Talwandi (Nankana Sahib), Punjab·1469 – 1539
ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਦੇਵ ਜੀ
Guru Nanak Dev Ji
The First Light of the Sikhs
He saw no stranger anywhere, only the One Light in all.
“There is but One God. His Name is Truth. He is the Creator. He is without fear. He is without hate. He is beyond time. He is beyond birth and death. He is self-existent. He is realized by the Guru's grace.”
Mool Mantar, Guru Granth Sahib
Life
Nanak was born in 1469 in Talwandi (now Nankana Sahib in Pakistan) to a Hindu Khatri family. Even as a child he confounded his elders: when given money to make a profitable trade, he spent it feeding hungry sadhus, calling it the truest bargain. His father Mehta Kalu tried repeatedly to steer him toward worldly pursuits, but the boy's gaze was fixed elsewhere.
At age thirty, Nanak went to bathe in the river Vein and disappeared for three days. When he emerged, he spoke his first words of revelation: 'There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.' He had been taken into the Court of the Lord, given a cup of Naam (the Divine Name) to drink, and commissioned to teach. This was the beginning.
He then embarked on four great journeys (Udasis) that lasted over twenty years, traveling on foot to Mecca, Baghdad, Tibet, Sri Lanka, and across the length and breadth of India. At every stop he sang, challenged, and awakened: he sat facing away from the Kaaba to show God is everywhere, he challenged the yogis at Gorakhmata, he fed the poor with Bhai Lalo while refusing the feast of the exploiter Malik Bhago.
In his final years, he settled at Kartarpur on the banks of the Ravi, establishing the first Sikh community based on three pillars: Naam Japna (remembrance of the Divine Name), Kirat Karni (honest labor), and Vand Chakna (sharing with others). He institutionalized the langar, the communal kitchen where all sit and eat together regardless of caste or creed. Before his death in 1539, he appointed Bhai Lehna as his successor, renaming him Angad (limb of my body), establishing the lineage of ten Gurus.
One Heart
“Nanak, the whole world is in distress. He who believes in the Name becomes victorious. By the Guru's grace, one comes to know the One.”
Teachings
Ik Onkar: The One in All
There is one formless, timeless, self-existent Reality pervading all creation. It cannot be installed as an idol or captured in a creed. It is experienced through grace, devotion, and the Guru's Word.
Naam: The Divine Name
The Name is not a word but a living vibration, the direct presence of God. Constant remembrance of the Name (Simran) washes away the ego's accumulated dirt and reveals what was always present.
Hukam: The Divine Will
Everything moves by Hukam, the divine order. Suffering arises from haumai (ego, the sense of 'I am separate'). Liberation is not escape but the dissolution of this separateness through surrender to what is.
Works & Publications
Japji Sahib
The opening composition of the Guru Granth Sahib, a 38-stanza meditation on the nature of God, the cosmos, and the path to union. Recited daily by Sikhs at dawn.
Asa di Var
A collection of 24 stanzas (pauris) with accompanying salokas, sung in the early morning congregation, addressing ego, grace, and truthful living.
Compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib
974 hymns by Guru Nanak in 19 ragas are enshrined in the Guru Granth Sahib, the eternal Guru of the Sikhs, alongside compositions by Kabir, Farid, Ravidas, and other saints.
An Inspiration
Guru Nanak's uncompromising insistence on direct experience over ritual, his demolition of caste and religious boundaries, and his teaching that the Divine Name alone liberates — these are the very currents that flow through Ananta's satsang. Like Nanak, Ananta points to the One that is already here.