Ace mentor, visionary and writer Kamal Jit Singh Ahluwalia specialises in presenting a picture of lives of Gurus and other aspects of Sikh history through his deep knowledge, experience and practice of Management principles.  In this piece, he portrays the life of the Tenth Master with a new perspective heretofore unexplored in this manner.  In his inimitable style, the Lord of the White Hawks -fearlessness personified, taught us how to face the music of the power centres. Guru Gobind Singh was clear that forces beyond your control -the power centres -can take away everything you possess except one thing: your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.  When one is an extreme situation, the life of the Guru, as penned in this piece, should be your side.

GURU GOBIND SINGH’S LIFE’s responses to the events that he encountered,  made me wonder, that how on earth can one act so bravely, without any remorse, confusion, harbouring no hurt, grief, yet kept marching steadfastly, with more renewed vigour, in the face of mammoth challenges- those which certainly would have jolted, destroyed, annihilated, the strongest of humans. 

A mortal being of flesh and blood, with finite energy how on earth, did he possesses the infinite capacity, tenacity to make things happen better, each time, every time on a consistent basis.

For me his life is a distilled, expansive, immersing mediation on the irreducible gift of one’s own counsel, in the face of great suffering, as well as a reminder of the responsibility each of us owes in valuing the community of our humanity. There are a few wiser, kinder or more comforting challenges than what he endured- with a sense of gratitude and humility all the way. 

His life for me is influential and eloquent that helped me to better understand our time. It is an inspiring document of an amazing persona who was able to garner an Everest of good from an experience that was so abysmally bad, thus is a classical tribute to HOPE. His life lessons have a profoundly honest ring, for they rest on experiences too deep for deception. It’s a gem of the dramatic narrative focused upon the deepest human problems.

Typically a penned life of an individual has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person’s life that alone justifies revisiting and re-visiting it. Yet his life is a series of several such passages. It’s a life of not only survival but how to Think, Act, Change, Survive and Thrive. It was a brand plucked from the fire.

Yet his life is less about his travails, what he endured, going head-on with extremes of challenges than it’s about the sources of his strength to survive- live today to fight tomorrow and then making it happen. 

Remember who has WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW. His life poignantly describes those who surrendered to fait accompli –capitulated their self-respect, self-esteem, ones who had lost all hopes to lead a life of honour and dignity were the first to die –first in their beings and eventually physically. They died less from lack of food, medicine, than from lack of hope, lack of something to live for. 

Yet his life is less about his travails, what he endured, going head-on with extremes of challenges than it’s about the sources of his strength to survive- live today to fight tomorrow and then making it happen. 

By contrast, the House of Nanak kept itself alive and kept hope by summoning up thoughts of creating an enriching awareness, dignified future for one and all. Clearly, the suppressed who desperately wanted to live a dignified life did die, some of the disease, some in the crematoria.

 Read Also Learnings from Guru Gobind Singh's Safar-e-Shahadat

Yet Guru’s concern is less with the question of why most died than it’s with the question of why anyone at all survived.

Life isn’t primarily a quest from pleasure – Freud- or a quest for power- Hitler; it’s a quest for meaning. The great task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life.

The Guru saw three possible sources of meaning: 

• Doing something significant in love.
• Caring for others- each time, every time.
• Having courage in difficult times as he believed that courage was the art of living dangerously.

Suffering in and of itself is meaningless: we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. His life’s message was clear, unambiguous, straight and clear –may one remain brave, dignified and unselfish, or in the bitter fight for self-preservation, he may forget his human dignity and become no more than the animal.

You cannot control what happens to you in life, yet can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

He concedes that only a few of the intoxicated establishment –Mughals were able to do the former, but even one such example is sufficient proof that a man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.

He was clear that forces beyond your control -the power centres -can take away everything you possess except one thing: your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, yet can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

The Guru’s argument certainly is that we are never left with anything as long we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond.

An interesting incident simplifies this further in which a rich professional man appears before the Nawab that had occupied his town and shown his credentials, his letters of reference from prominent citizens and so on.  The Nawab asks him-is that everything you have? The man nods, yes. The Nawab then throws it all in the wastebasket and tells him –good, now you have nothing. The man, whose self-esteem had always depended on the respect of others, is emotionally destroyed.

The Guru’s argument certainly is that we are never left with anything as long we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond.

My own professional experience has shown me the actuality of Guru’s insights. I have known successful businessmen who upon retirement lost all zest for life. Their work had given them their lives’ meaning -the only thing and without it, they consumed days, weeks, months, years, sitting at home depressed, confused, explanatory, with nothing constructive to do, except lamenting on their missed opportunities while blaming all and sundry.

 Read Also Celebrating Guru Gobind Singh’s 42 years of a meaningful existence

I have known people who rose to the challenge of enduring most terrible of afflictions and situations; as long as they believed there was a point to their suffering and hardships. Whether it was a family milestone they wanted to live long enough to witness or the prospect of doctors finding a cure by studying their affliction. Each having its distinct clear WHY to live for, enabled them to bear the HOW.

Remember don’t simply aim for success cause the more you aim at it and make it a target; the more you are going to miss it.

My own experience echoes Guru’s life in another way.  One gains power and credibility because one is offered circumstances, situations, challenges that are extremely adverse, only to understand them better –as personally for me departure of my only child- Harjot Singh -one who transited from a normal to a special child cause of medical negligence, and made us aware of the finery of life and its manifestations, better.

The Tenth Master’s doctrine of curing the soul by leading to find meaning in life gained the credibility for me, against the background and anguish of one went through. He exalted me to be aware that life is meaningful and that I must learn to see life as meaningful despite my circumstances. It empathizes that there is an ultimate purpose to life.

One of the most religious sentences written in the twentieth century is –our generation is realistic, for we have come to know the man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers, nuclear devices, chemical warfare and weapons of mass destruction on one side; however, he is also that being,  who centered them all upright, with the Lord’s Prayer on his lips.

Remember don’t simply aim for success cause the more you aim at it and make it a target; the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause, to a person other than himself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success; you have to let it happen not by caring about it.

Life holds a potential meaning under any condition, even in the most miserable ones. I thought if the point we demonstrated, in the situation as extreme as that in the life of the Guru, this penned piece, might gain a hearing.

I urge you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge and ability. Then you will live to see that in the long run –in the long run, I say!- success will follow you precisely because you have forgotten about it. 

An important ingredient for us all in our evolution and awareness is the pivotal role of our parents –ones who are with you when all others departed -your parents- cause they have an unselfish interest in you -their vision being that you surpass them each time, every time. For them where they finished and exited should be your starting point. Thus honour thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land.

An important ingredient for us all in our evolution and awareness is the pivotal role of our parents

The purpose of penning this piece is an expression of the misery plaguing our times, and if some of us can reach out, and be aware of the message, whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails. 

Life holds a potential meaning under any condition, even in the most miserable ones. I thought if the point we demonstrated, in the situation as extreme as that in the life of the Guru, this penned piece, might gain a hearing.

I, therefore, felt responsible for penning down what I learnt and imbibed, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.

For me Guru’s life opens a new vista for me-searching for one’s life meaning and achieving it in the now with the following take-homes:

• It’s a value compass that helps me identify my blind spots.
• Imbibes the purpose effect in me by recognizing my triggers.
• Always bloom better wherever you are planted.
• Helps me to identify better my passion and perseverance.
• Induce clarity that I understand the process clearly how to get there from where I am to where I ought to be.
• Learning to swim with the sharks without being eaten alive.
• Being a rational optimist each time, every time.
• Need to hit refresh every time to excel, while under pressure.

These, my friends, are the vital ingredients for me to lead a life of fullness, awareness, total and in totality – a life of meaning, exploration, immensity and of being more human each time, every time.

It helps me to uncover my biggest bluff –the art of learning to pay attention, master my own self and triumph against my valleys.

It’s the new black swan effect for us all only if we are ready, eager to rewrite our agenda such that we do more great work by causing a quantum leap in our thinking and being. Realise your potential.

Kamal Jit Singh Ahluwalia, popularly known as K S Ahluwalia describes himself as a student of Sikhism, endeavouring to uncover, understand better the Sikh ethos. For the past two decades and more, he has been sharing insightful thoughts in print, personal interactions, workshops and talk shows on Sikh Inc. -management principles from the House of Nanak and life-transforming leadership skills.  He is a regular contributor to eminent journals and he has impacted the lives of thousands of youth with over 5.6 million man-hours across diversified audiences at more than a hundred plus global locations.