Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Something I did turned me away from you, and now I feel so far. Please be kind — bring me back and make me one with you again. I've worn myself out wandering everywhere, to every corner of the earth, searching — and now I've come and sat down at your door.
A cow with no milk has lost its purpose; a crop with no water just withers in the field. And a heart that hasn't met its truest Friend — where would it ever find rest? The homes, the hearts where the Beloved isn't present are like rooms with a furnace blazing inside them. All the dressing-up, all the little ways we make ourselves look and smell nice — without the Beloved, none of it means a thing. Without you, even friends and companions feel cold and far.
So here is my whole prayer, plain and simple: please, be merciful, and give me your Name. Bring me home to you, into the place where you truly are.
This is the prologue to one of the most beloved songs in the whole tradition — the Baarah Maaha, the "Twelve Months," which will walk the soul's longing for the One through every month of the year. Before the calendar begins, this opening stanza sets the whole emotional key: a soul that feels separated and aches to come home.
Notice immediately how it explains the separation — exactly as the neighboring prayer does. By the actions we have committed, we are separated from You. The distance is not the One's withdrawal; it is self-made, the result of the soul's own turning-away. And the soul is weary — we have grown weary of wandering to the four corners of the earth — having searched everywhere else first, as souls do, before finally coming to the One's door. This is the universal shape of the journey: we look in every other direction, exhaust ourselves, and only then turn home.
The stanza's power is in its homely, unforgettable images of what a life without the Beloved is like. A cow without milk — purposeless. A crop without water — withering, worthless at market. And most piercingly, a heart in which the Beloved is not present is like a house with a burning furnace inside it — outwardly a home, inwardly an oven, no rest anywhere in it. Against this, all the soul's decorations — the betel to sweeten the breath, the ornaments, the body itself — are declared useless and vain without the One. Guru Arjan is not despising these things; he is saying they cannot fill the one emptiness that matters. And so the whole prologue narrows, as the song will narrow again and again, to a single plea: show Your Mercy, and bestow Your Name; unite me with Yourself.
What have you tried to fill an inner emptiness with — and did any of it actually cool the 'furnace'?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI