Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Snakes coil around the sandalwood trees —
poison and sweetness live right there together.
Nothing in the world comes unmixed.
Sandalwood is a sweet-smelling wood used in worship. Yet snakes coil around the sandalwood trees. bikh amrit baseh ik sangaa — poison and nectar live there together.
Think of a rose. The flower is lovely, and the stem has thorns. The good and the dangerous grow tangled together. This deepens the point of the shabad. You cannot pull a perfectly clean offering out of a world where everything good comes mixed with something else. If purity means being apart from all mixing, it cannot be found here.
Where do you wait for something 'unmixed and perfect' that life only ever offers tangled together?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI