Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
My mind is lazy and half-asleep.
The One led me to the Holy Guru; meeting the teacher, the shutters were thrown wide open.
O teacher, fill my heart with love every instant; my Beloved's Name is my very breath. Without the Name I would die; the Name is to me like water to someone dying of thirst.
"The shutters have been opened wide" — a wonderful image of waking. The mind was "lazy and sleepy," shutters closed, the room dark; meeting the teacher flings the windows open and light pours in. And then the intensity: "the Name is my breath... without it I would die." The literal compares the Name to "the drug to the addict" — a raw image of absolute need. We render it as the thirst of someone who cannot live without water, keeping the intensity of the dependence while avoiding language that romanticizes addiction. The point is the depth of the longing: the Name is not a nice extra but the very thing the soul lives on.
What's something you need so deeply that life would feel impossible without it? What would it mean for goodness to be that necessary?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI