Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Settle this in your mind: there is no one and nothing except the One. There never was, there never will be — the One fills every place, all the way through.
Come and rest in that shelter, and you dissolve gently into it, the way a drop settles into the ocean. In these times, the one thing that truly helps you is remembering the One.
So many people work themselves to exhaustion chasing other things, and feel the ache of it later. Without loving the One, where would steadiness come from? Only those to whom the One gives it get to taste the sweetest thing there is — and it is given freely.
Ghagha is a Oneness-and-refuge Pauri. Its heart is nahee koi tujh bin avraa — "there is no one except the Lord" — the Ik Onkar truth stated as fact across all time (na ko hoaa na ko hoo — never was, never will be another). The image tujh meh smaavai jay ho-ay bhaagaa becomes the drop-into-ocean, this project's standard image for haumai dissolving. The line about people who "work and slave and repent in the end" is kept as sober observation (so many work themselves to exhaustion... and feel the ache later) rather than condemnation — the failure isn't sin, it's aiming at what can't satisfy. And the closing jaa ka-o gur... day-ay keeps the grace-lens: the sweetest thing (the amrit, ambrosial nectar) is given, received not earned. "In this Dark Age of Kali Yuga" is simplified to "in these times," per the guideline to avoid untranslated cosmological jargon.
What does it feel like to imagine yourself as a single drop that is completely at home in the whole ocean?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI