Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The mind can get tangled up in wanting, and in habits that quietly wear it down.
Five restless pulls — craving, anger, greed, clinging, and pride — travel along as tricky companions, hard to settle on your own.
Five restless pulls live inside all of us, and they need healing, not blame.
Man baasnaa rach bikhai bi-aaDh — the mind gets tangled in wanting, and in habits that wear it down like an illness. Then come the panch doot, the five thieves: craving, anger, greed, clinging, and pride. They travel along like tricky companions.
The verse calls them mahaa asaaDh, very hard to cure. That makes them a stubborn sickness to heal, not a crime to punish. Ego, haumai, is the feeling of being a separate little self. It and its cousins are like a bad cold. They are met with medicine, not a scolding.
Which of those five — wanting, anger, greed, clinging, pride — visits you most, and what helps it settle?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI