Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The nights and the days, the weeks and the seasons. The wind, the water, the fire, the depths below. Within all of this, the earth was established — set in place as a home for dharma, a place where the right way of living can be found and practiced.
Within the earth, all the different kinds of beings were placed — in countless colors, countless forms, with uncountable names.
According to their actions — all of them — they shall be considered. The Great One is true. The court of the Great One is true.
There, the genuinely chosen ones sit in ease and grace — those who received the mark of grace. And there, the ripe and the unripe, the fully formed and the not-yet-finished — are known for what they are.
Nanak says: when you go home, you will see this.
This pauri builds a cosmological frame and then fills it with an ethical one. The natural order — days, nights, seasons, the elements — is the setting. Within this setting, the earth was established as a dharam saal — a hall of dharma, a school for right living. This is the purpose of the human world in Guru Nanak's framework: not pleasure, not power, not accumulation. The world is the place where dharma is practiced and where the inner life is shaped through action.
The teaching tradition unfolds dharam saal in three layers. It is a place for right living; it is a travellers' lodge — earth as a stopover on a longer journey, not the final destination; and it is a school or temple, a place to learn what is really going on. Behind this sits a quiet cosmological point: in the older maps, the heavens and hells were where one merely spends merit already earned, but earth is karam-bhoomi — the one ground where new action, new karma, can actually be made. This life, however brief, is where the shaping happens. That is what gives it its weight.
Karmee karmee hoay veechaar — by their deeds, by their actions, shall they be judged — introduces the concept of the court of dharma, the sachaa darbaar (true court). This is not a literal courtroom presided over by a threatening judge. It is the honest accounting that emerges from a life honestly lived. What you have done is what you are. The record is kept not by an external authority but by the nature of reality itself. The teaching tradition locates this "true court" not in a distant heaven but within — the deepest, most honest part of you, which already knows what in your life is ripe and what is still raw. That is why the pauri's last line says the court is known only by going there: no one can report it to you; you have to sit quietly enough with yourself to see.
The panch parvaan — the chosen ones — appear here again (they were first named in Pauri 16). They sit in the true court with ease and grace, having received the mark of grace (nadar karam). Their ease is not the result of avoiding the accounting — it is the result of having lived in a way where the accounting holds no terror.
Kach pakaa-ee othai paa-ay — the ripe and the unripe are known there — is one of the most honest lines in Japji. There is no hiding in the court of truth. What is truly mature and what is still raw — both are seen as they are. This is not punishment. It is clarity. And clarity, however uncomfortable, is always the beginning of the right path forward.
If the record of your actions from the past year were read out honestly — not your intentions, but your actual choices and their effects — what would you be most proud of? And what would you most want to do differently?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI