Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You cannot put a price on the God-aware person - everything worth having is already inside their mind.
Who can guess their secret? Bow to them - that is the closest you can get to measuring.
No words fit them. No limits find them.
Only a God-aware person recognizes a God-aware person - the way only the sea can hold the sea. Nanak says: bow to them, always, in reverence.
The God-aware person is too big to measure, so the only thing to do is bow.
Almost every line of this pauri says "cannot." Cannot be priced. Cannot be fully known. Cannot be put into words. Cannot be given limits. Barahm gi-aanee kee keemat naahi — no one can put a price on them.
Gurbani usually speaks this way about the One. Japji Sahib uses these words for the One's endless greatness. Now they are used for a person. That fits. Once the self has melted, there is no small, boxed-in person left to measure. Measuring such a person is like measuring the ocean they joined.
Barahm gi-aanee kee gat barahm gi-aanee jaanai — only a God-aware person knows what it is like to be one. To understand something, you need common ground with it. A cup cannot hold the sea.
So what is left for the rest of us? The pauri says it at the start and at the end: bow. Naanak barahm gi-aanee ka-o sadaa namaskaar — bow to them always, with respect. Not study, but reverence. It is the honest thing a mind does before something bigger than itself. Japji Sahib says the same: the end of the One cannot be found.
Is there someone or something in your life too big to explain? What is the right way to stand before it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI