Abstract
Our obsession to connect virtually with millions has left us terribly impoverished at the personal level. We need to put our cell phones away and engage directly with one another across religions and cultures. With this in mind, Singh proposes an interfaith exercise: bring the first Sikh guru (Nanak 1469–1539) and Pope Francis in conversation with each other. Indeed, the two figures are centuries apart; they come from two totally different parts of the world and belong to two different religious and cultural traditions. And yet, each illuminates the other. Interestingly, Guru Nanak’s poetic verses I grew up on acquire enormous immediacy, meaning, and relevancy through the voice of Pope Francis’s addresses to audiences across the globe. Together, the Sikh guru and the Catholic pontiff open up for us significant new ways of recognizing the past and of being in the present; in the scholarly parlance of comparative religionists, they provide us a rich “reciprocal illumination.”
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Notes
- 1.
W. C. Smith, “Objectivity and the Humane Sciences: A New Proposal,” in Modern Culture from a Comparative Perspective, ed. John Burbidge (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 144.
- 2.
W. C. Smith, Towards a World Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981), 193.
- 3.
T. S. Elliott, “Burnt Norton” in Four Quartets, http://www.paikassociates.com/pdf/fourquartets.pdf, III, 5.
- 4.
British Broadcasting Company (3 September 2014).
- 5.
Elisabetta Povoledo, “Pope Appeals for More Interreligious Dialogue,” New York Times (22 March 2013). http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/world/europe/pope-francis-urges-more-interreligious-dialogue.html.
- 6.
Arvind Sharma, Religious Studies and Comparative Methodology: The Case for Reciprocal Illumination (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), 25.
- 7.
Dalai Lama, Ethics for a New Millennium, (New York City: Riverhead Books, 2001), 4.
- 8.
John Barbour, “The Ethics of Intercultural Travel: Thomas Merton’s Asian Pilgrimage and Orientalism,” Biography 28, no. 1 (University of Hawaii Press, Winter 2005): 15–26.
- 9.
Sonia Chopra, “‘Deeply Emotional Moment’ as Pope Blesses Expectant Sikh Mother,” The Quint, 28 September 2015.
- 10.
Paul Vallely, Pope Francis: Untying the Knots (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2015), 120.
- 11.
Pope Francis, “Why the Only Future Worth Building Includes Everyone,” TED2017, Vatican City, 25 April 2017. https://www.ted.com/talks/pope_francis_why_the_only_future_worth_building_includes_everyone.
- 12.
Guru Nanak often makes some biting critiques against arrogant men and women:
puffed up people are but the tall and ample silk cotton tree shooting up into the skies like an arrow; birds in hope of fruit fly over only to be disappointed by its bland fruit and repugnant flowers.
- 13.
Amoris Laetitia, 137.
- 14.
For the earliest and most influential translator of the Japji, see M. A. Macauliffe in The Sikh Religion, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909), 217.
- 15.
Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina), 124–125.
- 16.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York City: Crossroads, 1982), 270.
- 17.
Ibid., 270.
- 18.
Ibid., 269.
- 19.
See Note 5.
- 20.
Keeping the infinite one in mind is Guru Nanak’s essential prescription. It is frequently repeated in the Japji and all through the GGS.
- 21.
Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, The Name of My Beloved: Verses of the Sikh Gurus (New York City: HarperCollins, 1995), 51.
- 22.
Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, Of Sacred and Secular Desire: An Anthology of Lyrical Writings from the Punjab (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 38.
- 23.
Cow dung is used for plastering a kitchen floor to purify it.
- 24.
“Outsiders” (mleccha in the original) who did not belong to the Brahmanical varṇa (class) order. In this context it refers to Mughal rulers and their officers.
- 25.
Alluding to the establishment of the new Mughal regime.
- 26.
Apostolic Journey to Korea, Meeting with the Bishops of Asia, 17 August 2014.
- 27.
- 28.
“Greeting to young people before the Angelus,” Lima, Peru, 21 January 2018.
- 29.
The Lodi dynasty (or Lodhi) was an Afghan dynasty that ruled the Delhi Sultanate from 1451 to 1526. It was founded by Bahlul Khan Lodi when he replaced the Sayyid dynasty and was the last dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate.
- 30.
Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 189, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html.
- 31.
Diana Eck, “What is Pluralism?” The Pluralism Project, Harvard University (2006) http://pluralism.org/what-is-pluralism/.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Amoris Laetitia, 138.
- 34.
Pope Francis, Ground Zero Memorial, 25 September 2015, http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/september/documents/papa-francesco_20150925_usa-ground-zero.html.
- 35.
- 36.
Aliyev Mosque, 2.10.2016, https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2016/10/02/161002d.html.
- 37.
Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 256, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#II.%E2%80%82The_inclusion_of_the_poor_in_society.
- 38.
“Myopic” is another of Pope Francis’s terms that I picked up to translate the pervasive Nanakian term andhe (the ignorant blind).
- 39.
The pope’s words at the Angelus prayer, 29 October 2017, https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2017/10/29/171029b.html.
- 40.
Address of the Holy Father Pope Francis, Audience with Representatives of the Churches and Ecclesial Communities and of the Different Religions, 20 March 2013, https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/march/documents/papa-francesco_20130320_delegati-fraterni.html.
- 41.
Diana Eck, A New Religious America (San Francisco: Harper, 2001). Chapter 6 is entitled “Afraid of Ourselves.”
- 42.
For more details, see my chapter “Sikh Mysticism and Sensuous Reproductions” in Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion, eds. Tim Knepper and Leah Kalmanson (Berlin: Springer International Publishing, 2017), 113–134.
- 43.
Guru Nanak, Japji.
- 44.
- 45.
Pope Francis, TED 2017.
- 46.
Richard Blanco, “One Today: A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration, January 21, 2013” (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013) http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/today-richard-blanco-poem-read-barack-obama-inauguration/story?id=18274653.
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Singh, NG.K. (2018). Let’s Get Off Our Cell Phones and Hear a Sikh Maxim from Pope Francis. In: Kasimow, H., Race, A. (eds) Pope Francis and Interreligious Dialogue. Pathways for Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96095-1_12
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