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Moh among the Five Thieves

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Moh among the Five Thieves

Moh in the Guru Granth Sahib names an emotional entanglement broader than the Buddhist and Hindu moha this entry is deliberately kept separate from: where those traditions use the term chiefly for cognitive delusion, a failure to perceive reality correctly, Sikh scripture uses moh for the felt bond of attachment itself, to spouse, children, wealth, one's own body, and worldly status, the specific way maya, illusion, is said to take hold of a person through love of what is impermanent rather than through faulty perception in the abstract.

Guru Nanak's compositions are careful, though, not to condemn family and worldly life as such, a position that would put Sikh teaching at odds with its consistent rejection of renunciation as the spiritual ideal: moh is not love or care for one's family but attachment that has displaced remembrance of Waheguru as the deeper anchor of a person's identity, the disorder rather than the relationship itself. The Guru Granth Sahib frequently pictures moh through the image of a person building an elaborate house of sand at the ocean's edge, investing enormous care in a structure the incoming tide will erase regardless, a warning against mistaking the impermanent for the lasting rather than a warning against building at all.

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