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One of Five, Against Five

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One of Five, Against Five

Sikh devotional and ethical teaching commonly groups Sat alongside four companion virtues, Santokh (contentment), Daya (compassion), Nimrata (humility) and Pyare or Pyar (love), together framed as the qualities a Sikh cultivates in direct opposition to the Panj Vikar, the Five Thieves of kam (lust), krodh (anger), lobh (greed), moh (attachment) and hankar (ego or pride) that the Guru Granth Sahib names as the chief obstacles to spiritual progress. Sat is generally treated as foremost among the five virtues, both because of its place in the Mul Mantar and because Sikh commentary reads truthful living as underwriting the other four: contentment, compassion, humility and love are each, in this reading, forms truthfulness takes when applied to one's circumstances, to other beings, to one's own self-estimate and to one's relationships in turn.

The Five Virtues are not formalized in the Guru Granth Sahib as a single numbered list the way the Five Thieves sometimes are, but they recur across its compositions as a consistent constellation of praised qualities, and later Sikh teaching and popular religious education present them together as the positive counterpart to the Five Thieves, a practical ethical map for the ordinary devotional life naam simran is meant to support.

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