The Courage to Sit in the Dark and Ask

Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa

This is one of the most famous and fearless verses in all of Sikh scripture — Guru Nanak's unflinching cry against the cruelty of his times. He lived through invasions, tyranny, and the breakdown of justice, and he refused to look away or to offer false comfort. The Dark Age of Kali Yuga is the knife, and the kings are butchers; righteousness has sprouted wings and flown away. The image is brutal and exact: the age itself is a blade, the rulers who should protect their people are instead slaughtering them, and dharma — righteousness, justice, the moral order — has not merely weakened but taken wing and gone, vanished from the world like a bird flown off.

What makes this verse so powerful is its complete honesty. Guru Nanak does not pretend the darkness isn't real, and he does not pretend to easy answers. In this dark night of falsehood, the moon of Truth is not visible anywhere. Then, astonishingly for the founder of a tradition, he speaks in the voice of the bewildered seeker: I have searched in vain, and I am so confused; in this darkness, I cannot find the path. He lets himself sound lost. He gives voice to the genuine anguish of anyone trying to live well in a corrupt and violent time — the disorientation, the inability to see the way forward, the cry of people in egotism crying out in pain.

And he ends not with a tidy resolution but with a real question: Says Nanak, how will they be saved? This is a verse with the courage to sit in the dark and ask honestly whether there is any way out — to refuse false reassurance and let the question stand. It is important to read it as it is meant: not as despair, but as the honest naming of darkness that must come before the light can be truly received. The very next verse holds the answer. But Guru Nanak insists we feel the weight of the night first, so that the light, when it comes, is not a platitude but a rescue.