Nanak speaks this prayer: without You, Lord, everything is totally false. ||1||
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
In plain words
Kings and crowds, mansions and towers, gold and silver, even beauty itself — all of it is passing, here today and gone.
So don't build your heart on what washes away. Only the One stays — everything else is just passing through.
Don't anchor your heart to things that wash away — hold onto what lasts, and enjoy the rest lightly.
The deeper layer
This is the great koorh litany — koorh meaning false in the sense of fleeting, not lasting: false is the king, false the subjects, false the whole world; false the mansion, the towers, the gold and silver, the body, the beauty. Line after line names everything people build their lives on — power, wealth, looks — as passing. It sounds bleak, but its purpose is liberating: it asks, with whom should I make friends, if all the world shall pass away? — and answers, only the One that doesn't pass. It's not saying these things are worthless or evil; it's saying don't anchor your heart to what will slip away, because you'll grieve when it does. Anchor to what lasts, and enjoy the passing things lightly, without clutching.
A Question to Sit With
What passing things do people cling to that leave them sad when they fade? What lasts?
