Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Sometimes a person forgets the One who gave them their body, their life, and every good thing — and instead runs in every direction chasing profit and passing things. Their mind fills up with grabbing and pretending and getting pulled off course, and they lose sight of the Great Giver.
But here is the astonishing thing: when it delights the One, forgiveness is given — the flawed and the fine are gathered up together, no one sorted out and left behind. And Nanak says: when the One so wishes, even a stone floats on water. Nothing is beyond that mercy.
When the One wills it, the flawed are forgiven with the fine, and even a stone floats.
This Lalla Pauri turns on grace. Its first lines describe a forgetful, off-course life (loon haraamee... alap mat): forgetting the Giver and being pulled off course. The listed tangles (laalach, jhooth, bikaar, moh) are habits to release, like an illness to heal. Time spent with lampat, chor, nindak is more getting pulled off course. The turn is total mercy: khotay sang kharay — the flawed forgiven alongside the fine (no one left behind) — and the great image paahan neer taray, the stone floats: grace as the impossible made possible, the emotional peak of the closing letters.
What does it mean to you that mercy would gather up the flawed and the fine together?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI