Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You Yourself are the only greatness Your servant needs — You are enough. To be swept up and lost in chasing shiny illusions leads nowhere good; may I hold onto You instead.
The One is all the greatness a servant of the One could ever need.
This is the Rahao, the "pause" line. It is the center of the whole shabad, the line the rest of the song turns around. Tayray daas ka-o tuhee vadi-aa-ee — You alone are Your servant's greatness. The one who loves the One wants no other prize or fame.
Then comes the other side. Maa-i-aa magan narak lai jaa-ee — being lost in maa-i-aa, the glitter and illusion of the world, leads to narak, a place of suffering. Think of chasing likes on a screen. The more you chase, the emptier it gets. That road leads nowhere good.
So the weight of the line falls on where fullness lives. It lives in the One, not in the glitter.
What is a kind of "greatness" people chase that doesn't actually make them happy?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI