Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Muslims pray five times each day, with five names for the prayers. Guru Nanak lovingly offers his Muslim neighbors five prayers of the heart.
Let the first be telling the truth. Let the second be earning your living honestly. Let the third be giving to others in the One's name. Let the fourth be wishing every person well. And let the fifth be praising the One. Make good deeds your daily prayer — then you can truly call yourself a Muslim. Pretending, though, only ever produces more pretending.
Continuing his loving conversation with his Muslim neighbors, Guru Nanak takes one of the central practices of their faith — the five daily prayers (namaz) — and, rather than dismissing it, fills it with inner meaning. There are five prayers and five times of day for prayer; the five have five names. He honors the structure completely. And then he offers five prayers of the heart to live inside that structure: let the first be truthfulness, the second honest living, the third charity in the Name of God, the fourth good will to all, and the fifth the praise of the Lord.
Look at what these five are: truthfulness, honest livelihood, generosity, goodwill toward every person, and praise of the One. They are not the property of any single religion — they are the universal ethics of a good and God-turned life, here offered in the form of the five prayers so that a Muslim might pray them with his whole life. Guru Nanak is not saying abandon your prayers; he is saying let your prayers become these living realities, so that the outer act and the inner truth become one.
Repeat the prayer of good deeds, and then, you may call yourself a Muslim. The real namaz, the prayer that counts, is a life of good deeds — truthfulness, honesty, charity, goodwill, praise — performed continually. And the warning that closes the shalok is the same one that closed the last: the false obtain falsehood, and only falsehood. You cannot fake your way into this. A prayer of mere words, recited over an unchanged heart, produces nothing real. But a life that becomes these five prayers — that is the genuine article, in any tradition. This is the project's vision exactly: the forms of every faith are precious insofar as they carry the worshipper toward truth, honesty, generosity, kindness, and love of the One.
If your days became five 'prayers' — truthfulness, honest work, generosity, goodwill, gratitude — which would come most naturally, and which least?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI