Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Some come and bow before the teacher while their hearts stay closed and untrue.
When the teacher says, "Rise, my friends," they crowd and shuffle, not really moving with the moment.
Among the true students the teaching lives and works, sorting the real from the pretended, gently and surely.
The pretended can shift and hide, but they never quite blend in with the genuine — the two just do not mix.
What nourishes the true heart is simply not what they are hungry for.
Ill-will, in the end, defeats only itself; it cannot poison a heart it never reaches.
Keep me clear of a heart full of ill-will — such a heart already carries its own undoing.
This whole play belongs to the One, who makes it and watches it; and Nanak holds the Name close.
A Shalok of the Fourth Mehl about the saakat — the person cut off from the One, who goes through the motions without a true heart. The literal is sharp: "counterfeit," "poison," "cursed," "into the filth like sheep." Following the wellbeing rules, none of this is staged as cursing or contempt. Instead the teaching lands as a natural truth: the real and the pretended simply do not mix, like oil and water — not because anyone is condemned, but because a closed heart cannot absorb what an open heart is nourished by. The prayer "let me not keep such company" becomes "keep me clear of ill-will" — a wish for one's own heart, not a wish for another's harm. Ill-will is shown defeating itself, which is exactly the project's rule for enemy-of-teacher verses.
Have you ever seen someone try to fake caring about something? Why is real caring so hard to imitate?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI