Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Those who never find such a holy True Guru — how sorry, how sorry their lives are.
This human life is a treasure, the fruit of good deeds that ripened. And yet it gets traded away for a worthless shell.
Your life is a rare treasure, and it is worth spending on what matters.
Jin aisaa satgur saadh na paa-i-aa — those who have not found such a holy True Guru. The verse uses a hard word for their lives: dhrig dhrig, which means cursed, shameful. It is the cry of someone watching a precious thing go to waste.
Janam padaarath means the treasure of human birth. It comes as the fruit of punn, good deeds that have ripened. Yet people trade it ka-udee badlai, for a ka-udee, a tiny shell once used as the smallest coin. Imagine swapping a diamond for a bottle cap. That is the sadness in this verse.
If you were given something rare and precious, how would you decide to use it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI