Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Why cry out only for money and stuff? Getting lost in wanting more and more, in things that don't last — that is chasing something that isn't really there.
Without the Name — without keeping the One in mind — everything we grabbed for slips through our fingers like dust in the end.
A Shalok on maya — not "money is evil," but the trap of maya moh, getting emotionally hooked on the impermanent and mistaking it for the real. Koor means false, hollow, unreal — the same family as jhooth. Guru Arjan's question, "Why are you crying out for riches?", is gentle diagnosis: the ache underneath is real, but it is aimed at the wrong target. The closing image — hot jaat sabh dhoor, everything "becoming dust" — is not a threat but a fact about time: what you cling to dissolves, and the Naam (the recognition of the One) is what the soul actually carries forward. The teaching is not to abandon the world but to hold it lightly, and to root yourself in what lasts.
What is something you really wanted once that, once you got it, mattered a lot less than you expected?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI