While doing research on shaheed singhs, the martyrs of Sikhism, I took a moment to play Gurbani word association with Scotty Blue, the moderator of the gardening forum. A sometimes avid gardener myself, I then ventured over to the gardening forum and entered a discussion about pollination with Scotty which naturally led to bees.
I had seen a documentary not long before showing the closeup of a stinging bee. It explained how in protecting the hive and queen, the act of stinging is fatal for the bee. Somehow it struck me that the relationship of such a worker bee to flower, queen, hive, and colony is not unlike that of the shaheed singh (martyred Sikh) who sacrificed precious life in dedication to Waheguru, Guru, sangat and the Khalsa Panth.
For the Sikh, Divine Waheguru is the life giving blossom. Guru could be likened to the queen bee. Sangat is the hive made up of the selfless workers serving queen, hive, and blossom, all the while immersing themselves in the intoxicating fragrance and immortalizing nectar of the Divine. When an attack is made from outside which threatens the congruity of the system, single minded self sacrifice of an individual for the benefit of the system perpetuates pollination consciousness. Such an inherent understanding of networking interdependence, in which each seemingly separate unit of an entity makes up the whole, is a concept of entirety Sikhs know as Ik Onkar.