Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
This is how we tie ourselves up: with love and worry for children and friends, with getting and keeping, with calling things "mine."
There is a deer that runs toward a shimmer on the sand, sure it is water, and finds only more sand. So much of what we chase looks solid from far off, and we run and run toward it.
We tie ourselves to what we love, and we chase things that only shimmer, like a thirsty deer running toward a mirage.
Poot meet maa-i-aa mamtaa si-o — with children, friends, wealth and "mine." Mamtaa means the feeling of "mine, mine." Ih biDh aap banDhaavai — this is how people tie themselves up.
Then comes a well-known picture. Marig trisnaa is the mirage a thirsty deer chases across the desert. It sees a shimmer on the hot sand and thinks it is water. It is one of Gurbani's gentlest pictures of longing aimed the wrong way. The deer is not foolish for being thirsty. It just mistook a shimmer for the real thing.
The ties named here are not bad loves. Loving family is good. They become ties when we cling to them as if they were everything. Taking them for the whole of what is real is the mirage.
Have you ever wanted something badly, gotten it, and found it wasn't what you imagined? What was the shimmer, and what was the sand?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI