Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
O mind, why are you so swollen up with ego?
Whatever you see in this passing, messy world is only ashes.
Guru Arjan asks the ego a plain, deflating question: what exactly are you so puffed up about? Everything the ego preens over — possessions, status, the whole visible world — he calls "ashes": not worthless exactly, but impermanent, already on its way to dust. The teaching is not that the world is disgusting (the harsh literal words are the era's, softened here) but that it is passing, and pride built on passing things is pride built on smoke. This is Sach applied to ego: why inflate yourself over what won't last? The air goes out of the ego not through shame but through perspective.
What kinds of things do people feel proud of that don't actually last? What might be worth valuing instead?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI