Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Lost among other tastes, wandering — without the Name, there is only pain.
For he has not met the True Guru, the Primal Being, who gives the true understanding.
When we fill up on other tastes, we miss the one taste that truly feeds us.
This is the last of Guru Amar Das's ashtapadees, his eight-verse hymns, in Raag Aasaa. It opens with a problem these hymns have looked at again and again: an ras, other tastes. They are not always bad tastes. They are just other. They are an endless menu of stand-in flavors, tried while the one taste that truly feeds us goes untried.
An ras meh bholaa-i-aa — he wanders, lost among other tastes. Think of someone at a giant buffet, going from table to table. Each dish promises to fill them up, but only har ras, the taste of the One, can do that. Without the Name, he suffers.
The missing piece is named simply: meeting the true Guru. The Guru gives sachee boojh, true understanding, and that ends the endless sampling.
What do you keep sampling — entertainment, praise, novelty — hoping it will finally be food?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI