Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Let the quiet, peaceful night grow long — I want to spend it holding love for the One close.
Let the restless, aching sleep grow short, so I can keep hold of what matters.
I long for even the dust at the One's feet, and for the Name; for that love, I let lesser things go.
Soaked in that love, I'm gently glad, and the sour, unkind feelings drop away on their own.
The One took me by the arm and filled me with love; I met my Beloved on the honest road.
Please keep being gentle with me, so I can stay close.
The shabad opens with a beautiful inversion of ordinary night-feeling: usually we want the hard night to pass quickly, but here the soul asks the peaceful night of loving remembrance to "grow longer" and the painful restless sleep to "grow shorter." It's a picture of someone who has found something so sweet they want more time in it. The transformation is passive and gentle: soaked in love, "my awful evil-mindedness" simply falls away — bad feelings don't need to be fought so much as displaced by something better. And it's the One who acts first: baanhi pakri — "He took me by the arm" — grace initiating, the soul responding. For a child: when your heart is full of something good, the grumpy and mean feelings just quietly leave, because there's no room for them anymore.
What good thing, when you're full of it, leaves no room for grumpiness?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI