Let Go the Thin Flavors and the Deep Sweetness Floods In
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
**R** — I've discovered that the flavors I used to chase turned out to be flat and empty. The things I thought I couldn't live without lost their taste once I really looked.
And in becoming "tasteless" — in letting go of that endless craving — I found the one flavor that is real. It's like this: when I set the shallow tastes aside, the true taste came flooding in. And once you've drunk that deep, wonderful sweetness, the thin little flavors just don't call to you anymore. Something better fills you up.
The letter Rarra, built entirely on wordplay with ras — taste, flavor, relish, essence, juice. ras niras kar jaani-aa — I came to know the worldly tastes (ras) as tasteless (niras). ho-ay niras so ras pehchaani-aa — becoming free of craving, I recognized that true taste. The paradox: emptying yourself of small pleasures is exactly what lets the great sweetness in. ih ras chhaaday uh ras aavaa — abandoning this taste, that taste arrives; uh ras pee-aa ih ras nahee bhaavaa — having drunk that, this no longer appeals. This is not grim self-denial but a change of appetite: once you have tasted the deeper joy (the ras of the divine, of the Name), the thin flavors simply lose their hold. Freedom here is being satisfied, not deprived.
Is there something you thought you really wanted that turned out to feel empty once you got it? What actually satisfies you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI