Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The One is behind the whole play — the good turns and the hard turns alike are held within it.
When we forget that and puff ourselves up — "me, me, look at me" — we're running on ego, that feeling of being a separate little self cut off from everything. Without the One, what could any of us really do on our own?
A Shalok that returns to the oneness ground beneath the acrostic. "God Himself causes good and bad actions" is the teaching that no event stands outside the One — even here, this is not meant to erase responsibility but to dissolve the ego's proud claim of solo authorship. The source calls the ego-driven person pas — a "beast" indulging in hau hau (me-me, egotism). We render the harsh word gently as running "on ego" — in this project's lens, haumai is the illusion of being a separate, cut-off self, and it is a disease to be healed, not a crime to be punished. The closing question, bin har kahaa kamaat — "without the One, what can anyone do?" — is humbling in the good way: it doesn't shame you into smallness, it frees you from the exhausting pretense that everything rests on your isolated shoulders.
When you did something well, how much of it truly came from you alone, and how much from everything that helped you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI