A Letter to Guru Nanak: On Listening to the Shabad He left us

Dearest Guru Nanak Dev Ji,

I don’t deserve to write to you, but my heart won’t stay quiet until I do. My life is full of noise — the chatter of the world, the endless chasing, the mistakes I can’t take back. Some days I feel like I am suffocating in my own failures. I wear a smile, but inside, Guru Ji, I am breaking.

And then your words return to me like a whisper in the storm:

“Shabad Guru, Surat Dhun Chela.”(The Shabad is the Guru; the consciousness attuned to it is the disciple.) — SGGS Ang 943

I am not a true disciple, Guru Ji. My ears hear Gurbani, but my heart forgets its meaning. My lips say “Waheguru,” but my mind wanders in a thousand directions. And yet… when I sit in the stillness and listen, something happens.

This morning, before the world woke, I played Japji Sahib. At first, it was only sound — familiar but distant, like sunlight behind a heavy cloud. But then, slowly, the words sank deeper. My breath fell into rhythm with the bani. My heartbeat softened. And in that moment, I remembered your teaching:

“Suniai sidh peer sur naath.”(By listening, one becomes a sage, a spiritual teacher, a master of yogis.) — SGGS Ang 2

For a few moments, I wasn’t my failures. I wasn’t my guilt. I wasn’t the mistakes I keep dragging behind me. I was simply listening. And in that listening, Guru Ji, I felt close to Waheguru. Not far. Not separate. Just held.

Why do I forget so easily? Why does my ego rise up again and again, dragging me away from the sweetness of your Word? You have told us plainly:

“Ha-umai naavai naal virodh hai, do-ee naa vaseh ik thaa-ay.”(Ego is opposed to the Name; the two cannot dwell in the same place.) — SGGS Ang 560

It is my ego, my pride, my selfishness that keeps me from You. And still, when I listen — really listen — that ego falls silent. Then, like a child hearing its mother’s voice, my soul begins to cry, not from pain, but from relief.

Relief that I was never lost, only asleep. Relief that beneath the noise of the world, there is always the anhad shabad — the eternal sound waiting to carry me home.

“Anhad sabad dassai vadbhaagee.”(The unstruck melody is revealed to the most fortunate ones.) — SGGS Ang 442

Guru Ji, I do not know if I am fortunate. But I do know that without the Shabad, I am nothing. With it, even for a breath, I feel alive again.

I am ashamed of how often I stumble, but I promise you this: I will keep returning. No matter how many times I fall, I will come back to the Shabad. I will sit, I will listen, I will cry, until my soul is washed clean in its vibration.

Thank you, Guru Ji, for leaving us this eternal gift. Thank you for making sure that even centuries later, your voice still reaches me, pulling me out of the darkness. When I listen, I feel you sitting beside me, holding me like a child who thought they were lost — only to find they had been in their mother’s arms all along.

I don’t ask for miracles. I only ask that you never let me forget the sound of your Word. Let me die listening, so that my last breath may also be a return to You. The breath in which Shabad appears are the only one worthwhile and ignite the power within for other breaths to be worthwhile.

With tears in my eyes,

Your broken but longing seeker