Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
**Ng** — real wisdom doesn't come from just talking about it with your mouth, or from winning clever arguments about the scriptures.
The wise ones are those who hold the One firmly inside. Just telling and retelling stories doesn't get you there. The wise ones stay steady in the flow of existence — and to them, heat and cold, good days and hard days, all feel like the same ground under their feet.
They face the teaching, they taste its heart. And on them, kindness has quietly rained down.
The letter Nganga (Ng), a rare consonant that gives its section a memorable oddness. The teaching separates two things constantly confused: talking about wisdom and being wise. Not "mere words of mouth," not "debates of the Shaastras," not just "telling stories" — knowledge as performance is not the thing itself. Real wisdom is drirh — firmly fixed, lived in the body. The beautiful marker of the truly wise is usan seet samsar — heat and cold are the same to them: this is sahaj, the even, unshakable poise of someone whose root is in something that praise and pain cannot rattle. And note the honest end: even this comes as kirpaa, grace showered down — not a trophy the clever win, but a gift the open receive. This connects to the earlier Shalok: the mind must soften first.
What is something you truly understand in your bones, versus something you can only talk cleverly about?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI