Craving Steals Your Life While the Outside Looks Perfect
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Stained on the inside, spotless on the outside.
Those who are spotless outside but stained inside lose their life like a bet in a gamble.
They catch the terrible sickness of wanting more and more, and they forget that one day they will die.
In the Vedas, the highest aim is the Naam. But they do not listen, and they wander about like restless ghosts.
Nanak says: those who leave Truth and hold on to what is false lose their life like a bet in a gamble.
Jee-ahu mailay baahrahu nirmal — "filthy within, immaculate without." The inversion is surgical: the world's ranking system reversed in five words. The polished performer is diagnosed with two linked conditions: tisnaa vadaa rog — craving, the great disease — and maran manhu visaari-aa — death forgotten from the mind. The two are one mechanism: only a mind that has forgotten its mortality can believe accumulation is a life strategy. The stakes are stated in the bani's gambling image: janam joo-ai haari-aa — they lose this human birth in the game of dice. What is wagered is not money but incarnation itself.
The verse then makes a striking scriptural claim: vaydaa meh naam utam — even in the Vedas, the Name is the highest thing — so suneh naahee — but they do not listen, and so wander ji-o baytaali-aa — like restless spirits, demons out of rhythm (baytaal: literally 'off-beat', a being out of step with the cosmic measure — one of Gurbani's most precise images for the misaligned life). The critique is not of other scriptures but of unheard ones: the cure was on the shelf the whole time.
Paired with verse 19 (pure within AND without), this pair does for purity what Japji's pauri 20 does for washing: relocate the entire question inward. Respectability is not condemned; it is exposed as insufficient. The polish is fine — it is just not the person.
If people could see your inside the way they see your clothes, what would you want to tidy up?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI