Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Keep the One in mind, day and night — the friend who stays with you all the way to the end. Everything else you can grab hold of only lasts a little while, and then it slips away; nobody gets to keep it.
Ask yourself honestly: who really stays? Mother, father, brother, sister, home, all the things you love — you cannot carry a single one of them with you forever. So gather the kind of wealth that never wears out.
That wealth is remembering the One. Sing the praises together, in good company, with people who love the truth — and something in you comes home, and never has to start over again.
This Pauri sets up a contrast the whole acrostic keeps returning to: bikhi-aa (here softened from "poison" to "the thing that only lasts a few days") versus aisee sanch jo binsat naahee — "gather that wealth which shall never perish." The temporary things aren't condemned; they're simply named as temporary. The permanent thing is keertan sung in saadh sang — praise in the company of those who love the truth. The closing line, bahur na aa-i-aa ("they do not come again"), is traditionally read as release from the wheel of rebirth; for children it lands as coming home and not having to start over. The rhetorical questions — "who is our mother, father, son and daughter?" — aren't saying family doesn't matter; they're pointing past what time takes to what time can't touch.
Of everything you love, which parts do you think stay with you no matter what? How would you “gather” that kind of wealth?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI