The Japuji Of Guru Nanak- From Spirit Born People

[Degha Singh]

JapuJi Sahib has in it the inimitable rhythm of life in Nature- it makes man a fountain that flows with the milk of human kindness. JapuJi Sahib is the text of the art of living in unison with Nature and with Nature’s God.

Nothing in the other scriptures and Bibles of men equals JapuJi Sahib, in its wonder, its depth and its simple clarity of perfect revelation of personal truth.

…this hymn gives joy; it vitalizes the whole of our spiritual being, and elevates and ennobles.

The Sikh is one with Nature and it is JapuJi that has brought this about. JapuJi Sahib is a hymn that has in its ring the tremble of the Stars, the flickering lamps of this blue-domed Temple.

…the true Sikh, a true hero, will not exchange his JapuJi for the wealth of the three worlds, for the comforts of Paradise or the joys of a dream-world of intense pleasure.

…without JapuJi Sahib one dies, that the personal love for the Guru falls into the dust and diet of daily life and that without JapuJi Sahib one is famished.

The JapuJi of Guru Nanak

From Spirit Born People (first published in 1928)

By Professor Puran Singh (1881-1931)

The modern age has been auto-suggesting through its false science of political economy that man lives on bread alone. Miserably small and depressing is this animalistic view of life. The greatest thinkers of the world have not put faith in bread alone. Pregnant with spiritual beauty are the memorable words of Jesus Christ,-“Thou shalt not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” All animals get hungry; they must go to the manger, but to glorify this physical necessity, as does the modern world, is the outcome of ignorance and of blindness to spiritual values. My eyes turn upwards and kiss the lotus feet of the Great Guru who dwells within me when I read the hopeful message,- “Thou shalt not live by bread alone.” My thirst for reality is greatly assuaged. And when I reflect that Sikhs of the olden time, the disciples of the Guru, lived on the hymn of JapuJi Sahib I am filled with joy and thankfulness. So profound has been the influence of the constant repetition of this divine music by my Sikh ancestors, the ancestry that started only 450 years ago, that when I dip myself in cold water, involuntarily escapes the song out of me as birds cry out at break of dawn. To have dissolved its pure cadences in the blood of the Sikh children is a great artistic work. For this hymn gives joy; it vitalizes the whole of our spiritual being, and elevates and ennobles. Its touch cools down all fires of desire and the peace that was the Buddha, comes to the Sikhs to both men and women as they chant the Guru’s songs. Today if you ask any Sikh child to choose between JapuJi Sahib and bread; he will answer unhesitatingly ‘JapuJi!’ I am glad whenever I find the son of Man rises above physical need. And the true Sikh, a true hero, will not exchange his JapuJi for the wealth of the three worlds, for the comforts of Paradise or the joys of a dream-world of intense pleasure. With a broken shoe, a tattered turban, and a thread bare shirt, a poor toiler on the earth without name or caste reads JapuJi as he sits clothed in the color of the false dawn under a tree in the wilderness. His eyes grow red with delight and as he opens them there is the red sun trembling in the east. The Sikh is one with Nature and it is JapuJi that has brought this about. JapuJi Sahib is a hymn that has in its ring the tremble of the Stars, the flickering lamps of this blue-domed Temple. They who live on the surface, rebuke that Sikh for wearing a white turban, but as he raises his head, the clouds disperse and reveal the snow-covered mountain. I sometimes wonder because the mountain is such a splendid Sikh of the Guru. The Sikh copies his fashions of dress from the beautiful in nature. Of what use is life, if my head does not rise above all its circumstances and conditions even as the high white mountain rises above the plains? Seeing the river that comes out of the mountains like a song, is it manly for me to have a heart that is not the fountain of all the rivers that flow? JapuJi Sahib has in it the inimitable rhythm of life in Nature- it makes man a fountain that flows with the milk of human kindness. JapuJi Sahib is the text of the art of living in unison with Nature and with Nature’s God. It describes creation, as the divine poet sees it and suggests the realization of cosmic consciousness. Our reasons are of the material and therefore negligible; but feeling is of the spiritual. Nothing in the other scriptures and Bibles of men equals JapuJi Sahib, in its wonder, its depth and its simple clarity of perfect revelation of personal truth. Those who have the likeness of God in them dwell within the inmost circle of the family that is Nature. Is it not crude to speak of ‘one’s own family’ and not to be of all families? What is that courtyard which has not the moon and the mountains within its small expanse? What is that house which has not the wondrous expanse of the whole universe? It is miserable to be small. I wonder we do not suffocate in mental misery because of this ignorant exclusiveness. But by its rhythm, JapuJi Sahib of Guru Nanak lifts us up to great heights. We clasp the stars in one hand and the roots of life on earth in the other.

It is a charmed hymn. In its repetition is life. It is wonderful that Guru Nanak resumes his personality in this one hymn of His. We meet the master in its sound. They of this earth have not yet heard of it, but the Heavens resound with its lilt.

I think it is of no benefit to translate it. Having translated it once, in another mood I am impelled to translate it again. At least I wish to translate it endlessly. And it is forever impossible to translate it. In its vision swing many universes. In its sound resides the omnipotent being. In its movement there is the thrill of the silver steps of a myriad dancers of the sky. In its repetition is the assonance of a choir of Heaven, and the companionship of the liberated souls. It teaches no philosophy but it imparts the spark of life. In its chant is the secret of the future religion of the whole mankind. And one never has enough of this spiritual chant. JapuJi Sahib will make the little sweet intense language of the Punjab the universal language of man. ‘A fond hope!’ you may say. But love has its ways. And a small track may lead to a new continent I do not know. Love works all miracles. And Guru Nanak’s chosen language may, by the love of His name, be the chosen of the people of this earth. Its cadence is audible in Heaven; this much I know.

The JapuJi in Brief

O Beloved,

Thy name is Truth.

Thou art the Person who creates,

Thou art the humanity that hath no fear, no enmity.

Thy shining spiritual form is above time and space.

Thou art immortality,

Self-radiant Thou, O Love,

Whom no birth can envisage

And no death can remove.

O Beloved,

Sacred, secret is Thy Name,

And it opens like the flower of life in the kindness of the Guru.

Thou art eternity

The beginning Thou,

The middle Thou,

The end Thou,

O Beloved,

Thou art beyond the wings of thought,

Thou art beyond the plumbings of silence.

Without Thee desire is not sated,

And all wise proposings sink with sorrow, nothing avails without Thee.

Living with Thee,

In Thee, O Great Love,

Consenting to be Thine for ever and ever is life’s fulfillment.

At the signal of Thy brow

The forms rise,

The souls are cast,

And glory gilds the brow even of the smallest, the meanest.

At the signal of Thy brow

Life is scattered in myriad positions, low and high,

And the souls rise up through pain and pleasure.

Some are the gifted beings in union with Thee

And others wander away, in their orbits, for ever and ever.

All is the superb creation of Thy eyes, O Beloved.

Thou art.

Glory, Glory, O Beloved.

All are in Thy sunshine.

Thieves, they say,

Cut-throats, robbers who live on the other’s blood,

Sinners, slanderers, liars

They say these are mean and small

But when Thou shinest, all is beautiful,

I am attracted out of myself,

Fascinated by Thee I sacrifice myself to Thee,

Glory, glory, O Beloved,

All is well.

Thy palace is of music made,

On its walls the universe breaks in song,

Its sky is full of fair dancers,

The space resounds with the rhythm of soundless bliss,

The rivers and the continents sing Thy Name, O Beloved,

The stars beam with Naming Thee

The mail-clad warrior is fierce,

But his heroic death on the battle-filed sings in faint

Tunes of love Thy anthems of personality-music.

Thy dreams roll on.

Life is inspiration of Thy Beauty,

And they are the princes of Heaven who love, who love

In that still repose of soul, in the infinite rapture of silence.

When one I buds forth into a million,

When the voices of the rivers become my voice

And the cries of birds on wind my own,

And the leaves of the forest and the blades of grass my myriad tongues,

When one call of mine to Thee, O Beloved, becomes

a million, and that million becomes a million again,

And the wheel of the whole Universe moves as a wheel

In wheel of song Naming Thee, O Beloved, and ever

In harmony with the celestial music within my soul,

Of Thy Love.

And my once saying “Thou” “Thou”, O Beloved, starts and countless ages of life saying “Thou”, “Thou”.

Of this music is made the ladder that rises up to Thee.

And they meet Thee who scaling this shining ladder cross the frontier.

Beyond, there, up, above, the highest art Thou, O Beloved,

And higher floats like the nimbus around Thee Thy song of Naam,

And the entrance unto Thy Palaces is according to the assonance of one’s soul; they enter whom Thou callest,

And the smiths that make men of themselves toil hard at their craft.

They cast and recast their souls in the image of Thee, O Beloved,

From near and far, it is the music of life that ascends to Thee.

Born of waters,

We children of earth

Hear news of Thee from the winds.

Day and night nurse all life.

According to the action of each soul are appointed places for all, be they near or far,

Those who Name Thee, Beloved, are perfected,

Bright are the faces of the victors who have learnt to live in the maddening music of Thy Presence, O Love, my Love.

Some of you will say this is not a translation of JapuJi Sahib. True it is not the million readings we can have of it, but it is one of those readings. Music has an infinite number of moods and meanings. Moreover, this translation is absolutely literal. I should be a blasphemer if I were to give any sense differing from that of the Guru in my translation of His Hymns. I like the short rendering given better that I gave in 1921 in The Sisters of the Spinning Wheel and I still like some of the passages in my earlier version. And when out of the million more renderings I have yet to give in centuries to come, I shall have selected the best, pearl-like in their beauty, and have strung them on a thread of light, I shall then make still other translations and become so vain with pride of wearing the garland, that then perhaps my ambition of translating JapuJi Sahib will have its first crude fulfillment.

I make a personal confession here. I have been saved from death by the love of the maker of JapuJi. I have doubted frequently with others of the age, the merit of repeating the psalms of the Guru, but by actual experiments conducted by myself on myself, I find that without JapuJi Sahib one dies, that the personal love for the Guru falls into the dust and diet of daily life and that without JapuJi Sahib one is famished. Without the repetition of the psalm of the Guru one becomes heavy of soul- and knows it not! Repeated singing of the psalm is to me the very essence of the best ethical state of mind. But all lyrical repetition follows love, it cannot precede it. No one who has not learnt the lesson of the sorrow of this life is capable of love of the Guru, and without His love there can be no life of the spirit.

[Heera Singh]

^^^ Amazing book, and even more amazing writer!

[Pheena]

^^^ Amazing book, and even more amazing writer!

can i purchase this book online?

i've tried google, but no luck.

[Manjot_13]

This was the book that inspired me to take amrit real eye opener. I defenatly recemedn that people read this.

[kaur_khalistani_lioness]

~vaheguru~

i got hold of this book this summer thank god!

its pure LOVE

have nevr read anything like it before...

him and rummi

evryone should have a copy.

every single word of his rhyme nd is in some kind of a flow

[Heera Singh]

^^^ Amazing book, and even more amazing writer!

can i purchase this book online?

i've tried google, but no luck.

I dunno how i cuda missed this post... sorry pheena..

http://www.sacha-sauda.ca/search.php?action=10&s=Y

go there, and put the title in the search... u can also search by writer n get all the books they have for that writer..

[Pheena]

^^^ Amazing book, and even more amazing writer!

can i purchase this book online?

i've tried google, but no luck.

I dunno how i cuda missed this post... sorry pheena..

http://www.sacha-sauda.ca/search.php?action=10&s=Y

go there, and put the title in the search... u can also search by writer n get all the books they have for that writer..

you my friend are awesome :lol: Just ordered 2 copies.

[Heera Singh]

you my friend are awesome :lol:

i kno.. jus dun tell nebody.. i's a secret

[JustME]

heres a pfd of the origional post............thanks for the sewa......amazing read :TH:

The_Japuji_Of_Guru_Nanak.pdf

[jss]

this is perhaps one of my favourite books...anytime i'm off the track...which is often, reading this book again and again...even if it's just a random passage opened up...gives the seeker fresh inspiration and guidance...

prof puran singh ji has also written several other very inspirational books which i recommend to everyone...

spirit of the sikh

Bride of the Sky

Prakasina

Chup Preet da shahen shah (this one is in punjabi..awesome read)

oh and his autobiography...On Paths of Life....very interesting life....