Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
We are like little birds, O mind, and the deathless One is our great tree -- the place we rest, the home we return to.
The lucky ones, turned toward the teaching, find that tree. So keep the Name close, and let it hold you like sheltering branches.
The closing image is quietly beautiful: ham pankhee ... har tarvar -- "we are birds, the Lord is the tree." Birds fly and forage all day, but every evening they come home to the branches. So the endlessly wandering mind is offered a resting-tree: purakh akaal, the Undying One. The vadbhaagee gurmukh (the fortunate, teaching-facing soul) is the one who finds it. And Guru Ram Das signs off in the third person, jan naanak -- "servant Nanak" -- with the same instruction the whole set began with: naam samaal, hold the Name.
At the end of a long day, where -- or in what thought -- does your mind most want to rest?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI