Sacred Text · The Guru Granth Sahib

The air is the guru

Japji Sahib, the concluding Slok · Guru Nanak

“The air is the guru, water our father, and the great earth our mother; day and night are our two nurses, male and female, who set the whole world a-playing. Merits and demerits shall be read out in the presence of the Judge. According to men's acts, some shall be near, and others distant from God.”
Sri Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 8 (the concluding Slok of the Japji) · Guru Nanak

Translation: Max Arthur Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors, Volume I (Oxford University Press, 1909), public domain (author died 1913), via the Internet Archive. We use Macauliffe rather than the modern Sant Singh Khalsa translation, whose redistribution licensing is not clearly established. Ang (page) numbers cite the fixed standard pagination of the printed Sri Guru Granth Sahib; a few well-known lines from Guru Nanak’s hymns are cited to Macauliffe’s volume rather than to a specific Ang. Obvious scanning artefacts were corrected against Macauliffe’s printed wording; passages are reproduced in context.

Christian comparison

How this connects to Jesus

The Japji closes with air as guru, water as father, earth as mother, and every deed read out before the Judge, so that by our acts some draw near to God and some far. The Gospel shares the sober hope of a final reckoning (2 Corinthians 5:10), yet locates our nearness to God not finally in our acts but in grace: by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-9). Compare the weighing of deeds with the mercy offered in Christ.

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