Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
When we live only for ourselves — me first, me always — the heart gets cloudy. You could wash in a hundred holy rivers and that pride would still be there, because outside water cannot reach an inside habit. Without meeting the true teacher, death keeps troubling a person. What clears it is meeting the teaching and letting it change how you see.
Pride is an inside problem, so outside washing cannot clean it.
Ha-umai mailaa ih sansaaraa — this world is made dirty by haumai. Haumai is the ego, the "I am separate" feeling that cuts us off from everything else. It clouds the whole world.
Guru Amar Das makes a point the Gurus make often. People bathed every day at a tirath, a holy riverbank where pilgrims go. But the bathing does not remove ahankaar, pride, because the problem is inside. Think of scrubbing a muddy shoe on the outside while a pebble rattles around inside it. The pebble is still there.
This is not a criticism of Hindu practice. The Gurus say the same thing about empty show in every tradition.
Bin gur bhaytay jam karay khu-aaraa — without meeting the Guru, jam, Death, keeps a person troubled. Outer ritual cannot do inner work. Meeting the Guru can.
What is something you can only fix on the inside, not by changing anything outside?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI