Hi Yves
The most valuable thing in this life is the breath we have. Without breath, our life is over. The five thieves steal our life-breath. Instead of remembering God with that breath as per Hukam (God’s will), we are using that breath to take a bad thought instead (lust, anger, greed, attachment, pride).
Watch this video (it is in English), at 19:40 he says what they steal: your amrit (the food for the mind), the Naam, they are preventing you, they steal your breath by making you use it in incorrect ways preventing you from getting a profit and getting the Naam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJxhR...
Hope that helps!
Hey Yves I’m sorry the video was too complicated! I think he builds on the topics over the weeks so its kind of hard to just jump into the lecture if you don’t already have background. So I will try to re-answer your question here in a way that perhaps I would explain to one of my friends and I hope it can be easier for you to understand.
In Sikhism the purpose of our life is to meet God during this lifetime. We believe in reincarnations. A soul is reincarnated into different life forms again and again, based on their actions in that lifetime (karma), until they are able to achieve that purpose. The human life is very special because it is the only life form in which it is possible to achieve our purpose. Once that purpose is achieved, we break the cycle of reincarnation.
To reach God we need to control our mind. Our mind likes to go all over the place! There are generally considered to be three categories of thoughts: “Good”, “neutral”, and “bad”. The bad is considered to be lust, anger, greed, attachment, and pride. These thoughts are like an obsession that takes over the mind. They are described as many things in our scriptures, one of them being “5 thieves.” These are called 5 thieves because they are stealing away our chance at meeting God! The more we are thinking about anger for example, we are using up all of our time in anger instead of remembering God or doing service and helping other people. Our mind gets so wrapped up, it starts to love its thoughts more than God, and forget our purpose. Does that make more sense?
