Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Impurity — that stain people worry about — does not come from music, or from holy books, or from the sun and moon moving through the sky. It does not come from the food you eat or the washing of your body, or from the rain that falls on everyone alike.
It is not in the earth, or in water, or in the air that spreads everywhere. None of those can make you impure. Nanak says: without the Guru, no goodness grows. The one stain is turning your face away from the One.
Shalok, First Mehl. The idea of ritual impurity (jooth) is dismantled item by item — music, scripture, celestial phases, food, bathing, rain, earth, water, air — none carry pollution. This is a dismantling of ritual-purity anxiety, aimed evenhandedly at formalism rather than any one faith. Goodness grows with the Guru (niguria gun naahee: without the Guru there is no virtue). Impurity is only turning away (muhi fayri-ai).
Have you ever worried something outside you made you bad, when the question that mattered was where your heart was facing?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI