Pauṛi 1

The first pauṛis has been assigned three sloks, two by Guru Nanak and one by the second Nanak. The first slok is by Guru Nanak, and it is as follows:

Glossary:

In this, the opening slok, the Guru lays down what can be called the central theme of this bāṇi. He salutes his master and says that not merely once but he would sacrifice himself to his Guru a hundred times a day. It is the Guru who shapes Devtas out of humans and for so doing he takes not a moment.

In the Japji Sahib the central theme of that Bāṇi is to be found in Pauṛi 1, in the line ikv sicAwrw hoeIAY ikv kUVy qutY pwil – kiv sachiāra hoīai kiv kūṛay tuttai pāl, meaning ‘how is one to realize the Godhead within oneself, remove the veil of illusion and thus become True’. In a similar way, this slok here could be said to epitomize this Bāṇi. Throughout the Āsa di Vār the Guru will tell us how the crass material of the worldly human form is to be transmuted into the divine form; and how for this purpose we need the right Guru. The transformation of the Māṇas (humankind), into the Devta (the divine form), or in other words from the mundane level of consciousness to the suprahuman consciousness, can be said to be the central theme of this composition.

As the Gurbāṇi tells us repeatedly, the passage from the spiritually base stage to enlightenment becomes possible only through the auspices of a Guru, a master. For Guru Nanak here in this slok, the Lord himself is that Master. He is therefore rendering homage to the Lord and in doing so he says, in the first line, that such is the glory of the Lord and such the depth of his love for Him that he would be a sacrifice to the Lord repeatedly. Using slightly different terminology the Guru had conveyed the same sentiment in the Japji Sahib. There, in pauṛis 16 to 19 he had used the refrain, Kudrat kawan kaha vichār, vāriya na jāva[n] ek vār, meaning such is the greatness of the Lord that the Guru does not deem himself fit to even once be a sacrifice to Him. Thus we see that the Guru repeatedly says that he would very much want to sacrifice himself to the Lord but he is diffident about his worthiness to even be a sacrifice. He is saying here in the same vein, that a hundred times a day would he sacrifice himself to the Lord – his Guru.

In the second line he says the Lord can metamorphose mere humans into divine creatures and for doing so it takes Him no time at all. Implicit in the words is the thought that such transformation will occur only when the Lord so wills. This is again a thought that repeatedly occurs in the SGGS. The message is that it is our duty to constantly strive to be worthy of His grace and benediction, but that being worthy does not create an entitlement. The Lord reserves to Himself the sole right to bestow His glance of grace and none may demand it by right. The movement from the mundane to the divine will occur only when the Lord so wills. And when He does so will it will not be a lengthy, slow process but that krq n lwgI vwr – karat na lāgi vār, the moment of enlightenment will be instantaneous.

This stress on the importance of the Guru can be found throughout the Gurbāṇi. For Guru Nanak the Lord Himself is the Guru. For the rest of us it has been ordained by the Tenth Nanak that the Sri Guru Granth Sahib shall be the living Guru for all times. It is in fact the Word enshrined in the SGGS that is coterminous with God. As the SGGS, on page 982, Rāg Nat Nārāyaṇ, Mahla 4, says, bwxI gurU gurU hY bwxI ivc bwxI AMimRq swry] – bāṇi guru guru hai bāṇi vich bāṇi amrit sāray, meaning that the Word is the Guru and the Guru is the Word, and within the Word is all Nectar.

This command from the tenth Nanak becomes the last word for the follower of the Sikh faith, and this means we can find salvation by sincerely following the message of the SGGS. Others are of course at perfect liberty to make their own choices. For the Sikh a great amount of time and effort is saved because a Sikh has the good fortune to be blessed with an ever-present Guru the moment he is born. He can seek learning within the SGGS and make his way out of this morass of the cycle of birth and rebirth. For many who choose other paths, time will inevitably have to be spent seeking the true Guru and only a lucky few will find one. Some may waste a whole lifetime just in the search. Those who are staunch followers of any other true master would therefore be well advised to sincerely follow the path they have chosen, but make a firm choice as early as possible, for the time allotted to us on this earth is but brief.

The Guru is for the seeker the key to the passage from here to the Divine, said the Guru in this first slok. The next slok, which is by the second Nanak, further stresses the same point in another way. It runs as follows:

Glossary:

Literally translated, this means that were a hundred moons and a thousand suns to rise the light they shed would be as nothing. Without the Guru we will be in a state of spiritual darkness, notwithstanding the light all these suns and moons can shed. The importance of the Guru is being underlined further here.

The reference obviously is to the enlightenment that we are all seeking, the spiritual enlightenment that would lead the soul from out of the morass of ignorance that marks our existence on this earth. The light that these heavenly bodies shed is for the outside. The light that will reach inside us and banish the dark from within our souls is not the material light of this world. The light that is really required is that which will touch the spirit inside all humans; and that light is the light of the knowledge of the Divine. The source for this mystical light can be none but the Guru. Only he can set our feet on the path, only he can tell us how to move forward and only he can tell us which pitfalls to avoid. Only by listening to the word of the Guru, acquiring full faith in him and obeying strictly the prescription that he may lay down for our daily conduct, can we hope to reach that enlightened state. The Suns and Moons of this world are irrelevant to that inner illumination. Only the Guru will light up that dark space; for it is the Guru only who can provide the spiritual light needed for it.

Continuing on the subject of the vital importance of the Guru, the third slok, again by Guru Nanak, says:

Glossary:

Referring to the large number of people in this world who think they are in no need of any guidance, the Guru in this slok says they care not for the Guru and deem themselves fully aware and knowledgeable. Such ones are like spurious sesame thrown in a barren field. Without a master they are in the field and they falsely seem to bloom while inside they are only dust and ashes. The Guru is speaking of something we would have all experienced often in our lives. He speaks of those who think they know all they need to, and see not the need for a Guru to guide them. Such a state of mind is obviously indicative of a highly exaggerated sense of self-importance, of an inflated ego. In the previous two sloks the importance of the Guru has been explained and stressed. Here he speaks of those unfortunate ones who deceive themselves into the belief that they are too smart and do not need any guidance. Let us now study the slok in detail.

The Guru says in the first line that there are some who bother not for the Guru because they are so ‘full’ of themselves that they think they do not need to be educated. Puffed up with the sense of their own importance they deem it unnecessary, nay beneath their dignity, to deign to pay any attention to the Guru, or even the need for a Guru.

The Guru states in the 2nd to 4th lines what he thinks of the plight of these unfortunate ones. He says they are like unfruited sesame in a lonely field. The allusion is to a common practice in rural India at that time. The populations then were sparser than today and agricultural fields were not always cultivated. Some fields would be left fallow intentionally, others would lie untilled because there was no owner, or the farmer did not have the capacity to sow anything for that season. The Guru says the condition of these unfortunate ones is like sesame seed thrown wild in an untenanted field. Not only, he says, are these cast into this inhospitable terrain but even these seeds thus cast are spurious, leaving no chance whatever for any fruitful outcome. The term bUAwV (Buāṛ) refers to a form of weed that grows usually in unhusbanded sesame crops. The irony is that such seeds outwardly look healthy enough and they even seem to ripen normally and give every appearance of having borne fruit. However, when opened they yield no healthy oilseed. So the appearances are here entirely deceptive. The seemingly healthy growth has produced nothing but a black inedible mess. The same, implies the Guru, is the plight of these self-centered ones, who refuse to believe there is anything they need to learn. They may in real life appear to be fruiting but what they produce in reality is nothing. Their spiritual attainments in this situation will be zero.

The Guru says further that the field in which these seeds have been dropped is not only untilled, but it also has no master. Learned commentators have interpreted the phrase sau nāh in line 3 in two different ways. The term sau can mean a hundred, as in the first line where the Guru speaks of sau (hundred) moons. It also is used to describe ‘master’ except that the pronunciation would then be sauh. Prof. Sahib Singh says the term should properly be rendered as ‘hundred’, and therefore it would mean ‘a hundred masters’. He quotes the example of say, a field of gram spoiled by weather, which is then ignored for that reason by the farmer. What happens thereafter is that this neglected field will attract, and will soon then be denuded by, hundreds of poor villagers seeking firewood. Thus the field, by reason of being neglected will have suddenly found a hundred masters, but yet it is in reality without any real master. He says that the situation of the human who ignores the need for a master, a Guru, is like this neglected field. He becomes susceptible to attack by hundreds of evils born of his own uncontrolled senses. Such a mind is then overwhelmed and becomes denuded by these evils. Thus the golden opportunity that this human birth had made available is tragically lost.

Bhai Vir Singh in his commentary offers three alternate explanations for the phrase sau nāh. The first is ‘a hundred masters’, which really implies ‘no master at all’; the second meaning is ‘no master’. A third possible meaning takes the word sau as suād, meaning enjoyment. In this rendering the phrase would then translate as ‘no joy’.

Most commentators, however, have adopted the rendering as ‘hundred masters’, and this seems the more appealing interpretation. The sense of course remains broadly unaltered in either of these interpretations. What the Guru is telling us is that such unfortunate, self-centered ones without a Guru, are in the position of sesame seeds that do not yield the fruit and lie useless, and are at the mercy of everyone. Such will be their plight before the Lord also and the precious gift of this human birth would have been wasted. These unfortunate ones may often be giving the false impression of being in bloom but within them will be nothing but spiritual emptiness, the ashes of their spiritual potential.

In the pauṛis that follows, these three sloks, the Guru speaks to us of the process of creation and of the Lord Himself. The Guru says:

Glossary:

Simply translated the pauṛis tells us that the Lord created Himself of His own Will. He then created the nāo, His Name, in the form of the visible Universe, in which He resides and which is therefore the Lord manifest. With it came into existence also the set of inexorable Divine Laws, which were to be the governing principles of all creation. He then created Nature in which He resides and fondly watches what He has wrought. He is the Bestower, the Creator and gives when He is so pleased to do. He knows all and He gives and takes away life at His will. With fondness He watches from His seat. Let us now look at the pauṛis in more