Alam podcast
they spoke about you know the theology and they on the kind of methodology of putting together Japji Sahib which again if you touch
put some of those points for free to um are we able to focus on your devotion to Japji Sahib
because even then when you're speaking about uh the the poetry and you used to give the other
translations to your friends and they said it's still not flowing um and then it made you realize
even how you know another realization of how beautiful goodbani is right uh so talk to
about that you know over the years when you're working on japji side what has that done for
because I know this project technically is for everyone else, but what's it done for you yourself as an individual?
For me, it just makes me fall in love with Bani even more. And I think we're lucky enough
if we have an understanding of Gurbani that you can listen to Shabbats
and you can understand what Bani is saying. But I'm one of these people who I still think in English.
That's my first language. and even today if you see me in the gudar listening
to keep them i've got my phone out and i'm trying to follow the translation and the way i'm doing
that it's not because when i'm listening to keith and i'm not generally understanding it but there might
be one word that i don't get and i want to miss that one word i want to go
into that and so i'm looking at not necessarily the translations but i'll have sort of professor saip
singh's breakdown of every word and so i'm oh the shabad is saying this for me i'm i
always feel like i'm a little bit of a shabad like i'm so excited when i come across a shabad or a
line or a word that is new to me a new concept and i'm always intrigued how do i learn more
about this so for jabji sahib there's one of banis that you've been listening your whole life
from the child you know from childhood that's of the things that most children get taught and to
hear it now come out in this poetic english way it feels like it just makes you fall in love
with the bani more you know i feel like we've a version for people who don't have that
benefit of being able to just understand gurmukhi gurbani from from from the direct language so that
bani that we fall in love with if we're enough to being brought up in a family or
in a background where we can actually listen to Gurmukhi and understand it how do we transfer
that love to other people like we're constantly falling in love with Bani but there are so many
people who are not and and I've I've heard from these people and I feel their pain I can really
feel the pain of a parent coming up to me saying I don't know what what is Bani means but
my whole life I've been I've been taught it so that's kind of what it's done for me like
I it's given me a wonderful sense of satisfaction that i have been able to create something that
i'm able to share the love that i'm feeling the body i'm able to share that with people
who don't necessarily know that so it just kind makes you fall in love with it more and
it's given me so much confidence seeing the feedback that we've gotten that now that the next question a
lot of people are saying is what's the next one what's the next body and i have no idea
like i don't i genuinely haven't thought about the more effort that we would take to translate
[more banis although i probably listed at the] background i probably have about seven or eight more
[banis that i feel like you know this could] be done if if you can do it on what
is arguably a more complicated bhani like Japji Sahib because it's not common punjabi language it's not common easy
words if if we could do it for that [how many more other banis could people benefit]
from that they could that they could learn [to like one of the banis that i absolutely before]
you say can we guess who have a bond please know you go first because i was gonna say i was thinking that's all i was thinking
i'm really surprised that both of you said that because that is the next one that i would love to
salok || is so hard hitting and every time i'm listening to
this i'm just thinking what if other people just listen to this every day it is like the
little two sentence nuggets of wisdom that are just so hard-hitting about your life what is
life about why are you wasting your life they're so hard-hitting and it's almost the most
by me i think because it's in that salok format of just two liners i would love to do that
again because i feel like you could very quickly give people gurmukh wisdom in a way that they're
just learning wisdom in a very easy
to digest format. So I would love to do
Suluk Melanova. Anand Sahib
is another beautiful one. Sohila Sahib, of course.
I think definitely, especially when people pass away
and they have the Suluk being sang near the end
on the board. And when you see
the English translations, they're still hard-hitting.
Like I said, they're already quite digestible.
But if it was something a bit more to the,
just there, because we always know
that the English translations can always be better.
So if there's a bit more thought That went into that
I think definitely I can imagine that
You know That would really hit people
So it's good to know You've both got it correct man
Smashed it You know with the
Japji Sahib project Was there any specific
Body or point Where you just thought
That this is Like the most
Inspiring Inspired you've been
Like where you just Put the pen down
You're like I just need to reflect
On this now Yeah
There's a There's a
There's a line that Hits me every time
Which in the Gurmukhi is
and the way i've translated it is just praise and praise without answers to delve like rivers in the ocean that lose
themselves there's something about that poetry that time i hear it i'm like oh i fall in love
with him the idea that you're not going to get all the answers by this methodology praise of that divine
is not going to give you all the download of wisdom about how god is you're never going to be
able to figure out god but the way you need to praise god is the way the river flows into the
ocean to the point at which it once the river goes into the ocean it you can't find the river
anymore that is what praise does for you so i for me there's something about that which again i
think when i was reading Japji Sahib that might not have been the line that stood out to me
but in the translation that's the line that i just back to and just sometimes you just want to pause
and think okay let me just the way the river to the ocean and loses themselves at all
that's there's something it just teaches you something in that have you got your translation memorized as well
no oh no close then you close no no not because then you'd have to sit there and just
do yeah do that when you when it flowed it's your favorite one i was like what are you
going to try if it's called memoirs no i don't think i did that and what about the most difficult
body was there one that you know you had to cut down and come back to there on did
you do in a chronological order did you start it won't go and go to okay now did you kind
of break it up into no definitely did it in in chronological order um and i think it's important
because when you're translating you want to make sure that if a certain word has been translated
a certain way in an earlier barney then later you don't want to just you're not making
up the translation every single line by line so there's in translation there's this idea
of creating a translation dictionary where every word that you've translated you store it somewhere to
see when that word comes up again can i that same translation so while i didn't create a
full kind of glossary like that i would constantly look at any word that's come up and how
have i translated that before so that there's consistency throughout it so definitely did it um from from start
to finish but i think that the area that i struggled with the most is where you're referencing
indig philosophy and then how do you bring out how do you bring out these ideas without
feeling the need to explain it or over explain and then I had to take my cues from
Gurbani like Gurbani doesn't explain things when it references certain things I think for me the one that stands out is this idea of
like how do you explain without then overly explaining what the concept is and I'm when
I'm reading the Bani I'm like well Guruji hasn't explained what is he's just referenced it for the
people who know it they know it so i think there's there's constantly kind of debates that you're
having with yourself which is what do i do with with this idea and then you're going and
and what is this thought though you know what are mahesh gurbani is talking about i was gonna
when i was listening to it the first time it was majority in english and then it got to like
shiva and i was like you you could have translated those to god of destruction or whatever you
didn't and there was must there must have been a thought process that's a thought process
is do you translate everything and then can you translate in a in a succinct way so where
is mention of um the i i use the the idea of Dharam Raj that i just call the king of justice
now you wouldn't necessarily somebody said what is Dharam Raj you wouldn't necessarily say the king
of justice but if you actually take the words Dharam and raj then you have to kind of create it
in a succinct way so in in certain ones i'd leave it as as as the words that are traditional
[Chitr and Gupt i left them in there but Dharam] [Raj i felt like i could give something but Chitr]
[Gupt like how do you how do you translate that] into a single word you know so there are so
times when you're having to question these things i think specifically where gurbani references
indic philosophy and ancient indian ideas and and devi dft and things like that even the word devi
and devta like i couldn't necessarily work out what you know demigod you lose something you
something sometimes just the the translation is just too long and too wordy so i think i early
on i made a decision that certain words i was just going to leave in there you know i think i admire
you different as well yeah um and um you spoke about earlier how you had like a dictionary
the word so before you decide the chapter set project did you do some research into
translations then and kind of learned okay this is a process in what in which you follow in
to do translation work so one of one of my earliest jobs i actually used to work for one of the largest
translation companies in the world in back in my it days so i worked on um their website and so
understood a little bit about the translation process from this is probably 2010 something
like that i was working in in a larger translation company so i had a little bit of understanding of
that but i think with the internet today you can learn anything in any skill and and most of the
time you can download uh translation tools so you start learning well how do other translators do it
then you can very quickly do that. And I think maybe with my sort of tech
or my IT background, I've been very comfortable with the idea
that you can learn anything, right? If you just put your mind to it,
if you do your research, you can find the information out there.
You know, one interesting thing as well is even the fact that you've added music, right?
Because obviously Japji Sahib isn't in any RAG particularly.
So how did you even get to that process of I'm going to choose this music for this?
And I think you've done into four sections, right? yeah so in the early days i said that when
i was trying to find these kind of audio versions english translations online they weren't there i would
again be inspired by what else is out there's a particular version of the bible as
an audiobook online where they make really good of background music and background sound effects and when
i heard it i mean the audio quality was so well the production value of that was so high
i just knew i wanted to do something of that of quality at one point i even played with
the idea of having sound effects so when malaj oceans or mentions this or that could we actually
hear those sounds in the background i played with that idea as well um and so for me the the
idea that the whole Japji Sahib as a piece of audio had to be an experience that you were kind of
gaining i suppose it goes back to what we were doing with the virals it was learning that
you could say something impactful but if you added music behind it it would just lift it so
much more i think it was some of that same of thinking that you can create versions that are
with no music in the background and you would miss something but if you could play with music
in the background then it would just elevate that and again the listener wouldn't necessarily know why
is it having this transformative effect and i think there's a reason why even if we don't have
a rag to Japji Sahib even if you're doing it home you do put a bit of a melody
to even when you're reading it quietly to yourself it's got a cadence it's got a rhythm to it
you might actually sing it and you know there are so many versions of Japji Sahib that are
sung online and they're beautiful you know listen that sung online you know what things i love when
you when you go to sikhi camps and it's time there last time they actually sing it together
with a vajra it's so beautiful because then whole song that really kind of get gets in gets
behind it so there is so much power in adding music to that that i just listening to
various examples of different kind of scriptures online i would hear and i thought yeah that's a format that i wanted that i wanted to use
And even the Q&A aspect as well, in terms of asking the question and giving the answer through the Bodhi as well. Where did that come from? Because some people may think that you made that up,
but that's not the case, right? Yeah. So if you look at all of the Tikkas of Japji Sahib,
when we say Tikka, what we mean is these commentaries by very well-respected [scholars of Sikh philosophy of Gurbani.] they have written commentaries explanations of Japji
Sahib and almost all of them agree Japji Sahib is actually Guru Nanak Dev
Ji's answers to various questions and when explaining Japji Sahib in those tikas in
those commentaries they actually write questions down and say almost as though and then Guru Ji
was asked this question and then he gave this as the answer so the idea that japji sahib is
a q a is a very well uh accepted idea within the kind of scholarly uh world and for
me when i was giving my earlier versions of sahib translated to my friends they were saying they
weren't able to to follow the the format and i thought maybe it's because one verse going to
a one topic and then going to another topic going to another topic is something that they're
just not they're not comfortable with that they're not they're not able to follow it and i
think there are other bhanis like anand saav for that does seem to have a bit of a flow
whereas Japji Sahib is written in such a way that it's tackling such complicated issues and it's doing
it in a very succinct way that the does when you read the translation feel like it's
going from one subject to another to another like what does sunia the listening verses have to do
the mania and then it goes on to the verses like there are so many different
although poetically it's beautiful when people are the translations they were saying to me and i don't
get it i can't i can't even finish it because i'm not able to follow it so i thought well
if all the commentaries have got these questions in there could i add a question in there and the way that
we try to make it clear that the question is not in the bani is that we use the different
voice so there's a female voice asking the question and then and then we've actually put the question
on screen but when the bani is coming out English we've actually put the lines of Japji Sahib
so it's very clear that the question is just like an aid to help you understand what Japji Sahib
is which is a Q&A Guru Nanak Dev Ji's answers in all of his Udasis in all of his travels
around the world his answers to some of the most technically complicated questions and some of the
most deeper spiritual questions Guru Ji has that all in Japji Sahib. Well definitely it comes of course as very engaging I remember when I was
speech in lots of about as well but i can imagine somebody sitting down when they're reading this
but they're fully able to engage with sivijapti song and it almost it becomes like a
yeah when you're listening to meditation kind of thing and i feel like Bani is a meditation yeah
Bani is meditation, Bani is introspection it's not i've just never been a fan of this idea that
Bani is something that you do because it's something you have to do it's not just a tick
in the box exercise it really should be every time you read bani every time you listen to
it should be an experience i think that's why bani was written in people's common languages
i don't think people necessarily appreciate that because if you've been born and brought up with
sikhi you're just hearing it and you just think it is what it is but i think the gurus made a lot
of effort to write bani's in various languages for no other reason that people actually understood
what was being said so i feel like bani should be understood it should be something that you
really savor and take in so if bani is an experience if it is a meditation if that it is
your communication with the divine what would it feel like if the bani is the guru and the guru is
the bani that's your connection that's your conversation right there it's not
that the guru told you to do it's not an exercise that you have to do it's something where the
guru saying sit down let's talk that's that's that's I that's how I communicate with Gurbani
myself so I wanted to share that feeling and I just feel like you we've unfortunately got into
the position where there are people who just want to finish one I remember once I was at an event
and somebody had said to me I can do Japji Sahib in nine minutes and I was taken aback by that and
And my honest response was I would never want to do Japji Sahib in nine minutes. I don't want to finish it that quickly.
If I sit and do Japji Sahib, I am happy for it to take me 45 minutes because there's something in there and I'm enjoying it
and I'm learning from it, you know. So, you know, Gurbani has said time and time again,
just reading isn't alone. You know,
What is the point of reading all these scriptures? if you're just going to let it wash over you,
if it isn't going to bring you a stillness, Gurbani is openly challenging the idea that you're
just going to read it because it's something you've been convinced that it needs to be done.
No, the Bani itself is your conversation with the Guru. That is the transformation. The time that you're going to give to actually transform
your life is there when you're reading it. So it's really important. I feel that people
understand what they're doing and it really becomes a transformative experience every
you do it and outside of youtube comments and social media are there any examples that
seen or sung that i know closely that i've used this translation i mean it's only been out for a
week now we literally launched it last week on on thursday last week so it's been um a
response online but most of the response has either been what i've read on on comments
actually just people reaching out to me that i haven't heard in a long time on whatsapp and
saying you know this is amazing well done or it's a really beautiful thing and you know i'm
it with all my friends so i'm starting to hear from various kind of sources that people are
uh gaining value from it and i feel blessed i feel humbled that you know i've i've had
opportunity to to to bring this and present this to the sun that you know it gives you a lot
confidence that when you do put all of your heart and soul and your love into something that it is
something that is something that are gaining value for and however if you don't mind speaking
your family as well in terms of balancing this work the the devotional aspect of you know going
there many hours traveling as well doing other projects um how do you find that time to balance
doing all this stuff and still being you know a family man your father being a husband and so on
as well um that's a really good question actually for me i'm really really fortunate that nanak nam
has for a number of years been my full-time job so it's what i do monday to friday and because it's my full-time work i treat it like my
job like it's a nine to five thing that i do you know i have a team we all log on
we're all working from home you know you have your you have your work but because i'm able to
dedicate my monday to friday to it i'm also to switch off at 5 p.m and say okay my work
is done and then i can go and spend time with family so it's not something that i do on the
side it's not something that i do on the evenings weekends and i think that is very important that you
are having a i mean i don't want to call a work-life balance but that's probably the best phrase
that that i can think of because this is not this is not work what do you do yeah this
is it's a labor of love it's a passion it's a um but it's very it's very i'm very fortunate that i
get get to do this as a job as my knight defied and the other way that i balance it
is whenever i travel abroad um i people have so many times why did you come and spend three
months here or come and spend a few months here like you could we'll give you we'll give you what
you need to go and just do prachar in this for a number of months and my response is always i
have a family i have young kids so i usually will never travel more than two weeks two weeks is
my limit i'll go and then i'll come back you know i'm still doing the school drop-offs
every now and then especially when my kids younger you know i'd be dropping them to school
picking them up from school making sure that when they come home from school they've got a dinner
on their plate because if i work from home some of that responsibility work is on me um so
i'm very much aware that i'm a key member of family diamond dynamic so i don't want to
put unnecessary pressure on my wife who's also and she doesn't work from home and then she's
having to do the cooking and the cleaning and all those things if i ever travel it's for two
weeks max and i and i understand that's a limitation while my kids are young and when they grow
up i'm sure that you know it'll open up opportunities when when they don't want to spend any
more time with mom and dad you know they need us anymore so it kind of opens that up
so i'm very comfortable with knowing that this is a limitation for this phase in my life and
you know it's really interesting you mentioned a about the whole nine to five because um if
you don't mind touching upon the topic of i religious guilt um in terms of because um i
know there's something that i've struggled with for a very long time and people that i've worked with
closely the idea of you know because we do as a as a job some gets support some gets
you know donations you know we do feel that pressure that we feel like we have to over work work more
hours and stuff but it can and it has become very unhealthy why and then it can start to you
know affect your health and stuff so what would say to even advice to me or to other people
in the future because i think now prachar is to people investing in prachar guru karas guru kirpa
investing in prachar just quick shout out to kamili goddara for giving us this space as well for
free to do this podcast um but how do you manage that way you don't almost put your own
health on the line because we are going to about longevity as well um and keep that
work-life balance you know look after family because last thing we want and advice that goddesses are
giving to me is that the last thing you is to have any sort of resentment
because you've literally killed your burnout.
Burnout happens a lot as well. So how do you manage that
and what advice would you give to other people
when it comes to that? Maybe it was just me
and my sort of lazy approach that I said,
I think I'm just going to do as a nine to five.
I come from a corporate background. I know what it's like
to work in a job nine to five and then thank you very much.
You know, last meeting on a Friday and then you enjoy your weekend.
And even as someone who is a public speaker on Protarik,
it does bleed into your weekends at times there are many saturdays that that you've gone and done
programs abroad and travel abroad you know if you're if you're engaging with the sun that
pretty much doing it on on the weekends or you're doing it on the evening so there is that kind
compromise but for me i feel like i'm not one of those like go-getters that i just constantly
work work that's that's not me and i don't work in that way but i i genuinely mean no disrespect
to anyone who who does work in that way i'm just not motivated that way i'm i'm a bit more of a
layback say jay say jay take your time kind of person um and i think that's kind of just been
my approach all along and you think it helps you keep a routine as well because you're kind
fixed in what you're doing because i love a lot of good success token to the travel a lot it
that they can't keep a routine again if you're going to different countries um you're awake
then things like amritvilla it's all it's just it's in the proofs in the pudding you can't do
a lot of things consistently because unfortunately you have no consistent routine yeah it's
completely true and i and i found as i as i've gotten older that jet lag now affects me way
than it did 10 years ago so i know that as amazing as it is that we get to travel and do the work
we do that it does have an impact it does have an impact on your routine it has an impact
on your health so you want to keep it at a slow and steady pace rather than a fast pace so you
want to kind of do it at a certain pace where you're comfortable doing it and I think I would
not at this stage of my life when I have smaller kids I think that stability that I had growing
as kind of in my family like my family we grew up very fortunately that we always had dinner on
table every day and we always sat around the dinner table as a family we weren't one of
that everybody just eats dinner whenever they come home we were one of the families that we sat
and that was a time when myself my sister my parents we would talk we would talk about
going on in each other's lives like i grew up with that stability and i want to give that routine
that stability to my family as well i we we try to have dinner on the on the dining table you know
no tv is on let's talk about it like how was your day what are you going through what's happening
or what's happening in the world that we can talk about as as family so that's the stability that i
grew up with and i i think i i've been i've been kind of trying to recreate that for my own family
as well i think there's just something really important about children growing up in a stable
family household so i'm going over my own conversation i'm just a bit on that about
i know you've done quite a bit of work on relationships in sikhi with benji as well of BG doing that I'm not sure she's done
much on parenting have you done much on parenting bringing up kids is that something you're looking to
do more in the future I actually haven't and it's certainly been a topic but again if I'm being
quite raw and quite honest I don't think I'm a great parent I think I make mistakes every day
I still have frustrations with my kid and with kids and i question myself every time you you
know you raise your voice every time you get frustrated then you're like oh well you sit on
stages and you say all these amazing things but you still get frustrated at home and it's a real
one of the best things about family life is that it humbles you very quickly because you you can
pretend to be someone spiritual on stages and when you talk really well but in your own family
life if you're not able to control your emotions things like that you still have work to do and
I try whenever I go on stages whenever I do anything and I'm talking I try to tell people
look guys I'm not perfect let me tell you I've fallen let me tell you where this went wrong
in my life so while we did do things with relationships my wife and I have worked a
lot on our relationship and we're constantly using Gurbani and trying to understand each other and
understand what it means to be Gurmat focused parents uh when it comes to parenting it's just
so much harder and i don't feel like whenever thought about doing something to do with parenting i
didn't feel like i was a good enough role that i could sit and talk to people
about parenting because like like the kids are with a relationship once you get into a good
flow with your partner that pretty much sustains itself with children everything changes every couple of years
the children keep changing and all of a sudden the things that were working with your kids
you know two three years ago are now no working so you're having to reinvent who you are as
a parent every time so I just came across that challenge and thought well I thought I had this fixed
you know I thought that we had we were good as a family but now my kids are teenagers so now
I deal with them in a different way and now my eldest is i don't even see him as a teenager he's
almost like a young man and now i'm having to deal with it in a different way i can't almost put
on my loud daddy voice and tell him to do because he's taller than me so he's he's no longer
i'm no longer speaking to a child that will just kind of listen to me he's more like another man
in the in the house so as a parent you're having to reinvent the kind of parent that you
are and it's been such a fascinating thing to watch just what your journey is like as a father
as a parent that i don't feel like i've got anything worked out yet that i can then go and do
a course on it the other the other element to it is i don't feel like gurbani has a lot
of parenting advice there are some elements in there about you know a mother who raises a a
child who's focused on the divine like there are mentions in there but Guru Granth Sahib is not
a parenting manual so I also don't want to make it up as I go along I don't want
to create content and say that this is Gurmat based if it's not there like it would be the same thing
if somebody said to me make a video series on how to run a successful business based on Gurbani I
don't think Gurbani is focused on that that's not what it's trying to teach you so what is Gurbani
talking about I feel like if I came across these amazing parenting shabbat i would maybe do a talk
about it but i don't think gurbani is a manual it's not a how to run your business
manual so you can't just kind of superimpose like you're being inauthentic to what bani really is and
i think for me one thing i've always tried do is what is gurbani saying let the bani actually
lead let the bani actually decide and for me the way i decide to make content is i'll just
come across a shabbat and thought wow i didn't didn't even know that that was covered let's bring that
to the circuit i'm sorry just to go a bit further with that um pressure is there is there
is like you said earlier when we spoke about of getting feedback and criticism the more popular you
become with the same thing you're best to do how is that pressure on your kids go to school
did it oh he's not an arm's dad rpg as you know they're the wife she's on the videos as
well how do you manage that is that okay or You know, when you go to Sikhi camps,
you know, sometimes they compare us and like, well, you're the son of,
you know, Nanak Naam, so you should be at this level
or this kind of stuff. Right.
If you don't mind. No, that's brilliant.
I'm really interested. You've asked that kind of angle.
One of the things I've tried to do is I've tried to keep my children
away from the Nanak Naam channel. Like, you don't see what their faces are.
I don't think they're rarely probably even mention their names.
So I try to sort of shield them from some of the criticism
that i might experience online uh and similarly like my like my wife her meat she doesn't get
a lot of uh criticism herself because she's not that so active in in creating content
i try to tell her as much as possible you've got some amazing views people would love to hear from
your perspective so she is slowly slowly kind of um getting more opportunities to kind of
content online with with me but with the kids i think they they're pretty much being born and
brought up with seeing their father as somebody who's on social media so much so that i don't
think it really they don't get what what nanagnam is they don't really get what uh kind of
uh we get online for them it's like that's just dad that's not really somebody special
the only time that they recognize that there's there's something to what i do is when i when
you're out about on the street and you get stopped and you get recognized and people
you know i i seen you in channel can i get a selfie with you or whatever that that happens
but again that's been happening for their life most of their lives so they just pretty
know that that's this part of the world i think they know but they don't they don't let it kind
of it's not something that they that they process very much um but certainly when um one or
kind of times have been when when there is a heavy criticism on something that we've said online
i think one time was when they they started hearing it in school they were like why did
your dad say that and this and that the other i think that was that was for me a bit of a
call that says i really have to be responsible what i say for nothing else but i don't i want
to shield my kids from from this i don't want them to to live in my shadow uh in that way nor
do i want them to have to defend what i'm saying even though i stand by everything that i say
Sometimes it's just how you edit something Sometimes how you put it out
Or even sometimes how you say it And you phrase things
And they're amazing Because one of the things
We've been very fortunate to do is Every morning before they go to school
We have this time in Malaj's room That we have at home
We're very blessed So every day before they go to school
We spend half an hour Before they go on their school bus
And we go through the Hukam Nama We go through Sakhis
We go through Qa'i Qudas We go through
We'll go through different things So that they are really well
Equipped with this knowledge So some of the times when they
Themselves have kind of Been questioned on some of my views
They can kind of answer it themselves You know they've been brought up in
This and they say no actually Gurbani says this
Or this is the Sikh viewpoint Or this is the philosophy
So you know bringing your kids up with gurmat wisdom is is like that is a
parent's responsibility that is something that you have to do uh you don't just get to outsource it to
your gyani ji in the gurdwara like i've always told like if there's any core audience of my content i
always say it's parents like i want you to take it so that when your kids are asking you something
you you feel like you you know something you don't just feel like oh let's let's ask energy in
the gurdwara no what feel confident that you can that you can interrogate gurbani yourself start
reading gurbani even if you're just reading translations start having a regular practice with gurbani
for you for your children so that you're you're well versed in what your guru is teaching
otherwise how are you a student of your guru if you're not actually directly engaging with the
bani and even if that's with english translations I always encourage people
Use it They're really good
You know Like I would say
They're about 90 to 95% accurate They're good enough
For you to learn Rather than feel like
You never want to access the Bani And so I try and encourage parents
As much as possible Make sure that you understand
What the Bani is saying Teach your kids
[Show them Shabads] You know
When a Hukam Nama comes Don't just read the Hukam Nama
And just assume That the kids are going to understand it
Most of the time they're not Go through it
If you don't know what it means Just say with your kids
Kids what do we think Dishaabad means
What does this line mean What does Guru mean
When he wants us to do this Or think like this
It goes back to like How you were kind of raised
Going to Sikhi camps And you had that foundation
In like having Sangat Have learning Sikhi
Ithiyas and all that stuff And even like the importance
Of having Sikhi Swaroop And I like
How have you found that Teaching the kids
In that kind of format Of having a Sikhi Swaroop
Wearing the star And Dari and all that
So I remember as a child going to school going to primary school and being the
only child with a with a patka at the time with long hair at the time with a turban of any
sort so i know what it's like to be the only that stands out and with that it sounds
really corny but with that there's a real even as a child you know that you represent something you might not know what it is
and you might just when somebody says what's that thing on your head and you just say oh it's my
religion even that you know that you're carrying your religion as as a representative that everybody
who's looking at you doesn't just look at you they look at your whole religion they look at
entire community when you do something so i have had that experience going to schools where i was
the only kid in a with a patka so i know that experience so i see the value of how that kind
it keeps you in line i remember as as a teenager you know my friends my mates who who didn't
kids or who weren't of the sick background getting up to all sorts of things you know and i just
that i was never going to be tempted to do those things because i'm like that's not that's not who i am you know i remember probably
never even walked into a pub until the age of about 20 and even then you only do it
at work because after work on a friday they're oh we're going for after work drinks and
you're standing there with your cherry coke or it is that you're that you're trying to know um
like up to the age of about 20 i would would step into a pub not that i thought that i
was gonna drink but i was like no that's not where a gursikh stands that's not where a gursikh
belongs so you kind of you're carrying your identity and what an amazing uh self-regulation tool
maharaj has given us gusab has given us that you are self-regulating just by the fact
that you know that you are a representative It's like you're walking Nishansad for your community, for your faith.
And why wouldn't we give that to our kids? So even though you're not teaching them necessarily anything,
you are at least giving them that responsibility that you represent something bigger.
Not just your parents, not just your family, your extended family. You represent Guru Nanak.
You represent Gokul Vincenti. You know earlier you touched upon the time you have in the morning
with the kids where you're looking at the Okan on the side. And you mentioned it probably a few times throughout the podcast about the emphasis on Gurbani,
which of course, Bani is Guru, Guru is Bani. And I can appreciate the element of when it comes to history,
when we bought up, that's all we were told. But, you know, kind of the main message of why we're here, what we're here to accomplish,
what Guru Saji tells us again and again to do in Gurbani, which is Namjapo and Bani Paro and Connect. What is your vijaya genuinely at the house
In terms of I'm just assuming
I don't think you're anti at the house at all It seems that your concentration more is on Gurbani
But where do you bring at the house Into your conversations
Do you try to avoid it Or is there a clear space for history
Sikh history Because a lot of our gurus
Sakhya Are at the house right
Yeah Of course Gurbani has background shabads
Why gurus are at the house But where do you kind of sit with that
in terms of Sikh history and then there's Gurbani.
Even though I'm not trying to say they're two separate things,
but we are looking at it through that lens as well.
It's really interesting. For me, when we used to go through
these Shabads with our kids when they were very young,
I remember distinctly one point having this kind of realization
that I was saying names to my kids and they had no idea
who we were talking about. So we would read a Hukam Nama
and today we say, Guru Ram Das Ji today says this
And then tomorrow's Hukam Naam Guru Amar Das Ji says this
And I remember at one point thinking These kids have no idea who that is
Who is Guru Ram Das Ji? Why do we assume that they just know?
So then part of the morning sessions Became going through
Like you get these books With like kids bedtime stories
Series for Where you go through the entire series
Of all the main Sakhis Of each Guru
So I was thinking I remember thinking
I can't just keep teaching them Gurbani because I can't say Guru Nanak says
when they have no image in their head what is
who is this Guru Nanak what did he do
what did he live like where did he live
what was what did he get up to
so it's very important that you give them
that background of who these people were
what did they look like what did they do
when I say look like as in what
what did their their personality look like
what was their characteristics we're not interested
in what they physically sort of look like
it was more about who are they in their day to day
That then when we say Guru Nanak says They're thinking, oh that person
The one who did all these things The one who stood up against his community
When he was given [the Janeu] And said, I don't accept [that Janeu]
Give me something strong Give me something that's never going to break
These are the people that we're talking about And this is the Shabbos that they say
So it was very important for me With my own children to teach them some of that
And again, I had that growing up as a child My mom would be so good at teaching us Japji Sahib
But we had to memorize the names of the Gurus And their wives and their children
We had to learn the Sakhis of all of the Gurus And it wasn't in a structured way with my mom
It was just, okay, today I'm going to tell you this story Today I'm going to tell you this story about Baba Puttaji
Or this story about [Guru Hargobind Ji] And so we just kind of got that overarching kind of understanding
so that it really made you appreciate that these are the role models,
these are whose writings we are bowing down to because they were such role models in their life.
So itihas, especially the guru's lives, is something that I feel like parents
should be teaching to their kids and something we've tried to do.
When it comes to putting that online, what I've tried to do
and what I've always focused on is what is not being done.
yeah and when i i i it's really clear to me very early on when when when i started uh nanak nam
was sitting with one of our charity directors and we had a whiteboard and we were sort of
ideas down about who's our target audience what kind of subjects do we cover what do we do
one of the decisions we made very early on was nanak nam was never going to be in
with anyone we don't see ourselves in competition with any other prachar organization what we see
ourselves as is that the panth is like a jigsaw puzzle and everybody is one piece together we
make the entire picture of the panth so we're not here to step on anybody's toes which is why i
not to even it's some parcharak or somebody says something i never say oh well i disagree with
i'm going to say something else i'm like you do you you do that you that's how you're
your parcha, what are you not saying? I'm going to cover that element of that. So for me, a lot
of katha in the Gurdwara is involving the Guru's stories. And I didn't see a lot of katha that was
more Gurbani Biyakhya, which is really interesting. If you look at the Sikh Rehat Maryada, it talks
about the few things that you're allowed to do on a Gurdwara stage. And it says you're allowed to do
you're allowed to do like a kavi darbar you're you know something that we've kind of lost the
the habit of doing which is people writing poetry we get it somewhat with tarijathas you're allowed to do katha and vyakya
interestingly Sikh Rehat Maryada makes a distinction between katha and vyakya and what I realized was most of
the katha that I grown up with and still I today is very much Katha, which is involving that storytelling,
that element of that. But there's very little Gurbani Biyakhya, which is, I'm not going to do anything else than actually just go
through Guru Granth Sahib. And while the history and the historical context is important, I actually
believe that Guru Granth Sahib is its own dictionary. Like if you don't understand something
in Guru Granth Sahib in one Shabad, you will find another Shabad that explains this. So it's a
self-referencing dictionary so for me you don't have to go to too many other places and
though I may have dipped into reading other Indic sources and reading the Bhagavad Gita and some of
these other things I'm not dipping into that and saying this is how we need to understand the
Shabad because we need to look at what the Bhagavad Gita says like that's how we
this Bani I don't do that I read those things to understand but I feel Guru Granth Sahib is a
perfect self-defining system that all of the concepts in Gurbani are defined on other
and other pages so for me my entire focus is I don't feel like I was seeing enough just Gurbani
which means explanation of the actual Shabbats so that's the that's the gap that I'm going to fill
that's the that's the specialization that I'm going to go down and I openly say when
ask me questions about history I say I'm not the expert on Sikh history please go and speak
other parjareks. You know, people say to me, why haven't you done any Shabbats in Dasambani? And I
say, because I'm not an expert on Dasambani. But there are many other great scholars out there who have done amazing work on, you know, [see Dasam Granth,]
see Saludlugranth Sahib, like go and listen to them. It's not one or the other. You listen to one parjarek for one angle,
and then you listen to another for a completely different angle.
Why should we try to compete with each other i think that's a very unhealthy way to look
at each other in the punt and for me that of seeing the punt as a jigsaw puzzle and everybody
has a part to play i think that's a really way to look at it 100 and it's work with
the japji sahib and non-sahib the asa ki ghar series you've done uh in terms of um the engagement
with this i wanted to bring it back to you mentioned at the start about the way you
used to experience and used to like meditate on trained and stuff and like what was the initial
kind of experience you had would if you don't mind going into that like kind of
spiritual experience yeah no i absolutely don't because i i think whenever you delve into that
question a lot of times people say oh you talk about your experiences or your experiences should
be good and i felt that there was missing now and why is nobody talking about
it either they're not having those experiences or for whatever reason they feel like they shouldn't share
them i can understand that there is a little bit to that because in order to really give
someone an experience what you don't want to do is taint it with yours so you don't want to
say this is what you will experience and whenever i do talk about my own experiences i don't say
like this is the definitive thing that you're going go from this stage and then you're going to go
this stage and this stage i'm not going to say that because then you're then you're looking for that
experience in your mind you know it's like i the example that i give is if i say
that if you go to certain levels within your then you will hear a sound then from the
very beginning you're going to start you'll be going to try to generate that and and unfortunately
if you're not trained your brain can create sorts of hallucinations you can create a sound that
you're like oh i'm at this stage now i hear that sound or if i say you can see
a blue light you'll definitely see a blue light because Because I've suggested the idea, planted the idea in your mind.
So I do understand why people say it's gupt, but I do think that that's created a void
in helping people to understand. So much so that the Sankat almost don't believe
that you're supposed to go and do this introspection. And I get this pushback all the time, especially from the older generation.
They say meditation has nothing to do with Sikhi, and I say, okay, how do you understand
this Shabad? How are you supposed to understand that?
That it's saying that within the sky of your mind there is a flowing river
and you must bathe in that river. And that's where they don't know how to answer that
because they haven't necessarily done that. And I understand that.
But meditation has been so transformative for me. In my early days when I used to just
try and meditate as much as possible, I would sometimes get an experience.
In the very early days you sit And your mind just starts creating visions,
like you're floating in the clouds and all these things.
And I would go back to my mentor and I'd say, look what I experienced in my meditation.
And he'd say, go back, go back, there's more, there's more. Like he wouldn't tell me what to expect, but he would just say, go deeper.
And one of the things that was very interesting for me was I did a meditation for a
of months where I would just observe whatever it is that's coming up and observe to
point at which when something came up i would say okay now i let that go as well so when you sit
within your meditation first things that come up is just noise images sounds duties
that you haven't done like immediate things come up and you say okay i recognize that it's there
and i go deeper what else comes up keep going something else comes up and then eventually if
your daily kind of noise goes then sometimes deep-rooted kind of thoughts that you
thought about for a long time things that you suppressed they come up then i said okay i'll
let that go and i would visualize myself going further deeper and the idea was kurbani
to me oh mind you are the source of the divine light the divine light is within you go and
recognize it recognize what you really are so i'm like this is not me if i could see it as
something that comes up in my mind it's not me so i would sit in meditation and any thought that
[unclear — audio garbled] [unclear — audio garbled]
oh i wonder if my my wife's okay one of my kids okay and you realize oh that's another layer
my attachment i'm attached to my kids i'm attached to my family can i let that go okay i let that go
violet and you almost let it go can you be comfortable and that in that point you're thinking in your meditation can i be comfortable if
i never have to see them again and then notice the fear say okay now fear has come up can
i be okay with letting that go you go deeper and deeper and deeper i remember once practicing this for
a certain amount of time i got to a where i'm like there is nothing more left for me
to let go i sat in the most stillness that ever sat in in the most kind of almost like you're
in a dark cave not in a scary place but just total emptiness and then i realized to myself but i'm
still here what is this with that if i have no thoughts no emotions no nothing but there's something
that i still call me then you go back into gurbani and says that is home i am the
me me did myself that is still there gurbani says [As long as your haumai is there, you can't know what God is.]
And for me, that was a huge realization. Ah, this is the thing that Gurbani is saying to get rid of.
This is the thing. Now you at least know what you're trying to get rid of.
So when Gurbani says, Haumai and the divine name are in conflict with each other.
Both cannot exist in the same space. So when you sit within yourself, ultimately there is an ego there.
There is an I am-ness that is there. As long as that I am-ness is there, you're not experiencing pure Naam.
That was then the point at which I was like, okay, now how do we use Naam? Now you have something that you know.
It's like when you've opened that door in your room, you've seen what the obstacle is.
Now you're like, okay, that's the thing that we're working on. So Naam then now starts to work on.
Once you've actually known what your ego actually is, then you can know, okay, this is the obstacle that i have never been able
to no matter then how much part you've done how beautiful you're the mala is what an amazing
banner that you wear how nicely you're able sit on stage and sing keithan if you don't
know this about yourself like what is your ego all those things are not able to actually penetrate
that deep because you can just build another ego oh i'm a great keithani i'm a great this i'm great
pracharak or i do this or even if you don't think that if you don't actually know what your ego
is you're still functioning at a level where you haven't really tapped into the ultimate thing and
gurbani is saying the number one thing that trying to deal with is your ego and i'm encouraging
people what is your ego do you know do you have you spent any time with it how are you
going to get rid of a problem that you don't that you don't know how to do it's like if somebody
says that you've got to you know dig out all the weeds in your garden you say yeah i'm gonna do
it but i'm never gonna go to the garden i'm going to go there and actually even look at the
weeds then how are you going to get rid of well i'll just sit here and read a book about how
to how to take all the weeds out of my garden no you this is the life that you have to do
this is what like the sadam khand in jyotishad is all about it's all about the stage of which
you're molding and grinding your ego down really the the bani work on you at such a level
where you finally say oh i realize this is not even this is what i could do so that's the kind
of the the steps that i felt that i was able kind of recognize within myself now i'm not saying i've
got gotten rid of my ego my ego is here you know shining brightly my ego is here all the
time it comes back but at least i've had a that oh there's that you still haven't dealt with that
right no matter how how good you look on the outside that's still there so every day you're
humbled by bani every day your bani is you something new a new lesson i think
how compassionate the guru is that the guru you the one lesson again and again again in
so many different ways i remember the early days when i was reading gurbani and i was saying
it's the same the same stuff all the time it's the same message all the time why do i
give me something new but no that's why because the the obstacle of trying to break your ego
is the ultimate issue and gurbani is so that every day the Guru is giving you a different analogy
and a different example so that it can work on you. And slowly, with Guru's blessing,
that can actually start having an impact on you. So I'm always encouraging people, sit, try meditation.
And when I say meditation, I don't mean, you know, close one nose and visualize this and visualize doing this
or trying to raise your kundalini and all these sorts of things. For me, these are very superficial layers
of just trying to visualize something, to trying to get experiences.
I'm not interested in experiences. If there is you to experience something,
then you haven't destroyed your ego. The experiencer is the one that we need to deal with.
And that kind of work is why when I started to do workshops, I would make sure that there's an element of just saying,
okay, guys, enough talking. Let's actually do this.
I think we were one of the first ones on our channel to do a guided meditation based on Guru Mahatma's principles.
Again, I felt like it was something that wasn't missing. But is it something new?
No, the Nirmalay have been doing that for a very long time. But they're just keeping it in their own circles.
Even Baba Isha Singh Ji, they wrote like techniques of meditation and how to connect to Naam as well.
So it's been there in the Sampradayas, but it's just maybe the access wasn't there.
It's not there in the Gurdwaras, right? It's not there in the everyday.
And I never claim that I'm an expert. and i never tried to i'm i'm trying to be
as honest as possible guys this is just working for me and i think you need to have it it's
like if you've tasted a really good you know chocolate or something and you say look have you tried
this why haven't you tried this yet sounds like we can't it's it's interesting because uh we just
released a video by jogar singh recently like a lecture series he did at university and in there he's
like why did no one tell me that you could experience this and he's like he just felt like he
had to go to the god and shake someone be you can experience this but obviously with him that
was his kind of way of doing and he you see in a lot of his videos he used
to talk about this is beyond any drug any feeling any temporary feeling you could have and you
could really see that he had experienced that and that authenticity it came through and i
think that's what made it so relatable and connected to and he just wants to share
that yeah and just say look guys there's here that we haven't heard about and nobody's
talking about it but we need somebody needs talk about it i think that's that's so powerful
that we break away from that old idea that you don't share this you don't talk about it you
keep your nonsense and go how is that helping i don't know maybe there's a technique there that
i'm not understanding but i didn't see the in that i was like if you don't share it with
me how am i supposed to know you know there's there's there's only so much that you can read about this
at some point someone needs to sit you down and say okay try this and you know just touching a
bit more on bhai jagraj singh we mentioned at the start you went to the same school together you
knew him before he was even interested so what was that like so he was uh we both went to
lambton school he was two years older than me and we in the year where everybody has a brother or
sister and two years older than you and so kind of knew people in the years above us and yeah
i knew jagraj singh he was in the same year as as my sister i remember them um studying together for a
levels and kind of do kind of we he was he would come around our house he lived you know not
too far away from from our homes or we i walk down to his house sometimes sometimes he
would come around our hours and i remember distinct point where one day he just showed up and
he was you know a gorsik and i'm like where that come from you know what's happened and then he
would you tell us you know what he's been going through and you know how he's you know experienced
Sikhi camps how he's been reading all these books and he's kind of he was a really big
reader so he was a very kind of well-read of our round philosophy and things like that so
we always were in each other's lives you know and I think even then when the the Kili Sangat
started we would be meeting up on a weekly basis when whenever he was there and we kind of our
kids so grew up knowing each other so it was a very interesting thing to see someone go from
almost a clubbing sort of quite a social life to now really just go deep dive into Sikhi
and he very quickly went from adopting Sikhi to becoming a spokesperson for it he was so passionate about
it that he would be at the camps and he remember him being at camps and and other Sikhs who
had been a Sikh or a Kesatari their whole life he'd be like why haven't you taken amrit yet it's
amazing why haven't you taken amrit yet and he was like he was just so kind of passionate about just
telling people look you need to do this so yeah have beautiful fond memories of the book and it's
also very interesting how you both went to the same school and you grew up together and then
you both started your youtube channels as well right yeah just look at that kind of comparison as well
and did you guys speak about that in the kind How do you do it?
He's like, oh, you go YouTube channel. I go YouTube channel and stuff.
Yeah, I remember even when I was trying to set up a non-economical charity and I went up to him and I said, look, I don't know what to do.
Tell me how to set up a charity. And he would advise me.
I remember one time I was working in London and he called me and said, I'm doing a talk at the school dollar.
I don't have any equipment. Can I borrow your camera?
So I remember meeting him in central London, St. Paul's Station. And that's where my office was.
And he came out and I gave him all of my camera equipment. I said, okay, go film this.
So it was kind of, we had a healthy respect for each other. But I think we also, from a very early stage,
knew that he had his message and what he wanted to do with his. And I knew that what I wanted to do with mine.
But on the surface of it might look like two different channels. On the background, we were talking.
I remember, I think only my second lecture on the channel at all was was called um something around uh how to
find happiness and straightaway to barrage came to me and he said that's a really interesting subject
i don't think i've ever thought about titling subject something or other or structuring the whole thing
but he says now that you put put it there of course goodbye is all of us look you
know so we were always in communication with um and had a very healthy kind of respect for what each
other were doing but we knew that we weren't so stepping on each other's toes either and there was
never a sense of competition yeah and like you said before the hajik so now you gave if you don't
mind you always touch upon this but we do you ask these questions for guests that were close to
bhajira singh and spend time around them how their passing for you in terms of how did you
react to that um very much i know you mentioned this idea about how you saw in your kind
of day-to-day working life but you know what impact did that have on you outside of what we
mentioned yeah he's probably one of the closest people in my own life who i've known for a number
of years who then passes away somebody who is my and i think for me the wake-up call for me was
i saw from the day that he told us that he cancer and we heard that he had cancer i
remember when it became public knowledge and i remember other people saying oh have you heard about this i was
like yeah i i know about it but i didn't know it was public knowledge so the day that it
became public knowledge um was around sort of december time and i remember uh i was in canada at the
day that i got the news that he had passed away and i literally just cancelled my plans and i'm
like okay i'm driving a flight back home and want to be back with the sangat with the with
his family with our family and i just literally i on a plane at the time and my one of my
companions who was traveling with me he had data on his and he just said well your glasses passed away
and i quickly just opened my laptop tried to the wi-fi of the plane and just like
okay we're just canceling we're canceling everything and i'm heading back i think the wake-up call for
me was seeing how quickly that happened from the that we had been told about his diagnosis it was
no more than about six or seven months to his passing and the impact that that's had on me is
it's totally shattered the idea that we are we all are going to have a long life that to me was
just right staring me at my face that here is somebody that i knew and now i'm i'm looking at his coffin
like that was like kind of like a rewiring of the brain and from that point onwards i've i've had in
my own life like zero delusion that i i'm gonna have a long life like in my head like i have
a six month life like there's no part of my life that i think of course everybody wants to have
a long life everybody you make plans like if book a holiday sometimes you book a year in
advance there's something at the back of my mind that changed from that point onwards where i'm
like don't ever have this delusion that life is just there for the taking life is a precious
gift and at any moment it can be taken away you and you've seen it now you've seen a family
person who has a wife and children right in front of you go you've seen somebody who you grew
up with went to school with and joked around and hung out with and used to go to the
cinema and go bowling with you've seen that they're no longer here so i think that it became so real
that death is real death is not something that is going to skip you by and i think that to me
is is the biggest impact that it's had thank you for sharing that um before we get to the
final question um of the podcast really nice you kind of mentioned how i go to the cinema
and movies and stuff so outside of Nanak Naam And doing what they say
What do you do For like your
Just chilling out You know
What do you do To just be a
Normal person In the world
If we're going to call it that Do you go to the cinema
Do you like watching movies What are your hobbies
What do you like to do For your time
Yeah I feel like I
Never wanted to present myself [As a Katha Vaachak]
Or somebody You know
One of the earlier videos You see me in
A Baana In the very early stage
Because I love That whole Naanta
That whole Wari Aspect of that
but I realized that that was something that I was putting on as much as I loved it and I
believed in it and all those things I realized that that's not who I am day to day I'm not
somebody that that wore a barna every day it was just something that I was wearing for that
you know you go to Sikhi programs and you put on the barna and all those things I still have a lot
of respect for for all of that but I realized that if I was to share my message with people
I need to present to them my most authentic version and my most authentic version is I am
working guy I'm a family man I'm a dad I'm a man who has the same flaws as any other human being
and I wanted to be as authentic when I presented myself so I do talk to people and when I'm
stage I talk about I have always loved music I grew up listening to all sorts of world
from you know Nusrat Fateh Khan or whether it was the latest kind of you know pop bands or whatever
I've a music that has always been a thing that's that's a really big part of my life and I
now that I've fallen in love with Keith then I tend not to know what's the latest kind of trends
when it comes to music now I probably know more about Keith than that I know about music but I've
never had this conflict because I've not I didn't convert into Sikhi I was just brought up with
so there was never this conflict that you can't live a normal life and also have a spiritual
it was i never had this idea that you have to reject all of them all the fun in the world let's
let's let's put it that way um and only be a serious kind of religious guy and that's
of just the way i was brought up so for me i'm a big food lover you know i don't probably go
the cinema anymore but who who does anymore um but you do watch you know i'm i'm watching
and netflix just yesterday my kids were saying dad we haven't seen the latest avatar i'm
Okay yeah we need to do that You know
It's just simple things like that Like I
For me that Bringing Sikhi
Into your everyday life Is
Something that I think There's a really beautiful way
To pair that And I'm not of the belief
That you have to reject that You know in Sukhmani Sahib
It says Guru Ji is not saying
Don't eat all the different Flavors of food
It's just saying If you are blessed
With all the flavors of food This
Keep that so what is your favorite food yeah what's my favorite food um quite like thai food
kind of feels amazing i i do all the cooking at home as well so i make a quite a good sort
of green curry and a pad thai and things like that and whenever i go to thailand it's
mango rice oh yeah that's really good yeah sticky mango rice that's really good uh i remember seeing
that for the first time and thinking that's a really weird thing he puts rice and and mango
together but the first time i tried it i thought okay these guys are onto something yeah so i love i love good food things like
that yeah i just personally don't have a conflict with with any of those things that's amazing and uh
thank you for sharing that and thank you for just a fantastic guest and just being so open and
speaking of life and you've spoken on um even some of the questions uh try to go very deep
and frankly so open uh to answer them just to the the last that we've spoken about japji
side uh and you know this fantastic project that launched under Guru Kirtipa hopefully so will come
in the future as well uh what other um now we're working with that you just would
like to share with the song then we will links in the description you know to the
Japji Saibang to ISFG channel but anything else want to share in terms of future projects that you
guys are looking to do so one of the projects that we also launched last year was I was always
a fan of how do we bring Keaton to the like I said music is a big part of my
life and again that's another thing that I feel is inaccessible to the wider community so we launched
a project last year called Guru's Voice where unlike translating Gurbani into poetry I translate
Shabad into song lyrics that's quite a style of translation but then I was never a
musician I never had any access to that I'm a good singer and i can't play any instruments so it
was always a desire for me to try and see how do we bring music out of the world so that
people can emotionally connect with the bani so a project that we launched last year [is called Guru's Voice]
where i translate the bani and then we put through software and tools like that to actually create
a sound and a music for that so that's something that i feel like again it's not for
people who listen to kirtan it's for the people who don't listen to kirtan.
I'm always looking at that. One of our sort of mission statement
for our charity is called Taking Gurmat Global.
And I genuinely believe that Gurbani is for the whole world.
This wisdom is for the whole world. But I feel like we may have,
as a community, become quite closed in how we deliver that.
I feel the gurus were more revolutionary in how they delivered wisdom
around the world. And I feel like to some extent
we've become a little bit stagnant and we only do things the way that they're done in the Gurdwara
and we don't empower ourselves the way the Guru has empowered us. You know, the Guru says that you are the Guru Khalsa.
Go out there, go spread this, go do what you can. So I'm always looking at just because something hasn't been done before
doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means nobody's thought about it or nobody wanted to do it.
It's not everyone's cup of tea, but one of the projects that we have is called Guru's Voice
and it's Gurbani in a Western style. and it is specifically for people who may be curious about Sikh wisdom
but have no way to access it and for us the way we access wisdom is through Geethan.
Going forward, this idea of taking Gurmat global is really something that I want to do.
I've seen amazing kind of impact that we've had within the Sikh community and a question that I'm left with is
how do we bring this to the wider world? does it require you to take Sikhi in its current
format all the way out there or can you unpack from some of the practices and the language and
things that are barriers to people coming in and can you bring it in different ways so one of the
things that we want to do is we want to focus podcasts and really take the Sikh message out to
quite large podcasts around the world I don't see many people trying to do that um and i don't
see why not um probably going back about five or years ago like everybody was doing ted talks and
that kind of trend has died now with with but even till today we never had a gursikh on
a ted talk talking about sikhi we had gursikhs on ted talks talking about business or other things
but we had buddhists on ted talks talking buddhism we had hindus on ted talks talking about hinduism
but never sikhi so i had a vision a few years ago i was like let's do that but now kind
of ted talks are dead and now it's all about podcasts so why can't we get gulmat on some of
these major platforms where and it's not against like against the other religions it's not about that if
you look at my jigsaw puzzle analogy it works even on a global scale even it works with
all the other spiritual traditions and religions that are out there sikhi does bring a truth in a different
angle in a different flavor we do we have a different way of of looking at the world
and understanding our connection to god and oneness and all of those things in a way that some
people who may not find it in the other traditions might find it here I don't think Guru Nanak Pasha
ever was trying to be us versus them I don't him doing that Guru Nanak Dev Ji we proudly say
is the Jalatku he would go everywhere and he would sit with people of various traditions and and have
dialogue with them and I feel like we've lost to some extent and I would like to somehow
see Gursikhi Gurmat on some of these major global platforms why isn't there a series based on Sikhi
on Netflix or Amazon Prime and not Sikhi from who are the Sikhs and what's their background
but what is this wisdom what are these what is this you know there was a a
Netflix series a good few years ago ago about why can't we have that you know so for me
it's just exploring those ideas and I feel like that's where my strength lies it just goes back right back
to how I've always done things I look at the and i say i look at the outside world and
say what else could we benefit from what else are we not doing and that makes me
quite a um controversial figure sometimes because look at me and saying what's he doing why does
he do what he does and i genuinely am never anything to bring any kind of disrepute to the
[Panth in any way] like it's genuinely guys we're all working together
just because I'm not doing the same thing
as you doesn't mean
I'm doing something against you
I'm just working on a different audience
on a different focus and you may see me
go and do more weird and wonderful
kind of projects like that
but it's always with the idea
of taking Gurmat Global
taking Guru Nanak Tehiji's message around the world
why if we are
if we are the custodians of this wisdom
if we are the people who are now
carrying Guru Granth Sahib on our heads
why shouldn't we take it all over the world
why shouldn't we take these teachings everywhere so that's kind of how we're looking at it
one of the things i started to do as of last year is how do we get into some of
wellness you know these wellness conferences huge major global conferences never a
representative how do we get a Sikh representative on that and it doesn't have to be me i'm
comfortable with somebody else saying i can do it and i've got it there i'm like go like i would
love in a weird way i would love to retire from this work i actually it's it's not great being
the public eye all the time it's not it's not great that every time you go out you're
looking over your shoulder is somebody gonna stop me although most people stop you and say
wonderful things some left people stop you and they don't like you you know you're always
of looking over your shoulder so i don't i the the element of being recognized wherever you go
is is not something that i i didn't set out to do that that wasn't what i was trying to do and
more than happy when other people are doing projects i would love for people to the
that i have in my head to see somebody else do it i'm like great now that's done we don't i don't
have to do that you know i could do something else so i'm not trying to be the only guy
doing this i'm not trying to be somehow some superstar or some some celebrity like i i don't
like the celebrity kind of element of it if you could call it that you know but i recognize that
our role is that it's strategically viable for us to go this you know um if you look at this
sakhi of of um it comes in in in on prakash about how nabob kapoor singh got his uh navapi
mughal forces at that time realized that they were fighting with the good six with it with the
with the uh khalsa so much and they realized that this is not a good strategy we we
fighting with them we think we've defeated them then the Khalsa keep coming back and they
up with a new strategy and they said why don't we work with them why don't we give them a
kingship in one area and the Khalsa get together and they're sitting around a circle and
saying that we've been offered this Nabapi we've been offered to be you know a a lord let's
it and of a certain area of land uh and they're all going around in a circle and they're saying
[unclear — audio garbled] [unclear — audio garbled]
I can't do that, that seva But they recognised that it was important
First they were discussing Should we do this or should we not?
We've been fighting with these guys Should we do this?
And they recognised it was strategically important For us to actually have a seat on that table
And in the end they came to Kapoor Singh And they said
[You're going to become the Nawab] And he said
No, I'm nobody His seva was to do
Bakha di seva For the Sangat
He was just doing that And they said
No, no, no, we've chosen you. You're the one to do it.
And he said, I will do it under one condition that I still continue to do my seva.
So even back then, they recognized the strategic importance
of being in spaces that they're not normally in. But they recognized that I'm not doing it to become a king,
but even though I might dress like a king and look like a king on the outside,
I'm still a seva that of the pantham, the inside. That's the intention which we do it.
so sometimes you have to take on that kind of burden of being a public figure being recognizable
but always your your your duty is back to the to the guru your duty is back to the saver of the
path so it's always saver whatever we do you know and we don't do it we try not to do it to let to
let it get to our head or get to our ego you know one of the kind of questions i was just
When you were speaking Firstly it's really good
To see And have that
Panthic mindset I think that's amazing
We should be going out To all these different
Levels of the world Right
And representing Sikhi And spreading
Guru Nanak Dev Ji Maharaj's Message
But when it comes To yourself
You probably have seen A lot of feedback
Or maybe criticism About how
If people might feel You are diluting the message
Or that A lot of people
Might take the way That just because
They are shared truths In other backgrounds
And faiths That Sikhi
Is just an amalgamation Of other faiths
And stuff so how do you find that balance between giving
the uniqueness and beauty of Sikhi as well as like all this other stuff all this
shared truth and wisdom from these other so I try almost never to share wisdom from
other backgrounds what would what would be the point that ultimately everything that we do is is
trying to to elevate the message within Gurdwara Gurdwara itself so I don't see myself as
teaching other stuff like people say oh that's And I'm like, no, it isn't.
It's just this angle of Sikhi that you may not have looked at. If you look at even in ancient Indian tradition,
they're generally seen as there are four spiritual paths. Different kind of yogs they call out, different marats.
There's Gyan Marat, there's Bhakti Marat, there's Karan Marat. There's different kind of paths.
Gulbran Sahib Ji isn't just one. People make a mistake if they think Gurbani is just Gyan Marat
or it's just Bhakti Marat. It's somehow this amalgamation of two.
Of two different things and some of the Shabads that we've talked about, you know, Khoja Deda Hara Roj.
That is not about Bhakti. That is nothing to do with saying Naam Jaam.
That is actually about self-awareness. Now when I sit and I talk about self-awareness, there's more than enough Shabads that talk about it.
There are plenty of Shabads that don't have the word Naam in there. That don't have that devotional element but
actually have that self-reflective element in there. So Gyan Marik is there within Bani.
So if I explain it and people don't hear what they're used to hearing, they say, oh, he's teaching something else.
No, I'm teaching an element of Gurbani as I understand it. And there are multiple paths within Sikhi.
And I think this is a very interesting thing about what Guruji has tried to do. I don't think Guru Nanak Dev Ji came to just make another religion.
I genuinely see Guru Nanak Dev Ji as creating an umbrella religion. And I don't think, I think we do a disservice to Sikhi
by just saying it's just another religion. It's the fifth largest religion
We demote Sikhi When we just say
Oh there's all these other religions We're also a good religion
I don't think Guru Nanak Dev Ji was doing that He never was trying to convert people into Sikhi
He was genuinely teaching There are Shabads in Gurbani
That's teaching you how to be a proper Muslim What a real namaz is
What real fasting is It's there in Gurbani
Is he saying You should leave Islam
Is he saying You shouldn't do your namaz
Is he saying Don't go to Mecca
Or is he saying the reason that you do all these things is so that you can connect in this way
and i don't think we've understood sikhi in that way that we are not trying to sell you
religion what we're trying to do is we're trying to say whatever religion you belong to
we have a wisdom that can elevate that keep your religion but genuinely make it about
with the divine don't make it just tribalism which is what most religions have
they just become tribalism me and my prophet and me and my holy book and my holy book
That we're right That means that you guys are wrong
We don't play those games We're saying
There is light in all But you just don't know
How to bring that light out of you So I'm not trying to push
Any other religion In fact I'm trying to elevate Sikhi
To what I genuinely believe Is Guru Nanak's position
Which is Guru Nanak sits above Gurmat sits above
All the other religions Not from an egotistical perspective
Otherwise somebody else Would be listening and saying
Of course the Sikhs are dead Say that
But no, what I'm saying is we're not trying to just slot in another philosophy. What we're saying is we have a philosophy that you can apply.
Naam Simran works no matter what tradition you're in. Bhakti works no matter what tradition it is.
Whatever tradition you're in, this is how you find God. I think we need to position Sikhi as an umbrella tradition.
And so in doing that, you're not diluting Sikhi. You're simply presenting the ultimate truth
To the whole world Without requiring them to change their religion
And I think that's a That requires a little bit of thought to figure that out
Otherwise what you end up doing is saying In order to be a true Sikh
You have to do this, this, this and this And what we're saying is
Maybe there's a different way of doing things So thank you for sharing that
That's a really I don't think we really hear it that way that often
In terms of the idea of And that's why I think a lot of times
When you see the Speakers' corners
Of debates where They say
Why is Gurmat They just say
Become a better Muslim It's like you said
We're above All these things
Not in an egotistical way But just the way
Gurmat sits It's a different approach
Gurmat is a different approach Anji
Definitely And I think
Karim's got one more question What would be
Your advice to someone Who's starting out
On this journey As an individual
You mentioned On a Pantek level
What you're trying to achieve Which is amazing
But as an individual level What would you say?
I'm still surprised how many people within the Sikh community don't actually just read
And I don't mean memorize Gurbani. I mean actually just read Gurbani, actually do koj of what the Shabads are saying.
And I always recommend people, if you do nothing else, every day, read the hukam nama of the day and actually just read the means.
Spend time with Gurbani and do whatever else you want to learn. you want to learn santia you want to learn you
want to grow your case you want to do all things fine do all those things but have a
direct relationship with gurbani and i say this time time again i genuinely don't believe i think
there are a lot of people within the that are just afraid of gurdwara saib ji there's
just this no i'm not good enough i'm not to do it and i don't think guru nanak dev ji
would want you to have that approach and i always say people if you knew guru nanak dev ji was coming
to your town would you say i'm not worthy to visit him or would you go running to know that Guru
Nanak Dev Ji is in your town so I always say to people you have Guru Nanak Dev Ji in every
Gurdwara Guru Nanak Sahib Ji is that I'm not saying that you need to sit on the tabia and know how
to read it but we're so lucky today that we can download things on our phone we can get apps
we can get hukam numbers on our phone actually Gurbani because you will hear lots of people say
lots of things and you won't know which way turn unless you actually read Gurbani. When you read Gurbani,
you can say, okay, I understand where that person's coming from. I'm not really sure that he's saying something in line with what I've
read in Gurbani. But at least you have your base. Our base as a community, our base as a Dharam is
Bani. Bani is where it starts. Bani is where it stops. Guru Granth Sahib Ji is where it's at. And I
feel sorry for so many people within the community that just don't have that one-to-one direct
relationship with it. And if it means that you do it in English, do it in English. But actually
have a one-to-one daily dialogue with good grand sahib ji that to me is the way your sikhi can is
it's going to start and that's where your sikhi is going to end fantastic and what a great way to
finish off a final message to the sun so thank you so much for coming on the podcast uh we
about uh doing three four hours but finn you're pretty much here they're nearly the three
mark how long did we record our stay two hours by we'll leave it there then um from just your
So Jenny, Jaseki, talking about your marketing experience as well, the projects that Narmaz will be doing,
the Siddhi Japji side, translation in poetry with music, and it's a Q&A, a fantastic project.
And thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast as well, Ji.
And also just the gems that you've been sharing, the different questions you've been asking,
whether that's talking about your personal life and the family dynamic as well,
and just being a very nice person, very nice person.
I think on the point it was a modest, kind person.
Just thank you so much. It's been great to have you on tonight.
Thank you for having me as well. So I think it's really kind of you
to having me on the channel as well. So thank you so much.
Jello, hopefully when you do this we can have you on again.
I don't know about that. But for the song you're watching at home,
just make sure you check out the video, you share the video
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If you have any questions, For Paisalbjizan, leave them in the comment section or go over to the NotOnNotOn page as well
Hit subscribe and all that cool stuff as well And we see you guys in the next video
If you have any guests you think we should be interviewing Then let us know, I'm going to do that as well
Okay, finish up there? Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh