Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
A person can wear their body like clothes stitched out of wind, and grow proud of it — but the body is on loan, and pride in it is a small mistake.
These borrowed things do not travel onward with us; in time they return, quietly, to the earth.
The body is like borrowed clothes. So who you really are was never the clothes.
This shalok, a short verse, says something plainly that children are rarely told: the body does not last. Vaa-oo sanday kaprhay pahirahi — people wear clothes made of wind. The body is that thin, that borrowed.
The verse calls the proud person garab gavaar. Garab is pride, and gavaar means foolish. The point is not to call anyone names. It is to loosen the grip of pride built on something that will not last. It is like bragging about a rented costume.
Jal bal ho-ay chhaar — in the end, these clothes turn to ash and do not come along. The verse is honest that the body ends. And the teaching underneath is freeing. If the body is borrowed, then who you truly are was never the borrowed thing.
If the outside things — looks, clothes, even your body — are borrowed, what part of you feels like the real, lasting "you"?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI