Nadar, kirpa, mihar, prasad — the vocabulary of unearned favour is everywhere in the Guru Granth Sahib, and it is what separates Sikh devotionalism from a merit system. The last stage of Japji is called karam khand, the realm of grace, and it is not reached by climbing. This sits awkwardly beside the tradition's extremely concrete demands — rise before dawn, recite five compositions, give a tenth, keep the hair — and Sikh preachers have to manage the tension every week. The usual formulation is that discipline does not purchase anything but keeps a person in the place where the gift is given. Comparisons to Protestant grace get made in diaspora sermons, and Sikh scholars generally resist them, because there is no doctrine of a fallen nature here for grace to repair.