Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Come close to me — that is the prayer. Dress my heart in true words, the kind that ring clear and honest, so that self-importance quiets and everything I need to do falls into place.
Through every age there has been only One that is truly real; turning over the teaching, you come to know it.
When someone lives only for what they crave and gets tangled in wanting more and more, they can feel there is nowhere to bring their trouble. But there is always somewhere: the teaching, warm and near, is the resting place. Turn there, and you are no longer lost with nowhere to go.
The pauri is a prayer for nearness and for seegaar — being "adorned" in the sach shabad, the true word. Adornment here is inner: honest words and a heart that has let haumai (ego, the feeling of being a separate, self-important self) go quiet. The manmukh — the self-facing person turned only toward their own cravings — is drawn not with contempt but with compassion: kis aagai jaa-ay pukaaray, "to whom can they cry out?" The answer the pauri gives is gentle: the gur — the teaching — is at pi-aaray, most beloved, and it is exactly the resting place the tangled heart could not find. The critique of craving targets the ego-driven grasping, not the person, who is always welcome back.
Who or what is the place you go to when you feel like there's nowhere to turn?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI