Guru Nanak's sensuous metaphysics. (3rd April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kaur Singh, Nikky-Guninder
• Is Part Of: Sikh formations. Volume 15:Number 1/2(2019)
• Page Start: 200
• Page End: 211
• Publication Date: 2019-04-03
• Subjects: Sikhism -- Periodicals; Sikhs -- Periodicals; 294.6
• DOI: 10.1080/17448727.2019.1593300
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-8727

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Religion and aesthetics are demarcated as two different avenues with 'God' and 'Beauty' as their respective goals. Opposite of anesthetic, aesthetics is clearly the heightening of the senses. But religion with its focus on God dwelling in a world beyond ours mandates a negation of those very senses. Guru Nanak, the first Sikh Guru, overturns such an antithesis. My paper focuses on Guru Nanak's Japji, the foremost devotional hymn in the Guru Granth Sahib, to explore the way in which aesthetics and religion merge together in the unitary experience of a sensuous metaphysics.