Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
A restless heart wanders in every direction, chasing this and that. It is shaped by everything it has done before.
Comfort and hardship, freedom and returning again: these unfold like a story already being written.
Your life unfolds in a pattern shaped by all that came before; you are held inside an order, not lost in chaos.
The Shalok pictures a wandering life. Kunt chaar dah dis bharamay — a person wanders in the four corners and the ten directions, which means everywhere. They are driven by karam kirat kee raykh, the line drawn by their own past actions. Think of footprints in fresh snow. Each step you took shapes the path you are on now.
Then it names the big pairs. Sookh dookh is comfort and pain. Mukat jon is freedom, or being born again. These come by likhi-o laykh, what has been written.
This is not a gloomy "nothing can change." It is a pattern, a story already being written. Existence has order. It is not random. In Sikh teaching this "writing" is not a far-off judge's sentence. It is the natural unfolding of Hukam, the flow of existence. The next verse, for the letter Kakka, makes that clear.
Does it feel comforting or uncomfortable to imagine your life as part of a pattern already being written? Why?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI