GURU NANAK DEV ACADEMY (PEHOWA)

Guru Nanak (1469–1539 CE) was born in a village called Talwandi, about 40 miles from Lahore in what today is Pakistan. He is said to have been from a merchant family. He married and had two sons. In his early twenties, Nanak moved to Sultanpur, an important town on the main road between Lahore and Delhi, where he worked as a clerk in the Lodi administration. When he was about thirty years old, he had an experience that he described as a revelation—a direct encounter with God that shaped the rest of his life.
The stories Sikhs later told about Guru Nanak, called janam sakhis, recount his childhood inwardness, along with his engagement with social issues. They tell of his honesty and devotion to truth as a youth. And they tell the story of this remarkable and transformative encounter with God. One day Nanak went to bathe in a river, accompanied by a friend. Nanak mysteriously disappeared, and his frantic friend, after several attempts to rescue him, returned to Sultanpur with the dreadful news and the clothes Nanak had left on the bank. Three days later, however, Nanak reappeared. He emerged from the water and his first words were: “There is neither Hindu nor Muslim.”

He went on to articulate that God was neither Hindu nor Muslim and so he, Nanak, would choose to follow God’s path. Guru Nanak described his mystical encounter with God in one of his hymns: He was taken to the court of God and given a cup of divine nectar called amrit to drink. This nectar bestowed the gift of God’s name upon him and he was charged by God with the preaching of the Divine name.
With this charge, Guru Nanak left his job and spent many years traveling throughout India and, according to early Sikh sources, even to the Middle East. He preached his message in the form of beautiful hymns called shabads. According to tradition, he was accompanied by Mardana, a musician and a Muslim by birth. Guru Nanak sang of the oneness of God, the equality of all people, the futility of empty ritualism.
The stories that grew among the company of his disciples give a glimpse of the wisdom of his teachings. It is said, for example, that he went as far as Makkah. At the end of his journey, he fell asleep in the broad arcades of the holy Ka’bah of Makkah. He was shaken awake by an official who scolded him for sleeping with his feet in the direction of the holy house of God. He responded, “Then move my feet to a direction where God is not, and I will sleep with my feet in that direction.”