Your body is a field. What you plant in it is what you harvest.
The Arc
Guru Ram Das sings the body as a field of action. The Name rests on every breath and is the one support a heart can lean on. Worked with care, this field yields the priceless jewel of the Name, which pours into hearts made ready by love. Humility -- becoming the servant of the servant -- opens the mouth to speak the unspeakable. A mind burning with wanting is cooled by the water of the Name; then the mind begins to dance before the teaching to an unstruck music, and a stream of pure sweetness flows from the home within. Rituals done from pride are sand castles the ocean erases in a moment. The song ends in one of Gurbani's loveliest images: the One is both the pool and the sea, the world is His play, and as waves rise and fall back into water, everything returns into Him.
Key Vocabulary
karam kee dhartee -- the body pictured as a field of action, where what you sow grows
laal javehar -- rubies and jewels, standing for the riches of the Name
anhad shabad -- the unstruck sound, a music heard within, not made by any instrument
nij ghar -- the home within, your own true center
jal tarang -- waves of water, which rise and fall back into the same water
Themes and Cross-Connections
The body as a field to be tended; the Name as breath and support; humility that opens speech; wanting cooled into a dance; and the great closing image of waves returning to water -- everything coming home into the One.
For Raag Bilaaval
Bilaaval's brightness suits a hymn that moves from thirst to a dancing mind and ends in serene homecoming.
Translation Notes
The manmukh (Pauris 4 and 7) is rendered gently as the restless, turned-away mind rather than as a person to look down on; the pride that builds 'sand castles' undoes itself. The soul's dance before the Guru (Pauri 5) is kept as joyful celebration.
Your body is a field. What you plant in it is what you harvest.
The Arc
Guru Ram Das sings the body as a field of action. The Name rests on every breath and is the one support a heart can lean on. Worked with care, this field yields the priceless jewel of the Name, which pours into hearts made ready by love. Humility -- becoming the servant of the servant -- opens the mouth to speak the unspeakable. A mind burning with wanting is cooled by the water of the Name; then the mind begins to dance before the teaching to an unstruck music, and a stream of pure sweetness flows from the home within. Rituals done from pride are sand castles the ocean erases in a moment. The song ends in one of Gurbani's loveliest images: the One is both the pool and the sea, the world is His play, and as waves rise and fall back into water, everything returns into Him.
Key Vocabulary
Themes and Cross-Connections
The body as a field to be tended; the Name as breath and support; humility that opens speech; wanting cooled into a dance; and the great closing image of waves returning to water -- everything coming home into the One.
For Raag Bilaaval
Bilaaval's brightness suits a hymn that moves from thirst to a dancing mind and ends in serene homecoming.
Translation Notes
The manmukh (Pauris 4 and 7) is rendered gently as the restless, turned-away mind rather than as a person to look down on; the pride that builds 'sand castles' undoes itself. The soul's dance before the Guru (Pauri 5) is kept as joyful celebration.
Last updated: 2026-07-08