Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
**A** — a life is called truly worthwhile when the One's goodness lives on your tongue and in your praise.
Such people come and settle in the company of the good and wise, and with love they keep the Name in mind day and night. Their coming into the world is a blessing — the kind One pours mercy over them.
Arriving once, they don't have to spin through the churn again. They melt into the joy of simply beholding the One.
The letter Aiaa (A) in a Pauri on the fruitful life. Aa-i-aa safal — "the coming is fruitful" — picks up the thread of the previous Shalok's "blessed is their arrival." What makes a life safal (fruitful, worthwhile) is not achievement but orientation: the One's praise on the tongue, dwelling in good company (saadhoo kai sangay), keeping the Name lovingly an-din (day and night). The line about being "born only once, not reincarnated again" points, in this project's lens, not so much at a doctrine of escaping rebirth as at breaking free from the restless churn — a mind so absorbed in the One that it no longer spins. The close is pure sweetness: har kai daras samaa-i-aa — they "melt into the sight of the One." The reward for a well-oriented life is not a prize elsewhere; it is dissolving into the very beauty you loved.
What would make your life feel "fruitful" to you — not by what you collected, but by what you were pointed toward?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI