Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You may chant your prayers five times each day. You may read the Bible and the Koran.
Says Nanak: the grave is calling you. And your food and drink — the sustenance of this life — is finished.
The practice is not wrong. But if it is not coming from your actual presence — from what is genuinely real in you — it is just noise.
The closing pauri names specific practices across traditions — five daily prayers (Islam), the Bible (Injeel, used here as a reference to scripture broadly), the Koran — and places them all in the same context: the grave is coming.
This is not dismissal of practice. Guru Nanak himself meditated, sang, prayed constantly. It is the recognition that practice without presence — without the genuine reality of the one being addressed — is hollow. The grave does not care about your ritual count; it cares about what you actually became.
What is the most genuine thing about your spiritual life — not the practice, but the real, live, honest part of it? Can you name it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI