All things are mere diversions of life:
When the soul is separated from the body, then they will cry out, calling you a ghost.
No one will let you stay, for even half an hour; they drive you out of the house. ||1||
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
All these things are just passing amusements of life:
when the soul leaves the body, the very people around you will call you a ghost.
No one will let you stay even half an hour; they hurry to carry you out of the house.
Guru Tegh Bahadur speaks the plainest truth there is, and he speaks it not to frighten but to free. The things we spend our lives on — he calls them "diversions," passing entertainments. And then the unflinching picture of what everyone eventually faces: when the soul departs, the same house that was yours cannot keep you even "half an hour." This is memento mori — the honest remembering of death — and the whole tradition uses it not morbidly but as a clarifier. Nothing focuses the question "what actually matters?" like remembering that the body and the house and the possessions are all, finally, let go. He is not being grim; he is being honest, so that we spend our precious, limited days on what will not be carried out of the house.
If you remembered that your days are limited and precious, what would you want to spend them on? (Note: this is a gentle, honest look at life's shortness, not something to be afraid of.)
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI