Harmandir Sahib, Amritsar · Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 4.0

Sikhism

Tradition·Founded 1499 CE·est. ~26 million worldwide

Sikhism → 1 branch

Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee

Branch
Overview Belief 38How to Live 10Practice 32Stories & Scripture 28Community 10 You × Sikhism Discussion
The Interior of Sikhism

Vismad — astonishment.

A salok in Asa ki Var simply repeats the word down the page — wondrous, wondrous, wondrous — applied to sound, sight, air, water, fire, birth and death in turn. It is one of the few religious states in the corpus that is not a stage on the way to something else.

Add to My Beliefs →
Reached throughAttention to the scale of creation, in Japji and in the Asa ki Var saloks
What it is likeAstonishment — the scripture simply repeats the word again and again with no explanation attached
What it signifiesWonder as a religious state in its own right, not a step toward one
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Vismad is astonishment, and its presence in the corpus is one of the more surprising things about Sikh interiority. A salok in Asa ki Var simply says the word over and over — wondrous is sound, wondrous is knowledge, wondrous are the beings, wondrous the forms, wondrous the air, water, fire, wondrous is the play, wondrous the coming and the going — for several lines, with no argument attached and no conclusion drawn. Sikh commentators treat it as a state in its own right rather than a stage toward something, and it is one of the passages that gets read in Punjabi schools as literature as much as scripture. It also does a quiet doctrinal job: a religion that insists nothing can be depicted needs some account of what the response to creation is, and this is it.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
Divinity saturates the ordinary. Hasidism · core tenet Go deeper →
E Eris — the guest who was not invited. Discordianism · figure Meet them →
Sound rightly spoken has power. Vedic Religion · core tenet Go deeper →
Holi — the festival of color. Hinduism · rite Go deeper →
V Vairocana — the cosmic buddha. Buddhism · figure Meet them →
K Kundakunda. Jainism · figure Meet them →

The conversation

argument stays attached to the claim it is about All discussion →

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Where next

← Anand — bliss, in the middle of an ordinary day.the previous passage in Sikhism Bhana manna — accepting the will. →the next passage in Sikhism Sikhism's Practice roomback up one layer Propose a change to this passageone button — it routes to the review pool

Numbers count Panfaith activity only — never real-world adherence.

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