Vahiguru ji ka Khalsa, Vahiguru ji ki Fatih!

This week, we are drawn into the voice of Sheikh Farid, the 12th-century Sufi mystic whose words carry the ache of longing and the sweetness of surrender. Known as Fariduddin Ganj-i-Shakar—Treasure of Sweetness—his verses, preserved in the Guru Granth Sahib, cross every boundary, inviting us to remember what is essential: to love fully, to live honestly, to stay close to the One.

In his couplets, his words touch something profound. Not just the mind, but the heart. They don’t teach us as much as they awaken us—to the quiet pull within, to the truth we often forget, to the love we are made for.

We spend much of our lives caring for the body as a precious thing—we notice its wounds, its aging, its deterioration with the passing of time. We work to preserve and protect it. When the body is hurt, pain announces itself and we seek to heal it. But in this fixation on the body, we forget that the mind and heart are precious, too.

In the one hundred and thirtieth stanza, Sheikh Farid says:

The minds of all are rubies; breaking them is not good at all.
If, for you, there is yearning for the Beloved, do not break the heart of anyone. 

We pause.
We reflect.

We do not treat minds and hearts with care. Harshness, tastelessness, cruelty—these things leave no outward marks, and so we convince ourselves they are small. Yet the pain they cause can be deep and lasting.

All hearts and minds are precious rubies lodged within the body. They are precious because within them is the presence of the beloved One. And if this is understood, if we can understand them as dwelling places of the beloved One, the way we think and act will transform.

Sheikh Farid says if we have a yearning and excitement for meeting the One within, if we have love and devotion and a desire to connect with the One, we will not break hearts or minds. Yearning for the One is love for the One, and love for the One means we see the One in all.

This is the lifestyle to nurture and the society to envision. When children are asked what they would do if they were to become world leaders, their answers are always simple. They would make sure all people have a roof over their heads and enough to eat. They would make sure no one is cruel to anyone, that no one is hurt, that all are cared for.

We know these ideals intuitively when we are children, that this is what we ought to aspire to, not only as individuals, but as a collective.

To truly live this lifestyle means demolishing dichotomies we have created, walls we have put up between ourselves and others, good and bad, emotions and thought. To truly live this lifestyle means treating all hearts and minds as precious and deserving of love and kindness.

Let us see the One in all.
Let us expand in this seeing, in this connection.
Let us become more gracious and compassionate.
Let us become sweeter in every thought, word, and action.