Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Say the Name of the One, and gather the real profit.
You will find freedom, peace, poise and joy, and the rope of death will be cut.
Guru Arjan uses the language of the marketplace — profit — which runs all through his work. Life is a trading journey, and the question is what you invest in. Most people invest in things that can be lost: money, status, pleasure. He points to the one investment that pays in "freedom, peace, poise and joy" and cannot be stolen even by death. "The noose of death is cut" — not that the body won't die, but that death loses its terror for the one whose real wealth is untouchable by it. It is a shrewd, practical appeal: of everything you could spend your life gathering, gather the one thing that lasts.
If you could keep only one kind of 'wealth' forever, what would actually be worth having?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI