The Forty Days

In the town of Sirsa there lived a great many holy men, and they were all very good at going without.

Going without food, going without sleep, going without water, sitting still for days. That was their whole reputation. People came from a long way off to be impressed by them.

And then Guru Nanak Dev Ji arrived, and they did not like it.

They came to see him in a group, and started an argument, and the argument went on a long time.

If a person's mind is full of nonsense, said Guru Ji, then yes, some discipline may help to settle it. But grinding yourself down from beginning to end is worth nothing. Do not wreck your body. Forcing a mind into shape by sheer stubbornness only makes people miserable and sometimes ill.

That was not what they wanted to hear.

It is easy to talk, said one of them. Anybody can sit comfortably and read a bit and learn to argue, and then make fun of people who do the hard thing.

Show us, said another. We do not say you are soft. We can see you want nothing for yourself. But we will call you a teacher when you have done what we do, and then told us there is something better.

Then let us settle it, said a third. Forty days. One grain of barley a day and one bowl of water. Sit it out with us. Whoever comes through may say there is a better way.

And Guru Ji's companion Saido leaned over and whispered: why are you letting yourself be dragged into this. It is a foolish contest.

I know it is, said Guru Ji.

But if a child has got himself stuck in the mud, you have to step into the mud to lift him out.

These men are stuck. And they are proud of it, which is the difficulty.

So they went in.

Every one of them was given a room, and Guru Ji was given a room too, and they were watched, and the doors were guarded, and the forty days began.

It was summer, which is the worst time to do such a thing.

One grain of barley. One bowl of water. Forty days.

And at the end of it the doors were opened.

Out came the holy men, and it took them two or three days simply to be able to think straight again. They were skin and bone. Their faces had gone grey. They had done it, all of them, and it had very nearly finished them.

And out came Guru Nanak Dev Ji.

And he was exactly as he had gone in.

His face was bright. There was colour in it. He walked out of that room the way you walk out of a room you have had a good night's sleep in.

The holy men stared at him.

Have you not been fasting at all, said one of them, when he could speak. Have you been eating in there.

And Guru Ji said, mildly: were your guards awake.

Yes, they said. The guards were awake the whole time.

Then take it from me, said Guru Ji, that food is not the only thing that keeps a person alive.

They did not understand.

So he told them, and this is the part worth keeping.

I did not do what you did, he said. You spent forty days holding on with your teeth. I spent forty days in the love of the Lord.

He is the one who feeds you. Usually He does it with bread and water. He can do it another way, and He did.

And they asked him what the better thing was that he had promised, and he gave them one word.

The Name.

And they all laughed at him. Is that all, they said. What do you take us for. We say the Name every day of our lives.

You do, said Guru Ji. Your tongues say it.

And while your tongue is saying it, your mind is off somewhere thinking about comfort, and about being famous, and about the powers you would like to have.

You say His Name and mean yourself.

Goodnight. They went without food for forty days to prove something, and the one who came out looking well had not been holding on to anything at all.