Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
This body has made its share of mistakes — so how does it become clear and clean again?
By turning toward the Guru, we gather goodness, and that goodness washes the ego right off — ego (haumai — the feeling that you are a separate self, cut off from everything).
Trade in what is real, with love, and you make a true bargain.
This trade never loses; its whole profit is the One's own delight.
Nanak says: those who gather Truth were always meant to — it was written into them from the start.
A Mehl 4 verse built on the merchant image so beloved in this Vaar: life as a marketplace, and the wise trader who buys sach (the real, the lasting) instead of what washes off. The question kio... nirmal ho-ay — "how does one become clean?" — is answered not with scrubbing or guilt but with acquisition: you become clean by gathering virtue, which crowds out ego the way filling a cup with clear water pushes out the muddy. The final line, Dhur likhiaa ("written from the beginning"), is handled gently — not as harsh predestination but as the reassurance that the pull toward goodness was always part of you.
When you fill your day with something good and true, what happens to the small, worried, me-first voice? Where does it go?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI