Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The many pleasures, powers, joys, beauty, canopies, fans and thrones —
the foolish and unseeing are wrapped up in these. Nanak, the craving for illusion is just a dream.
The counter-image to the beggar-king: those with every royal trapping — thrones, canopies, the whole regalia of power — who are, inwardly, "foolish, ignorant and blind," because "desire for Maya is just a dream." Here the Vaar introduces the dream motif (P21-P23): all the grasping for power and pleasure is dream-stuff, real-seeming while you sleep, vanishing when you wake (the same dream-of-power as Gauree's beggar-king). The one with the thrones is the one asleep; the beggar-king of the previous verse, awake to the One, is the one truly royal. The scales are inverted again.
Have you ever been sure something was real in a dream, only to wake and find it gone? What might be 'dream-like' about chasing power and stuff?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI