Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
I bathe at all sixty-eight holy places. I wander over the whole earth.
I keep rules of cleanness day and night. Yet without the True Guru, it is still dark.
You could visit every holy place on earth, and without the Guru it would still be dark inside.
Athsath majan kar isnaanaa — bathing at the sixty-eight holy places. Bharam aa-ay Dhar saaree — wandering all over the earth. Then anik soch karahi din raatee, keeping many rules of cleanness day and night. That is the most outer effort a person could make.
Yet bin satgur anDhi-aaree — without the True Guru, there is darkness.
The verse does not say these things are bad. It says light is something that happens inside. Think of a dark room. You can walk all around the house, but the light comes on only when you find the switch. The Guru's teaching, taken into the heart, is that switch. Again and again this raag moves the holy place from a spot on the map into the person.
What outer effort have you hoped would fix an inner darkness? What actually brought the light?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI