Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The real "impurity" of the mind is not any outward thing — it is loving the sense of being separate, split off from the One. Confused by that, we wander in circles, coming and going, never quite settled.
The only thing that truly makes a mind "unclean" is forgetting that we belong to the One.
In the old customs, sootak meant a time of being "unclean." After a birth or a death, a family was thought to be impure for a while. They had to keep apart from others. Guru Amar Das, the third Guru, takes that idea and turns it inside out.
Man kaa sootak doojaa bhaa-o — the mind's real uncleanness is doojaa bhaa-o. That means loving "the second," the feeling of being separate from the One. It is not touch. It is not food. It is not birth. It is forgetting the Oneness. So being clean is something inside you. No one is clean or unclean because of the family they were born into.
Bharmay bhoolay aava-o jaa-o — lost in confusion, people come and go. That coming and going is the restlessness that forgetting brings. It is like a phone that has lost its signal, searching and searching and never settling.
What do you think makes a person truly "clean" or good on the inside?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI