Re­cently the se­vere storm Am­phan on the east coast of In­dia did a lot of life and prop­erty dam­age. The storm broke the record of 283 years. Watch­ing the dev­as­ta­tion on TV was quite painful. Imag­in­ing liv­ing through one such storm is sure to send a shiver up through the spine. Now if we add an eye­wit­ness ac­count or a re­port to the ex­pe­ri­ence that would re­ally be like com­pound­ing the suf­fer­ing thou­sand times. Imag­in­ing the sce­nario and con­tem­plat­ing on it, spir­i­tu­ally in­clined Bhupin­der Singh Hous­ton con­tem­plates the times of Bha­gat Kabir and ex­plores his recorded legacy of how di­vine wis­dom swept through his life. The au­thor also sketches the trans­for­ma­tion.

BHA­GAT KABIR HAS USED THE METAPHOR OF A STORM to de­scribe his in­ner trans­for­ma­tion. The storm swept through him awak­en­ing di­vine wis­dom, higher in­tel­lect in him. It came so sud­denly and with such in­ten­sity that Bha­gat Kabir feels that the storm metaphor cap­tures the essence of its un­fold­ing. The de­scrip­tion of the af­ter-ef­fects of the storm has been beau­ti­fully cap­tured by Bha­gat Kabir in the com­po­si­tion. He says:

–Be­hold, O Broth­ers of Des­tiny, the storm of spir­i­tual wis­dom has come. It has to­tally blown away the thatched huts of doubt, con­fu­sion and torn apart the bonds of Maya. 1. Pause. The two pil­lars of dou­ble-mind­ed­ness have fallen, and the beams of emo­tional at­tach­ment have come crash­ing down. The thatched roof of greed has caved in, and the pitcher of evil-mind­ed­ness has been bro­ken. 1. Your ser­vant is drenched with the rain that has fallen in this storm. Says Kabir, my mind be­came en­light­ened when I saw the sun­rise. 2.43.Guru Granth Sahib, Page 331

For Bha­gat Kabir, di­vine wis­dom came with an in­ten­sity of a storm, first, it knocked off the four thatched walls of the hut. Kabir Ji com­pares hu­man life to a thatched hut which he equates to the hut/​house of ig­no­rance. Al­though the hut is quite frag­ile to with­stand se­vere weather con­di­tions, yet its cosi­ness com­forts us. The hay mats of doubts and con­fu­sion mak­ing the four walls blew away, along with the cords of il­lu­sion used to se­cure them.

In ef­fect, he is say­ing that the ig­no­rance of the mind is tied with strings of il­lu­sion to the beams and pil­lars of the hut. Next, he de­scribes the pil­lars by say­ing that the two pil­lars rep­re­sent­ing the dou­ble-mind­ed­ness or du­al­ity sup­port­ing the hut to keep it erected came down. When the pil­lars came down the propped up beams of at­tach­ment also hit the ground.

Just as pil­lars act­ing as props sup­port the hut, the same way we are look­ing to oth­ers for props in the form of sup­port to help us dur­ing our chal­lenges in life. We put our ex­pec­ta­tions on them, yet carry a lin­ger­ing doubt in our mind if they will come through at the time of reck­on­ing or not? When the ex­pec­ta­tions are not met, there is dis­il­lu­sion­ment, dis­ap­point­ment, re­sent­ment plus soured re­la­tion­ships. Then, that grudge is car­ried on for a very long time. As the beams and pil­lars caved in, the thatched roof of greed caved in as well. In­side the hut, there was a clay pitcher of false wis­dom or evil-mind­ed­ness which shat­tered to pieces by the im­pact. So, the false wis­dom was com­pletely smashed to pieces in the wake.

The heavy down­pour fol­lowed the se­vere storm. Bha­gat Kabir com­pares it to the shower of Di­vine Naam -the Name of God Almighty, that com­pletely drenched him, in the process of trans­form­ing and re­ju­ve­nat­ing him. With the false wis­dom shel­tered in the hut of ig­no­rance al­ready crushed, a new de­tach­ment took birth within, push­ing away doubts, fickle mind­ed­ness, and fears, along with evil thoughts that are prompt­ing the mind to im­ple­ment them.

The evil deeds as a di­rect re­sult of evil thoughts were also com­pletely ban­ished. All the im­ped­i­ments to di­vine wis­dom were washed away, like be­ing cleaned in a heavy down­pour. Now, the fickle mind­ed­ness was purged from within, re­placed with equipoise and faith in Almighty.

When the down­pour fi­nally stopped early next morn­ing the bright sun came out and every­thing was glit­ter­ing, pris­tine, re­flect­ing in the Sun. The bright sun and clear skies that greet the dawn of the new day came in the form of di­vine wis­dom. The clear bright spec­ta­cle was a re­al­iza­tion that every­thing that he was wit­ness­ing had the di­vine essence in it and the same essence was in­side him as well. This is the dawn of di­vine wis­dom, which has dri­ven away the false wis­dom.

The trans­for­ma­tion in the states of the mind oc­curs thus:

Orig­i­nal State of Mind	New /Trans­formed State of Mind
Doubt	Faith
Il­lu­sion	Clar­ity
Du­al­ity/​Dou­ble-mind­ed­ness	Firm con­vic­tion
At­tach­ment	De­tach­ment
Greedy/​Self­ish	Al­tru­is­tic
False Wis­dom	Di­vine Wis­dom

So, the false wis­dom acted like a shell, a cap­sule con­tain­ing the other first five listed above it. The storm like di­vine wis­dom dawned, dri­ving away the wa­ver­ing mind, il­lu­sion, con­fu­sion, greed, and at­tach­ment to the world. The dou­ble-mind­ed­ness which was fe­ro­ciously swing­ing like a pen­du­lum from one ex­treme to an­other com­pletely stopped mov­ing.

Now, his mind was in a neu­tral state, poised, to­tally calm with­out any lust, greed, crav­ing or at­tach­ment to the world. As the new day dawned, the bright Sun rose, that il­lu­mi­nated his mind with the new di­vine wis­dom. The mind had tran­scended lim­i­ta­tions. Now, it saw the di­vine in every­thing and in him­self as well. Every­thing wit­nessed or ob­served was part of the Lim­it­less. The bliss­ful feel­ing that he ex­pe­ri­enced, he shared it in these words:

“ਅਬ ਹਮ ਤੁਮ ਏਕ ਭਏ ਹਹਿ ਏਕੈ ਦੇਖਤ ਮਨੁ ਪਤੀਆਹੀ ॥੧॥”
Now, You and I have be­come one; see­ing this, my mind is con­tent.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 339

An en­gi­neer by pro­fes­sion, hail­ing from Myan­mar, ed­u­cated in In­dia, Bhupin­der Singh is a Hous­ton-based busi­ness­man, with a keen in­ter­est in writ­ing books and ar­ti­cles on Sikh his­tory, mo­ti­va­tion and spir­i­tu­al­ity.