Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
If I had a hundred thousand tongues, and those were multiplied twenty times over — with each one, I would repeat the name of the Great One of the universe, hundreds of thousands of times.
On this path of devotion, there is a staircase. Each genuine step lifts you higher. Step by step, you climb — until you merge with the oneness.
Hearing of the realms of the spirit, even the smallest and most ordinary being longs to return home.
Nanak says: by grace, it is received. And the false boastings of the false — they amount to nothing.
This pauri introduces one of the great metaphors of Japji: the staircase of devotion (pat pavrhee-aa). The spiritual path is not a single dramatic leap into enlightenment. It is a gradual ascent, step by genuine step. Each act of Suniai (deep listening), each moment of Mannai (genuine acceptance), each expression of love for the oneness — lifts you one step higher.
The summit of that staircase is named in a single word: ikees — ik (one) joined to ees (the Lord) — to become one with the oneness. Every step, every quality Japji has praised, every repetition of the Name, is a rung; none of them is the destination. And the teaching tradition adds a caution for the climb: many will speak fluently of these heights who have never climbed them — koorhee koorhai thees, the hollow boast of the hollow. Fluent talk about the ocean is not the same as having swum in it. The genuine ones, it notes, are usually the quiet ones.
The image of a hundred thousand tongues is a classic hyperbole in Indian poetry — used to convey that even unlimited praise falls short of the reality it points toward. Guru Nanak's use of it is both ardent and humble: he would say it a hundred thousand times over, with every tongue — and even that would not be enough. This should inspire not discouragement but awe. What you are pointing toward is genuinely inexhaustible.
The line about the worm (keetaa aa-ee rees) is quietly remarkable. Even the lowliest creature, hearing of the realms of the spirit, is stirred to aspire. The longing for the oneness is not exclusive to the educated, the spiritual, the practiced. It is built into every form of life. The worm longs for home just as the sage does.
Naanak nadree paa-ee-ai — by grace it is received — returns us to Gurprasad from the Mool Mantar. The staircase can be climbed only because the oneness is drawing you upward. Your effort and the oneness's grace are not in opposition — they are partners in the same movement. You climb because you are being called. And the false claim of those who pretend to have already arrived — who perform devotion without living it — amounts to nothing.
Is there a practice or a discipline in your life where you have experienced a gradual deepening — where the more sincerely you engaged with it, the more it opened up? What did that process feel like?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI