Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The chakvi bird asks for no comforts, but fills with joy at the sight of dawn.
The fish cannot live any other way — without water, it dies.
Two more love-similes, each showing a creature bound to its one beloved thing. The chakvi (a ruddy sheldrake), separated from its mate through the night, wants no comfort but only the dawn that reunites them — its whole joy is in the coming of the light. And the fish, which simply "cannot survive" out of water — for whom the beloved element is not a preference but life itself. Guru Arjan stacks these to say: this is how the soul should love the One — not as one comfort among many, but as the dawn the night-parted bird waits for, as the water without which the fish dies. A love that is not optional but vital, the very condition of being alive.
What's the difference between something you'd like to have and something you truly can't live without? What would it mean to love the good that deeply?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI