Two friends came to Guru Nanak Dev Ji with a question.
Their names were Bhai Malo Ji and Bhai Manga Ji, and they put their hands together and asked him how to reach the Lord and be done with coming back and coming back.
You will have to work at it, said Guru Ji. There is dirt on a mind and it does not come off by itself.
Then tell us how, they said.
There are several ways, said Guru Ji. I will tell you what they are, and then you may choose.
The first way is the hard way, he said.
You stand up to your waist in cold water. You stand out in the heat of the day. You go without food. You sit in caves. You hang yourself upside down. You stand on one leg for hours. You eat leaves. You walk to every holy place there is and then walk to the next one.
The friends looked at each other.
The second way, said Guru Ji, is not so hard. You sit still and work on your breathing, and by that you gather your mind up and hold it in one place.
And the third.
The third way, said Guru Ji, is the easy one. You listen to the singing. You read what the scriptures say, and take the trouble to understand what they mean. And then you go and be the sort of person they describe.
That is all.
Now here is the strange part, and it is the part Bhai Malo Ji could not swallow.
The first way is the hardest, said Guru Ji, and it will get you the least.
The second is easier, and gets you more.
The third is easiest of all, and it gets you the most.
Bhai Malo Ji shook his head. Forgive me, he said. Everybody says a person is paid what he works for. The harder the work, the bigger the reward. You have just told us the opposite. We do not understand.
So Guru Ji explained it with something they saw every day.
Think about the people in your town, he said.
The man who cuts timber all day works enormously hard, and so does the man who carries loads on his head, and at the end of the week they have very little.
The grocer in his shop works less hard than either of them, and has more.
The cloth merchant works less again, and has more again. So does the jeweller.
And the man who deals in diamonds does the least work of anybody in the town, and ends the year with the most.
The first two ways, said Guru Ji, are hard work done on the body. You can wear a body out and starve it and stand it in cold water, and all you will have done is exhaust it, and then you still have to go looking for the Lord.
The third way is work done on the mind. That is where the diamonds are.
Turn your mind toward Him. Read, and understand what you read, and sing, and then do the thing the singing tells you to do. The dirt comes off quickly that way. You become good, and being good you do good to other people, and then you find yourself pulled toward Him, because He is all the goodness there is.
So the two friends went away and did exactly that.
They read. They said the Name. They sang.
And they made an arrangement between them: Bhai Malo Ji would explain what the words meant, and Bhai Manga Ji would listen with his whole attention, and then the two of them would sing them together with the music.
And people came to hear.
They also did the plain part Guru Ji had told them, which was to be honest in their business, and to share whatever they earned.
And it changed that whole town.
Goodnight. They asked for the way home and were handed the easy one, and it took them a while to believe it.