Misinterpretation of Guru Granth Sahib

on various sites sikhs and non sikhs i have seen that severe misinterpretation of guru granth sahib is going on.people just take one or two lines from guru granth sahib and try to prove their point.sometime after reading the whole shabad it is not possible to understand meaning.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/sikh-sikhi-sikhism/14271-misinterpretation-of-guru-granth-sahib.html

today i found a site on kabir's mystic poetry.i am
very much impressed by the site.because along with the poetry they have also tried to explain the poetry.

Kabir : The Mystic Poet
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=14271

i think we sikhs should made a site which also explain
the meaning of the shabad in english.i want to the views of the people here.
thanks.

 
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Absolutely.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=14271
A shabads in Guru Granth are like poems. One must underatnd the whole poem to make sense of it.

Their is this thread on the forum Zafarnama, if you read the starting lines only one would come to conclusion Aurangzed was great but you gotta the read the whole Zafarnama to understand the point.

A noble pursuit, and one that I fully support.

However, there are two factors that one of a reflectory disposition ought to take into account.

1. Depending on the linguistic skills of the translators, the quality of their translatory work will be of varying degrees.
2. The interpretation of the Granth will vary depending upon the person who is interpreting it.

As you see, whilst there may be a Universal Truth within the writings of the Granth, not every person will necessarily see that Truth. And, like any poetry, what an individual gets from it depends entirely on the mindset of that individual.

I think that the journey of discovering the meanings of the Granth should be a personal one, as should the experience of gaining whatever answers you think you have received from it.

That is a big topic Max, does the Guru Granth contain an objective truth for us all? Is their a unified single clear message contained therein? Or is is designed to be a subjective truth as you have a preference for.

Technology (and the Gurus nadar), I think, is going to enable us to answer these things definitively soon. Now we can search all instances of a word in the granth and make comparisons to see if our hypothesis regarding meaning fits all. This will help us pinpoint exact meanings more accurately. We could also cross reference with the use of the shabads in other contemporary literature (not that I am comparing the two!). Think about the poor gyani of the past who had to singlehandedly interpret the Guru for the sangat with the minimal of training. Over the next few generations our understanding of our Guru should increase dramatically (I hope!)

Regarding misinterpretations, although my Sant Bhasha is not the best, I too often note a serious discrepancy between the words I understand and know in the shabad and those contained in the translation. Often even the sizes of the two lines are massively different. This suggests some poetic license on part of the translator.

One possible suggestion is to strictly use (if they exist), words that directly translate from those in the original where possible. We should discourage over interpretation in translation perhaps?

You raise an interesting dicsussion.


But, personally, I don't feel that the "technology" of the future is necessary as a verification of Granthian assertions. A volume whose earliest poetic works date back as far as the 14th Century AD, according to some calenders,
are obviously not designed to have the facets of their meaning facilitated by modern technology. Rather, it's a meditation on a moralistic standpoint; something that no amount of scientific advancement can ever necessarly discern.

In the Nietzschean Void - a nihilistic vision that seems to be increasingly realistic as science does indeed progress with much haste into the first half of the 21st Century - there is little else but social tradition and religious doctrine to act as a moralistic legislature by which human beings may govern their actions. Sikkhism - like so many other organised religions around the world - attempts to remedy the Void by embuing within every man, woman and child a very real sense of existential purpose.

Most religious texts do this by explaining things through metaphors, be they abstract or narrative poetics. The problem is when people start taking those metaphors and become far too bogged down in trying to divulge their apparently cloaked literal meanings, whilst completely missing the point that the passage is trying to make. This is the same mistakes that the Hindus made when reading their own holy verses.

In my view, if one is to see the Granth for its true worth, they must revolutionise and re-think their entire approach to experiencing it.

I'd like to draw your attention to a quotation by the renowned psychoanalyst and neurologist, Sigmund Freud:


The problem is, of course, that the arena of an omnipotent, formles, timeless and self-existent God is nowhere near the vicinity of being "commensurate with...[the] intellectual level" of human beings. Moreover, how on Earth does one begin to articulate such concepts in the limited form of human language?

Poetry and poetic metaphor are, it would seem, the only viable form in which to even attempt this.

But that doesn't mean that the metaphors are truths in and of themselves. Rather, they are vessels within which you must be willing to be carried if you are to reach the destination that they promise. And this can't be done with a scientific or technologically dependent mindset.

At the risk of sounding terribly bourgeoise, you have to "free your mind"...but you have to "free" it in the right direction. That direction can only come through consciences intuition, which is the truest state of gurmukh.

Sorry Max, you lost me there.

BTW, I wouldn't pay too much attention to Freud. He is very original but his theories were based mainly on research using a small sample of middle class Viennese women, hardly representative of the world. Plus most people think he had major sexual issues that were clearly projected onto his work.

I think you may be better off looking at Carl Rogers or Bandura. The latter is especially good.

My point in the original text was refering to semantics mainly, or the meaning of words. This isn't always clear in sant bhasha but I think that technology will help in pinpointing meanings through cross references. I mean now it is easy to quickly find all instances of a word, this wasn't really possible before.

I still feel that the message within the Granth may be made clearer through this, but I agree with you that our own mindset needs to change when we look into the Guru as well. Someone once said that it needed to be approached both analytically and devotionally, either on its own is incomplete.

But still translations that stay as close to the original are preferable than freely interpreted ones in my mind.

I'm not even going to talk about the state of Brahmgiani.....personally I feel I haven't even stepped on the first rung of the ladder of spirituality

i want all of you to show something
if we read following lines.guru granth sahib looks quite against women
ਮਨਮੁਖਾ ਦੈ ਸਿਰਿ ਜੋਰਾ ਅਮਰੁ ਹੈ ਨਿਤ ਦੇਵਹਿ ਭਲਾ ॥
मनमुखा दै सिरि जोरा अमरु है नित देवहि भला ॥
manmukhaa dai sir joraa amar hai nit dayveh bhalaa.
Over the head of the manmukh is the order of the woman; to her, he ever holds out his promises of goodness.


ਜੋਰਾ ਦਾ ਆਖਿਆ ਪੁਰਖ ਕਮਾਵਦੇ ਸੇ ਅਪਵਿਤ ਅਮੇਧ ਖਲਾ ॥
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=14271
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=14271
जोरा दा आखिआ पुरख कमावदे से अपवित अमेध खला ॥
joraa daa aakhi-aa purakh kamaavday say apvit amayDh khalaa.
Those men who act according to the orders of women are impure, filthy and foolish.

Dear Kds1980

These lines are written not written for man womwn realtion in general instead it represent a specific situation( but common) where man looses his purpose due to greed and personal benefits in the relation with women and in essence become manmukh.
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Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=14271

These lines could be better understood if somebody has read Tria Charitar in Dasam Granth as it explains such relations and consequences in detail



Jatinder Singh