Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Everything that was ever made will one day gently pass away.
It's easy to slip into doing wrong and to lose sight of the good — so it helps to stay awake to what really lasts.
This is the second alphabet poem in the raag, a companion to the first, and it too opens each verse with letters of the primer. It begins with the plainest truth: jag upjai binsai — the whole created world arises and passes away. And it names, honestly, how a heart drifts — paap kamaaveh... birthaa janam — sliding into wrong and forgetting virtue. This poem has a sharper, wake-you-up tone than the first; but underneath the sharpness is care — the sharpness of someone shaking your shoulder because they don't want you to miss something precious.
What is something you don't want to sleepwalk past while you're young?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI