Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
By listening — you dive into an ocean of virtue. Deep, vast, seemingly endless.
By listening — you become like a great teacher, a saint, a king. Not through titles or position. Through what genuine listening opens in you.
By listening — the blind find their path. Those who feel completely lost — who cannot see any way forward — find a direction.
By listening — the things that seemed impossibly deep, impossibly far, impossibly hard to understand — come within reach.
For those who are devoted — there is constant blossoming.
By listening — suffering dissolves. The weight of wrong actions lifts.
With this pauri, Guru Nanak closes the Suniai sequence and prepares to move into Mannai — acceptance, or the practice of living in accordance with what one has heard. The structure is deliberate: first you listen (Pauris 8–11), then you accept and embody what you've heard (Pauris 12–15). Hearing precedes doing. Understanding precedes transformation.
The image of the ocean of virtue (saraa gunaa kay gah) is rich. In Indian philosophy, virtue is not a fixed list of rules. It is a quality — like depth in water. You can wade in the shallows of virtue, or you can dive deep. Suniai, Guru Nanak says, takes you deep. It is not enough to know the rules of ethical behavior. Deep listening connects you to the source of virtue itself — the oneness — from which right action flows naturally rather than being forced.
The line about the blind finding their path (andhai paavahi raahu) has been interpreted by scholars as referring to those blind to the truth — caught in haumai, in the illusion of separation. Deep listening dissolves that blindness gradually. It does not happen all at once. But a direction becomes clear. One step at a time, a path appears.
The closing line haath hovai asgaahu — the unfathomable comes within reach — is perhaps the most generous promise in all four Suniai pauris. Whatever you thought was beyond you — understanding the nature of existence, finding peace, connecting to something larger than yourself — is not beyond you. It requires no special talent, no wealth, no birth into the right family. It requires only the willingness to truly listen.
Has there ever been a time when you felt completely lost and then somehow a path appeared — through a conversation, a moment of quiet, or something you read? What opened it up?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI