Guru Nanak (ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ), Nanak Dev
1469-1539 · Bhakti · Prominent
Guru Nanak founded Sikhism in the Punjab, and he is one of the few pre-modern founders of a religion whose own words survive under a mark of authorship: some 974 hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib. He taught one formless self-existent God whose hukam, or command, governs everything, and whose grace opens liberation while no amount of merit does. He called ritual purity, pilgrimage and renunciation worthless, against Brahmins and Nath yogis alike, and denied that birth carries moral weight.
Signature
The position Nanak is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
Positions on the 6 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- leans Describable (29 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (100 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (30 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (70 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- strongly leans Objective (95 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Ethics
- leans Means (80 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
14 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Nanak refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Non-Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Karmic Balance
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Divine Providence / Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Emanation
What is the origin of reality? - Authority
- Divine Revelation
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Death
- Karmic Cycle
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?