Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
O my tongue, you are busy with other tastes — sweet, salty, crunchy, more — but your thirst never ends.
Nothing will end your thirst until you find the subtle taste of the One, the Har Ras.
If you find the taste of the One and drink it in, wanting will never trouble you again.
This taste of the One comes by grace, when you meet the True Guru.
Nanak says: every other taste is forgotten when the One comes to live in the mind.
Ay rasnaa too an ras raach rahee tayree pi-aas na jaa-ay — "O tongue, you are absorbed in other tastes, and your thirst does not depart." The roll-call of the person (mind, body, eyes, ears) now reaches the rasnaa, the tongue — seat of both taste and speech, the body's organ of appetite. The diagnosis is how craving itself feels: an ras (other tastes, every flavor that is not the One) can occupy the tongue endlessly without ever closing the loop of thirst. Desire fed on objects regenerates — the bani said it at verse 19 (the great disease) and verse 4 promised its ending (the Name satisfies all hunger); here is the mechanism verse.
The pivot is har ras — the essence/juice/flavor of the One (ras: juice, sap, aesthetic relish — the term classical poetics uses for the essence of experience). The claim is pharmacological: har ras paa-ay palai pee-ai... bahurh na tarisnaa laagai aa-ay — drink it, and craving does not return. Not suppressed; extinguished, because the hundred surface-thirsts were misdirected forms of the one deep thirst, and the deep thirst has been met. The Aasaa shabads' Har Ras verses (Shabad 118) make the same claim: a taste that never fades. And the close: hor an ras sabh veesray — all other tastes are forgotten when the One dwells in the mind. Not renounced with gritted teeth — forgotten, the way the toy is forgotten when the friend arrives.
Received by karmee — by grace, through meeting the True Guru. For children the teaching lands easily: the endless snack-hunger of the heart has one true food; everything else is wrapper.
Have you ever wanted a snack, eaten it, and still felt like you wanted... something? What do you think that 'something' is?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI