Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Let wisdom be your food. Let compassion be your storehouse — the reserve you draw from when you don't know what to do.
In every heart, in every being — the music of the oneness plays. The oneness is the master of all masters. The miraculous powers and worldly riches that others chase are just another set of distractions — like beads on a string.
Union and separation — feeling close and connected, feeling alone and distant — both come from the oneness. Both serve a purpose. We come to receive what is meant for us.
I bow to the oneness, I bow. Primal. Pure light. Without beginning, without end. Through all the ages — ever the same.
This pauri continues the dialogue with the yogi tradition that began in Pauri 28, offering a different kind of inner provision than the outer symbols of the yogis. Where Pauri 28 reinterpreted physical objects (earrings, begging bowl, ash), Pauri 29 names the real food and the real storehouse of a spiritual life.
Bhugat giaan — wisdom as food — is a powerful image that appears across world spiritual literature. Plato spoke of the soul being nourished by truth. The Sufis spoke of the spiritual hunger that only knowledge of the divine can satisfy. Guru Nanak frames wisdom not as intellectual achievement but as sustenance — something you need regularly, something that keeps you alive at a deeper level than bread.
Da-i-aa bhandaaran — compassion as storehouse — is equally striking. In economic terms, a storehouse is what you draw on in times of scarcity. Guru Nanak is saying: when resources run low — when you don't know how to respond to a difficult situation, when you're depleted and confused — draw on compassion. It is the renewable resource that does not run out.
The teaching tradition sharpens why compassion, of all things, is paired with wisdom here. Knowledge is dangerous on its own: it curdles very easily into superiority — I have read the books, I understand what others don't. The moment that feeling appears, the wisdom that was meant to dissolve the ego has begun to feed it instead, like good food left to spoil. Compassion is what keeps it fresh. Where knowledge tends to place you above others, compassion places you alongside them, or below. Wisdom without compassion is not really wisdom at all; it is ego wearing wisdom's clothes.
Ghat ghat vaajeh naad — the music of the oneness plays in every heart — is one of the most inclusive statements in all of Japji. The sound-current of the oneness is not exclusive to any tradition, any practice, or any level of spiritual development. It plays in every heart. The practice of Suniai — deep listening — is, in part, about learning to hear it.
The teaching tradition makes this startlingly close. The "music" is not a faint melody in some far-off place — it is your own aliveness. The voice that sounds when you speak, the breath moving in and out, the plain sense of being present when you close your eyes: that presence is the oneness. We spend our lives assuming it is "me," something separate and small. Guru Nanak's point is gentler and larger — the aliveness you have always called your own was the oneness all along. You are not hunting for something hidden; you are learning to recognize what has never once been absent.
Sanjog vijog du-ay kaar chalaaveh — union and separation, both are set in motion by the oneness — names the fundamental rhythm of human experience. Love and loss. Togetherness and loneliness. Meeting and parting. Guru Nanak says both come from the same source and are held within the same care. This is not resignation. It is the recognition that even our most painful experiences of separation are not outside the oneness — they are inside it.
When you feel most disconnected — from people, from yourself, from meaning — what helps you find your way back? What is the thing, the practice, the person that reconnects you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI