Walking into the Word — An Exposition of Paurī 5 of Japji Sahib

Based on Maskeen Ji’s Discourse on Japji Sahib

The central problem: a wall between us and Reality

Giani Sant Singh Ji Maskeen opens his exposition from a stark, existential observation: between the human soul and God there exists a barrier — a wall built of falsehood and emptiness. This is not an architectural wall; it is a habitual structure of the mind. It is the mass of desires, identifications, and the habit of mistaking form for essence. We modern readers can recognise it easily: we pursue fame, comfort, status, and we reward external appearances with inner priority. Those pursuits are the bricks of the wall. Maskeen Ji’s katha makes two points immediately:

1. The wall is built on phrases of untruth — illusions about who we are and what offers true fulfilment.

2. The way to remove it is not more information, but obedience to the divine hukam (the divine law/ordained order), and living according to truth.

When the soul accepts hukam and begins to walk in the current of Truth, life itself — the entire kosmos — begins to unfold in a different light. Desire-driven action multiplies bondage; obedience to the inner command of Truth opens the door to liberation.

This framing makes Pauri 5 intensely practical: it is not merely metaphysical description, but a prescription. The “wall” falls not by polemics but by living. Maskeen Ji repeatedly urges us to move from admiration of form to the discipline of remembrance and service.

“Thāpiā na jāi kītā na hoi”: why God cannot be made or fixed

The Pauri begins with a paradox designed to shock the imagination: Thāpi▫ā na jā▫e, kīṯā na ho▫e — He cannot be fixed; He cannot be made. Maskeen Ji insists that this is no abstract point: it speaks directly to religious practice across human history.

People habitually try to fix God into images, concepts, rituals, and local gods. They build icons, compose liturgies, and appoint intermediaries. Yet the Pauri says: the ultimate Reality cannot be nailed down. Why? Because God is not an effect (krit), but the Cause (karta). He is conscious (chetna), pervasive (vyapak), luminous (prakash), a living presence — not an artifact made by human hands. As Maskeen Ji repeatedly notes: you can build a picture, a form, even a pious institution; you cannot build the Eternal.

This statement has two consequences for spiritual life:

• It overturns complacent idolatry of forms when those forms are treated as final.

• It redirects practice toward methods that open the soul to the living presence: remembrance, listening, and the inner sound-current rather than mere external veneration.

Maskeen Ji uses the analogy of the painter and the mountain: admire the painting, praise the painter — but who created the real mountain, the river, the stars? The painter’s portrait is limited; the original craft is boundless. In other words, don’t mistake the portrait for the source. The Guru’s teaching is a continual insistence on this point.

The remedy: sing, listen, keep love — the threefold practice

Pauri 5 gives us the remedy in three verbs: gāvīai, suṇīai, man rakẖīai bhāu — sing, listen, and keep love in the heart. Maskeen Ji expands these in rich practical language.

1. Sing (gāvīe): to sing is not only to produce melody; it is to voice the virtues of the Divine. The repeating of sacred phrases — done with depth — is transformative. Yet Maskeen Ji warns: singing that remains external is wind. Only when the sung word penetrates the heart does it become medicine.

2. Listen (suṇīe): the Pauri emphasises receptive hearing. Spiritual community (satsang) and the attentive ear are the soil for spiritual seed. When one sits and listens attentively to the Word, the relation is formed. Maskeen Ji stresses that relation demands listening first: “sunan te hi sambandh judda hai” — connection happens through hearing. (This is why the Sikh tradition places such emphasis on katha and listening to Gurbani.)

3. Hold love (man rakhīe bhāo): love is not a vague sentiment; it is an inner condition cultivated by daily remembrance. Repetition of the Divine Name, internalising the virtues, being moved by devotion — all these create bhāo (love) in the heart. When love arises, suffering is dispelled and peace arrives.

Maskeen Ji gives a gardening image: words and songs are the seeds; if you only say them once, the seed remains un-sprouted. Repetition, listening, and inward attention cause the seed to grow into fruit — bhāo, then devotion, then inner transformation.

The role of seva and name-repetition: why “those who served attained honour”

The Pauri tells us: jin seviā tin pāiā mān — Those who served Him have attained honour. In this Pauri, service (seva) is not mere ritual labour; it is the surrendering of self to the Great Giver. Guru Nanak Dev Ji draws a sharp distinction between serving the created and serving the Creator: worshipping created things increases the ego, while serving the One dissolves it.

Maskeen Ji warns about a subtle spiritual inflation: people may chant God’s name but with the aim of self-aggrandisement — “I became great because I sing.” That becomes self-serving. True seva is the service that dissolves selfishness. The Pauri’s instruction — to sing, listen, keep love — when practiced without ego, becomes the highest seva. It removes the burden of sorrow and brings the dignity (maan) that belongs to the soul.

Naad, Veda, and the Gurmukh: where the path points

gurmukh nādaṅ gurmukh vedaṅ gurmukh rahiā samāī — The Gurmukh is the sound-current, the Gurmukh is the Vedic wisdom, the Gurmukh is absorbed in God. Maskeen Ji constantly returns to the notion that the Guru’s Word (shabad) is the bridge between the finite and the Infinite.

• Naad: the inner sound — repeated Name, inner vibration. As that current grows, the soul attunes to the Divine.

• Veda: not just an ancient book, but the distilled truth that resonates in the heart. The Guru synthesises every true tradition into the living revelation.

• Gurmukh: the person who faces the Guru (and follows the Guru’s teaching) lives in the sound and the wisdom.

Guru Nanak’s point: the spiritual life is not a matter of intellectual assemblage. It is listening and becoming receptive to the inner sound. When the Gurmukh abides in that current, the identity begins to shift — from being the doer to being the attuned instrument.

The diversity of devotional media — water, earth, fire, air — and their limits

One of the most illuminating parts of Maskeen Ji’s commentary is his survey of the traditional spiritual media: some traditions emphasise earth (prostrations, humility), some water (purification rituals), some fire (austerities, tapas), and some air (repetition of the Name, vocal invocation). Each of these is a ladder — useful up to a point — but none is the final house.

Maskeen Ji explains:

• Islam’s practice of prostration (placing the forehead on the ground) uses earth as a symbol of surrender;

• Vedic traditions used water and ritual baths as a purificatory medium;

• Yogic and ascetic paths used fire and tapas to discipline the body;

• And the Guru’s path particularly elevates the pavan (wind/air, the breath and the word) as a medium of continuous remembrance and invocation.

But the sage’s warning is consistent: the ladder is not the destination. Each medium has its value, but the spiritual hunter should not mistake the means for the end. The point of every method is to produce inner receptivity so the Divine may act within. Maskeen Ji repeatedly stresses that the goal of these practices is the coming-to-speech of God within the person: when God speaks through the seeker — then true illumination occurs.

The ineffability of Divine knowledge: when words are too small

je hau jāṇā ākhā nāhī kahanā kathan na jāī — Even knowing Him, I cannot speak of Him. Maskeen Ji quotes and reflects on how saints have said that language reaches its end in the face of the Absolute. This is not a retreat from speaking; it is humility. The great teachers — Guru Arjan, Guru Nanak, and others — are unanimous: when the Infinite is known, ordinary speech becomes inadequate.

That is why the Pauri moves from description to practice. It’s one thing to say “God is beyond words”; it is another to create a daily discipline that carries us beyond speech. The Pauri’s repeated motifs (sing, listen, keep love) are the tools that do this.

Maskeen Ji adds a human touch: he tells stories of people who, by persistent invocation and austerity, entered states where speech was no longer their own — when the Divine voice came through them. Those are rare and holy moments, but they are the living proof that the path, when walked, does not end in abstraction; it ends in direct participation.

“gurā ik dehi bujhāī”: the single crucial insight

At the end of the pauri the Guru grants one consolidating insight: gurā ik dehi bujhāī — sabhnā jīā kā ik dātā so mai visar na jāī — The Guru has shown me one truth: there is one Giver of all lives, may I never forget Him.

For Maskeen Ji this is the core: the spiritual life is not the accumulation of data, but the resolute turning of attention to one Presence that gives everything: breath, food, family, intellect. To remember that Giver is to reshape the heart’s orientation. Remembering is the thread that keeps the relation alive.

He ends his commentary with a fervent prayer: may this memory remain unbroken. That, he says, is the real success of religion — not offices, not pageantry, not external honours — but the unbroken remembrance of the One.

Practical application: a short program of practice

Maskeen Ji’s katha is not merely theory, and he leaves the listener with practical steps that anyone can try:

1. Daily listening: attend satsang or set aside time to listen attentively to Gurbani or the Guru’s teachings. The first step is receptive.

2. Daily singing / recitation: repeat the Word — not mechanically, but with effort and attention. Make singing an inner event.

3. Cultivate bhāu (love): convert the habit of reading or singing into an inner attunement that softens the heart. Ask: do I feel moved? Does the repetition change my priorities?

4. Service in humility: serve others without counting the result as “my gain”; make seva a way of dissolving the self.

5. Watch for fruits: when pain recedes and a steadier sense of peace comes, you know the practice bears fruit.

This is not a list of rigid rules, but a map. Maskeen Ji’s own manner of teaching was gentle and precise — he always returned to this everyday: the heart must change, and change happens by repetition and attention.

Why it matters

We live in an era of overwhelming information and technologies that expand outer life but do not automatically expand inner life. Maskeen Ji’s katha, given decades ago, reads like a remedy to modernity: the pauri points at a simple, effective method for re-orienting attention from the many to the One. It does not reject form; it refuses to elevate form above the formless.

When the heart is full of the Divine sound and memory, outward comforts lose their tyrannical hold. The ancient promise remains true: the person who sings, listens, and keeps love in the heart will experience a diminution of suffering and an increase of abiding peace.

Conclusion

Pauri 5 of Japji Sahib is at once a description and a practice manual. It describes the nature of God (not-made, not-fixed, self-pure), it diagnoses humanity’s delusion (mistaking the created for the Creator), and it prescribes the cure (sing, listen, keep love; serve without claiming the fruit). Giani Sant Singh Ji Maskeen’s discourse amplifies these points with humane images and contemporary application: he shows us how age-old practices — prostration, ritual bathing, tapas, name repetition — are each legitimate ladders. Yet he insists they must serve one purpose: to make the soul receptive to the One who speaks within.

If you take one instruction from this essay, let it be simple: turn the ear inward and become a listener. In the listening, the seed of remembrance grows; in remembrance, love dawns; in love, the wall of illusion dissolves and the home of peace opens.