Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Those humble people who keep the One in mind become pure, like clear water, clean all the way through.
Keeping the One in mind, they become pure. Following the Guru, they keep the One in mind.
They are pure, and so are their mothers, fathers, families and friends. Everyone who walks with them becomes pure too.
Pure are those who speak it, and pure are those who listen. Those who keep it in their hearts are pure.
Nanak says: pure and holy are those who follow the Guru and keep the One — Har, Har — in mind.
Pavit ho-ay say janaa jinee har Dhi-aa-i-aa — "pure become those who remember the One." The word pavit (pure, holy) is deliberately reclaimed here. In the caste-bound world of the Gurus, purity was a birth-status enforced by exclusion — who may touch, cook, enter. Here purity comes entirely from remembrance: whoever remembers, becomes pure. No pedigree, no priest.
Then the radical expansion: pavit maataa pitaa kutamb sahit — pure become their mother, father, family, and sangat sabaa-ee-aa, all their companions. Purity, redefined as inward clarity, becomes contagious rather than defended. Where caste-purity was preserved by keeping people out, remembrance-purity spreads by drawing people in — through relationship (kutamb) and through the spoken word: kahday pavit sunday pavit — pure the speakers, pure the listeners. The bani that warned against empty talk (verse 15) here shows speech at its true power: words carrying the Name transmit what they carry.
This verse also answers verse 10's severity. There the family "cannot go along with you"; here the devotee's family is purified along with them. Both are true: no one can walk another's inner path, and yet one awakened member genuinely lifts the whole household — the vine-for-generations image of the Aasaa shabads (one devotee, twenty-one generations touched). Gurmukh remembrance is never a private possession; it is a lamp that cannot help lighting the room.
Who in your life makes you feel cleaner and kinder just by being around them — and how do they do it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI