Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
"Be kind to me," my heart asks, "so I can remember You night and day."
I love to speak the sweet, true words, and I find that whatever the One wills feels good to me.
Please be gentle with me — without You I have no other to lean on.
Everything I am — my heart, my body, whatever I have — is really Yours.
And when I feel foolish or small or all-at-sea, I remember I don't have to hold it all alone.
So I ask for shelter: hold me steady, and let the endless wandering rest.
This shabad is a prayer of total surrender — the posture Guru Arjan returns to again and again. Its heart is tera bhaanaa meethaa laage — "Your Will is sweet to me." This is one of Sikhism's most important teachings: not gritted-teeth resignation but a glad acceptance of how things unfold, trusting the One's fairness (which the raag established in Shabad 7). The self-description — "foolish, stupid, masterless, fickle, powerless, lowly" — is rendered gently as the honest feeling of being small and at-sea, not as self-condemnation; the point is that we don't have to hold everything alone. "Without You I have no other" (tudh bin avar na koee) is the trusting dependence of a child on a loving parent. For a child: it's a relief, not a defeat, to admit you can't do it all by yourself — and to lean on something bigger and kind.
What's something you've been trying to carry all by yourself that you could ask for help with?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI