ਹਉਮੈਹਉਮੈ

Haumai is the Sikh name for ego, the deep habit of saying I and mine that puts the self at the centre of everything and shuts out God and other people. Guru Nanak Dev Ji taught that this self centred way of living is the root malady of human life, overcome by Naam, humility and selfless service.

What is haumai?

The word itself gives the teaching away. Haumai is built from hau and mai, two Punjabi words that both mean I or me, so the term is often rendered I, I, or I-me. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism tradition, reproduced at length on SikhiWiki, reads it as I-ness and My-ness: the instinct that makes a person the measure of every thing, and turns other people, and God, into outsiders.

That is why ego, the usual English translation, only half fits it. Encyclopedia.com, summarising a dictionary of religions, notes that haumai is something in human nature akin to self centred pride, although there is no satisfactory English equivalent. Pride is one face of it, but haumai goes deeper: it is the settled belief that the self stands alone, that what I have is mine by my own power, and that the world divides into me and everyone else. A person living inside that belief is called manmukh, turned toward the self; the person turned toward the Guru is the gurmukh.

Why is haumai a problem in Sikh teaching?

The first problem is separation. The Encyclopaedia account calls ego the wall of separation between God and man, and SikhNet's study uses the same image: the divine light is within each person, but a thick, hard wall of haumai keeps the person apart from that reality. The soul and God live together, one well known image in gurbani runs, with a hard wall of haumai between them. What is walled off in this way cannot simply be argued away, because the wall is a way of seeing.

The second problem is what grows from it. Wikipedia's Haumai article, following the Gurus' teaching, calls haumai the source of five evils: lust, covetousness, wrath, pride and attachment. On this site those five are gathered as the panj chor, the five thieves who dwell within and steal a person's peace. Haumai also drives the endless round the Gurus describe: because the self clings to itself, the person is born and dies again and again, a manmukh carried by transmigration rather than freed from it. And it shows in ordinary conduct: the Encyclopaedia account describes the egoist as self seeking and proud of caste, birth, learning, wealth or power, treating others as means to his own ends.

What does Guru Nanak Dev Ji teach about haumai in Asa Ki Var?

His fullest statement on haumai stands in a salok of Asa Ki Var, the morning ode in Raag Asa, where the Encyclopaedia account locates ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਦੇਵ ਜੀ's most comprehensive view of the subject. The salok works by repetition: in ego man comes, in ego he goes; in ego he is born, in ego he dies; in ego he gives and in ego he receives; in ego he laughs, in ego he weeps. Nothing escapes the pattern, not earning or losing, not sin or virtue, not heaven or hell, not even ideas of caste, until the person loses all sense of liberation itself.

The salok does not end in despair. It turns on a condition: man can see the Gate, the Encyclopaedia translation runs, if he understands his ego, and it closes by placing the whole drama under hukam, the divine order, within which the record of a life is written. Guru Angad Dev Ji glosses the same teaching nearby, and to him the tradition attaches the disease image taken up below. Read as a whole, the salok is less a condemnation than a diagnosis: the ego touches everything, so the cure must reach everything too.

Is haumai the same as ahankar?

Not quite, and the Gurus' hymns keep the two words apart. Ahankar, also written hankar, is ego in its proud form: the inflated view of one's own importance, the voice that says I did this, I deserve this. Haumai is wider and quieter: the underlying sense of separate selfhood itself, the habit of trusting in oneself rather than having faith in God, from which pride grows.

Scholars state the relation in slightly different ways, and this page reports the range rather than hiding it. Wikipedia, citing James D. Holt, puts it this way: haumai concerns the nature of a person's existence and their place within it, while ahankar explores a person's view of their own importance. The same article adds, citing Cole and Sambhi, that hankar is the result of haumai. SikhiWiki's Five Evils article adds that haumai is not itself listed among the five thieves, yet receives the strongest censure in the scripture, the soil on which the five flourish. Either way, ahankar is haumai showing itself as pride.

Haumai as a long disease: what is its medicine?

The Gurus also speak of haumai as an illness. Guru Angad Dev Ji described it as a deep rooted disease, the Encyclopaedia account says: as long as it remains the condition of the mind, the mind cannot act in a healthy way. SikhNet quotes the famous description in gurbani in a few words: haumai deeragh rog hai, haumai is a long disease. A chronic disease is not cured by one effort or one ritual act; it is treated steadily, from within.

The same tradition insists the medicine exists, and names it. The Encyclopaedia summary says the word of the Guru is the medicine that can cure the disease of ego. SikhNet adds the sharpest form of the point, quoting Guru Amar Das Ji: haumai is opposed to the Name of the Lord; the two do not dwell in the same place. Where Naam takes root, haumai has less room, and where haumai rules, the Name cannot settle. Illness and cure are opposites that cannot share one heart, which is why the treatment is a daily practice held in gurbani and remembrance, not a single event.

How is haumai overcome?

It is overcome the way a wall is taken down, stone by stone, and the Gurus name the tools plainly. The first is Naam: remembrance of God through naam japna and simran, the repeated, loving attention that slowly replaces I and mine with Thee and Thine. SikhNet describes the shift exactly: the seeker moves from haumai consciousness to Naam consciousness, from mai and mera to tu and tera. Meditation on the Name, the Encyclopaedia account concludes, alone can banish ego and make a person the servant of God.

The second tool is seva, selfless service, and the third is humility, nimrata, which grows as seva is practised. SikhiWiki's short Haumai article puts the pair together: humility is developed by erasing its opposite, haumai, and haumai is erased by seva and complete submission to Waheguru; a Sikh serves God by serving other people. Service works against ego because it cannot be done honestly while keeping score. The fourth support is hukam itself: ਜਪੁਜੀ ਸਾਹਿਬ, in its second pauri, teaches that everything stands within the divine command and no one outside it, and SikhNet notes the conclusion the gurmukh draws: one who understands hukam does not speak in haumai. Accepting that all is given, rather than self made, loosens the ego's grip at its root. The company of the holy belongs on the same list: egoity ceases, SikhiWiki notes, as one takes to the company of the saints.

The goal of all this is not misery or self hatred. It is sehaj, the poise the Encyclopaedia account lists among haumai's opposites, and the state of the gurmukh, who still lives, works and raises a family in the world, but inwardly unattached. Guru Nanak Dev Ji describes such a devotee as outwardly living like anyone else, yet liberated within. The wall is down, and ordinary life goes on beyond it.

Haumai in everyday Sikh life

Haumai is not only a doctrine for scholars. It is the teaching Sikhs meet in the langar hall, where everyone sits on the floor at one level and the person serving food may be richer or poorer than the person receiving it, and neither fact matters. It is met in saying tera tera, Yours, Yours, a phrase tied in Sikh memory to the young Guru Nanak Dev Ji at the grain store, giving generously as he weighed. And it is met at home and at work, in the daily choices between keeping score and letting go.

That is why the concept still anchors Sikh ethics. A faith that begins with one God present in all cannot treat the separate, score keeping self as the truth of a person. Haumai names the obstacle; Naam, seva, humility and hukam name the way past it; and the gurmukh is the proof the tradition offers that the wall can come down.