Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
This made-up world is like an illusion, a mirage — see this, and turn it over in your mind.
Nanak says: keep saying the Name of the One forever — that is what will carry you through.
The image is the mirage: from a distance, shimmering water in the desert; up close, nothing there. The world as we grasp at it — solid, permanent, the thing to build our whole security on — is, Guru Tegh Bahadur says, like that shimmer: real-seeming, and not what it appears (this is Sach, the real versus the merely apparent; and the dream-of-life of Gauree's beggar-king). But notice this is not despair or world-hatred. "Reflect upon this in your mind" — just see it clearly, don't be fooled into staking everything on the shimmer. And then the constant, steadying answer that both Mehl 9 shabads land on: keep the Name, and that will carry you. The mirage can't hold your weight; the Name can.
What's something that looked really important from far away but turned out to be less solid up close? What's actually worth building your life on?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI