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Originally Posted by JustCurious  Why did Guru Nanak undertake the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood if he was aware that he would need to go and travel to share his mission? How can it be right or fair for the breadwinner to leave his family for a total of 28 years (almost half his adult life) to be a burden for others to take care of? How can it be called love to leave your wife behind with your children to fend for herself and her children for years on end. What could his sons have felt seeing their father and role-model disappearing for years on end? Even if Guru Nanak had left behind sufficient money to cover their material needs, what about the emotional and physical needs of his wife? Who was taking care of these in his long absences? Wouldn't his wife and sons begun to resent the fact that their absent husband/father was busy taking care of the "whole world was his family" & "sons(children) under the sun were his sons" instead of his own flesh and blood?
Isn't the fact that Guru Nank went gallivanting around India and other parts of the world for the majority of his children's early-mid years show as a bad example for them and also other Sikhs to emulate? How then can he be seen as a good example, when the example is bad?
Why did he see a need to go to Mecca to convince the people there of the One God when they already believed in One God and were following a strictly Monotheistic religion? Isn't that called preaching to the choir? Also if Sikhism believes that all religions lead to God, why was Guru Nanak proselytising the Sikh religion at all?
"When Guru Nanak received his call from God , he left everything & set out on a mission that has hardly been achieved by any other human being."
There are many accounts of other human beings who travelled far wider and through different parts of the world then Guru Nanak. Like Marco Polo & the famous traveller ibn Battuta who according to wikipedia:
"His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo. With this extensive account of his journey, Ibn Battuta is often considered as one of the greatest travellers ever." |
even if we will explain why Guru Nanak set out for travels far and wide people like you with narrow vision won't understand why Guru Nanak went on travels to take care of this world, In my view Guru Nanak set out a good example that alongwith your family this world is also our home so we need to take care of this world too, all or most worldly people are self centered and think about themselves only but only spiritually oriented people can think of other people's welfare, Guru Nanak thought about everyone, How can you expect a great Guru like Guru Nanak to act self centered and think of his family only? we all leave homes sometimes in our lives for our small worldly missions but that don't mean we abandon our families,
If Guru Nanak would have stayed home and spent his life entertaining his wife, accumulating money etc like all of us, I don't think it would have been a good example on part of a spiritual leader,
He did not go to mecca preaching God but to preach God is every where,one can be with God any where, he just wanted to clear that rituals like going to mecca etc are useless.
I don't think Guru Nanak was in competition with any other travellers, whatever examples you have given are useless, take home this most important point that Guru Nanak was not a human being like Mohd. he was above us