Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Without true, loving devotion, the body has no honor — like a lamp with no flame.
Without that love, the body has no honor. What can the poor helpless ones do?
No one but You has the power. Please be kind, O Lord of all that grows.
There is no resting place except the Name. Joined to the Shabad, we are made beautiful.
Nanak says: without loving devotion, what can the poor helpless ones do?
Saachee livai bin dayh nimaanee — "without true liv, the body is without honor." The key word is liv: absorbed, loving attention; devotional love as sustained inner orientation. Embodiment gets a blunt word: the body by itself, for all its wonders, is vaychaaree-aa — a poor, helpless thing — when the love it was built to carry is missing. This prepares the great body-addresses later in the bani (verses 33-38): the body came into the world because the Light was placed in it; a body ignoring that Light is an instrument never played.
The theology here is double. First, dependence: tuDh baajh samrath ko-ay naahee — no one but You has the power. Even the capacity to love truly is not self-generated; the verse asks for it as mercy (kirpaa kar banvaaree-aa — the Lord addressed as Banwari, Lord of the forest-garden, a Krishna-flavored name for the One who tends all growing things). Second, exclusivity of rest: ays na-o hor thaa-o naahee — for this soul there is no other place. Every other resting spot fails, which the bani has been demonstrating verse by verse: cleverness fails (10), ritual fails (18), babble fails (16). What remains is attachment to the Shabad, which does not merely shelter the body but adorns it (savaaree-aa) — the empty instrument strung, tuned, and played.
If your body is an instrument, what song has it been playing lately?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI