Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
It has gone dizzy, drunk on illusion; it won't sing the One's praise.
It practices little tricks to get ahead of others, just to fill its own belly.
The diagnosis is precise: the mind is "intoxicated with Maya" — drunk, and like a drunk person, not thinking clearly, not able to hold onto what matters ("it does not chant the Lord's Praise"). And it schemes: "practicing deception... to fill its belly." This names the small, everyday cunning we slip into — the little manipulations and self-servings aimed at getting ours. Guru Tegh Bahadur is not thundering condemnation; he is describing, almost clinically, how a mind drunk on wanting behaves. And describing it clearly is itself sobering. When you can watch your own mind doing these things — see the little scheme as it forms — you are no longer fully drunk; a piece of you has stepped back and become aware. That awareness is the beginning of freedom.
What does it feel like to 'catch' your own mind in the middle of a selfish thought? Does noticing it change anything?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI