Advice to Physician

After giving up learning from Maulivi Kutabudin, Guru Nanak started meeting saints and hermits. When no saint or hermit was available, he used to stay at home inunersed in his own thoughts. If anybody came to the house, he talked as if he had met the person for the first time. Observing Guru Nanak's strange behaviour, his parents used to wonder. Guru Nanak also paid no attention to the tinting of his meals.

Seeing the state of Guru Nanak, people began to talk thus . "Money is dearer to Mehta Kalu than his son. For the love of money he is not giving any treatment to his son although he is the only son." Hearing the people talk like this, Mehta Kalu one day called Haridas, the village physician, to treat Guru Nanak. Physician Haridas took Guru Nanak's arm to feel the pulse. Guru Nanak pulled away his arm from the physician's hand and said, "Dear physician, why did you hold my arm?" The Physician replied, "I caught hold of your arm in order to feel your pulse. By reading your pulse, I was to diagnose your disease due to which you do not feel hunger and cat nothing and keep lying down all day. I was to give you medicine after the diagnosis which would have cured you and you would have felt hunger at the proper time."

Guru Nanak said to the physician, "Dear physician, my body whose pulse you are trying to feel is not sick. This Illness is in my mind, deep inside myself. A physician who first recognises the malady correctly and then prescribes the medicine, which frees the body from all awnings, is a wise physician. Both the body and the, mind may attain peace. One shall deem oneself to be an accomplished physician if one treat his own malady before relieving others of their fitness."

The physician, on hearing that he himself upset. He asked, "Nanak, which illness do one have? One am quite hale and hearty. Tell me quickly which illness does one suffer from?" Guru Nanak replied, "You are sick with serious illness of birth and death. This cycle of birth and death cannot be cured by your medicines. Only the physician who does not himself suffer from this disease can give medicine to cure it. That physician, who is neither born nor dies. You are not that physician."

Physician. Haridas knew only the cures of the diseases of the body. He did not know the medicine to rid oneself of the maladies of the mind but he came to understand what Guru Nanak had said. He took leave of Mehta Kalu telling him,

"Nanak has no physical ailment. He is in unversed in the love of God. Dear Mehta Kalu, please stop worrying about your son. He does not need any medicine from a physician."