Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
O my ears, you were made to hear the Truth.
To hear the Truth you were made and fastened to this body. Listen to the true bani, the Guru's Word.
Hearing it, mind and body turn green and fresh, like a dry field after rain, and the tongue is soaked in sweet nectar.
The True One is unseen and full of wonder. No one can describe what the One is like.
Nanak says: listen to the sweet Naam and become pure. You were made to hear the Truth.
Ay sarvanhu mayriho saachai sunnai no pathaa-ay — "O my ears, you were sent to hear the Truth." Pathaa-ay: dispatched, commissioned — the ears as envoys attached to the body (sareer laa-ay) with a mandate. The audit of the instruments (body 33/35, eyes 36) completes with the organ everything here depends on — for Anand Sahib is a SONG, and its economy of transformation runs through hearing: the Guru sounds the sohila (verse 16), the listeners become pure (verse 17, 40). Where Japji gives Suniai four pauris — by listening, sages, oceans, dharma — here is Anand Sahib's Suniai, compressed.
The physiology of true hearing: jit sunee man tan hari-aa ho-aa — hearing it, mind and body become HARIAA: green, verdant, sap-filled (the pun is scriptural: hari-aa/greenness carries Har, the Name, inside it — hearing Har makes you hari-aa). The dry field of the person rains into leaf. And the tongue — last verse's incurable craver — rasnaa ras samaanee: absorbed in the essence, its thirst ended by something that came in through the EARS. The instruments heal each other: right hearing cures wrong tasting.
The object of hearing remains beyond report: sach alakh vidaanee — the Truth, unseeable, wondrous — taa kee gat kahee na jaa-ay — its state cannot be told (the akath kahaanee of verse 9 again). But untellable is not unhearable: the closing command, amrit naam sunhu pavitar hovhu — hear the nectar-Name and BECOME pure — makes hearing itself the purifying act. No scrubbing (verse 18 dismissed it); reception. Grace enters through open doors, and the ears are doors that need only stop being filled with noise.
Out of everything you heard today, how much fed you — and how much was just noise passing through?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI