Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
This mind of mine won't take my advice, not even a little.
I've tried and tried to teach it, but it won't leave its stubborn, tangled ways behind.
Guru Tegh Bahadur, the Ninth Guru, opens the raag's closing shabads with a wry, deeply human confession — one every honest person recognizes. He knows what is good, and yet his own mind won't listen to him. "I have tried and tried to instruct it" — the split between the part of us that knows better and the part that keeps doing otherwise. There is something almost humorous and enormously relieving in hearing a Guru say this plainly. It means the struggle to govern your own restless mind is not a sign that something is wrong with you; it is simply the human condition, named honestly by one of the wisest. Naming it without despair is the first step to loosening its grip.
Have you ever known the right thing to do and found your own mind pulling you the other way? Does it help to know even the wise feel this?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI