Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The mind dreams up the whole worldly show and wants to star in it. But you can run a thousand clever tricks through your head and still never feel the warmth of real awe kindle inside you. When a person lives only for their own ego, their words are just wind -- blowing past, empty, leaving nothing behind.
The restless intellect craves tamaasaa, the worldly spectacle -- to perform, to be seen. Nanak's diagnosis: no amount of cleverness can manufacture genuine awe; its warmth simply does not ignite from mental tricks. It is kindled, not engineered. The closing line names the manmukh -- the self-facing person -- whose speech is wind: much movement, no substance. The contrast with the opening pauri is sharp: words rooted in awe carry weight; words rooted in ego are weightless air.
Have you noticed the difference between words that mean something and words that are just noise?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI