Sahaj

Sahaj, from the Sanskrit sahaja, “born together” or “innate”, is the natural or spontaneous state. In the tantric Buddhist and Hindu poets of medieval India it named the innate reality, realized when artificial practices are let go. The sants, among them Kabīr, took up the word, and the Sikh Gurus made it a name for the highest spiritual state.

In the Guru Granth Sahib, sahaj is the state of peace, balance and bliss in which the soul rests in God, free from the turmoil of ego and desire. It is reached through the remembrance of the Name and the Guru’s grace, not by austerities or ritual, and it is lived in ordinary life: the one in sahaj remains in the world but is not stained by it, like a lotus in water.

Sahaj has often been compared with the Daoist ziran, the “self-so”, and with the Zen ideal of the ordinary mind.