Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
O my True Master, what is there that Your home does not have?
Everything is in Your home. Those You give to, receive.
Singing Your praises always, I keep Your Name living in my mind.
For those whose minds hold the Naam, the music of the Shabad plays and plays.
Nanak says: O my True Master, what is there that Your home does not have?
The saachay saahibaa, the True Master, is spoken to directly, and everything turns on the image of the ghar — the house: "what is there which is not in Your home?" (The literal translation adds the word "celestial"; the Gurmukhi says simply ghar tayrai — "Your home." The plainer reading is stronger: everything, including this world, is already inside the One's house.) Everything exists in that house, and all receiving is by gift: jis deh so paav-ay — they receive, to whom You give.
This is the bani's economy of grace, and it sets up a chain that recurs through Anand Sahib: praise leads to the Name enshrined, and the enshrined Name to the inner music. Constant praise (sadaa sifat salaah) is not a payment that earns the Name; it is the doorway attitude that lets the Name settle in the mind (naam man vasaava-ay), and where the Name abides, "the divine melody of the Shabad vibrates" (vaajay sabad ghanayray). Gratitude tunes the instrument; the music plays itself.
The teaching tradition frames this as the move from prayer to praise — from asking-out-of-lack to singing-out-of-fullness. A mind that keeps count of what is missing lives in scarcity inside a house that lacks nothing. A mind that praises discovers the storehouse it was standing in all along. This anticipates verse 31's merchant image: the capital was never ours; we trade with borrowed wealth and the Owner keeps giving.
If you made a list of what you already have instead of what you want, how long would the list be?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI