Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The gifts are the Lord's to give — how can anyone compete with Him over who receives what?
Some people stay completely awake and alert — and they don't receive the gifts. Others are sleeping — and they get woken up and blessed. It's not about who tries harder.
Guru Nanak's radical point about grace
Dātī sāhib sanḏā, ki'o chhutai vaḏḏā — "the gifts belong to our Lord and Master; how can we compete with Him?" The gifts are not distributed on the basis of merit, alertness, or effort. They belong to the Lord. He distributes them as He will.
Guru Nanak then immediately illustrates this with the most counterintuitive example: some who are awake (vigilant, prepared, practicing) don't receive; some who are asleep (inattentive, unprepared) are awakened to be blessed. This is not a teaching about spiritual laziness. It is a teaching about not equating effort with result when grace is the operative variable.
Why this matters
This Shalok comes just after the first Pauree established the One Creator and the command to meditate. The Shalok prevents the meditation instruction from becoming a meritocracy: "if I just meditate enough, I will earn the Lord's presence." Guru Nanak inserts the corrective immediately: the gifts are His to give. The alertness, the meditation, the practice — these are the right orientation. But the giving is entirely His.
*Can you think of a time when someone received something they didn't seem to have worked for, while someone who worked very hard didn't? What did you make of that?*
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI