Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
There are cures for many things, but the habit of tearing others down has to be set down by the one who carries it — no one else can lift it for them.
When a heart loses its way, it keeps circling the same unhappiness, again and again.
Another Fifth-Mehl Shalok on the same theme. The literal says "there is no cure for the slanderer" and speaks of rotting "in reincarnation" — both softened here. The point is not that such a person is beyond hope forever; it is that this particular habit is not something an outside medicine can fix. Bitterness toward others is a choice a heart makes, so it is a choice a heart must un-make; no potion reaches it. And pach pach jonee paahi — "rotting in birth after birth" — is gentled into the felt experience it names: a heart that has lost its way keeps circling the same unhappiness. The frightening rebirth-register becomes the recognizable loop of returning again and again to the same sore place, which is honest and hopeful, because loops can be stepped out of.
Is there a habit you keep circling back to that no one else can fix for you — one only you can gently choose to set down?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI