Salok Sehskritee, Salok 53 — Ego and the One Healer
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
O ego — the feeling of being a separate self, apart from everyone — you are the root of birth and death, the very heart of wrongdoing.
You make people leave their friends and hold on to enemies. You spread out countless tricks of maya.
You make living beings come and go until they are worn out, tasting pain and pleasure again and again.
You make them wander lost in the frightening wilderness of doubt, and you bring them terrible illnesses no one can cure.
The only Healer is the Supreme One. Nanak says: I worship the One — Har, Har, Haray.
Ego, the feeling of being a separate self, keeps people tired and lost, and the One is its Healer.
The salok calls it the root of the whole cycle of coming and going. It makes us drop our friends and hold on to grudges. It spreads many false pictures. It makes people come and go until they are worn out. It leads them to wander lost in a wild forest of doubt, like a very hard illness.
Think of a phone stuck on its own lock screen. It is full of power but cannot connect to anything. Haumai is like that: a wound, a sickness of feeling alone.
And the verse names the cure. Baid-ya paarbarahm parmaysvar — the healer is the Supreme One. A wound can heal. Turning toward the One is how the healing begins.
When you feel most cut off from everyone, what helps you feel connected again?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI