Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
No one is really a fool, and no one is really the clever one. Everything that happens unfolds within your way of things. You are beyond reach, beyond understanding, endless, and bottomless. There is no way to add up your worth or put a price on you — it simply cannot be said.
This stanza draws a startling, humbling conclusion from the previous one. If everything happens within the One's bhaana (P1), then naa ko moorakh naa ko siaanaa — "no one is [truly] a fool, and no one is [truly] clever." Think how radical this is. We constantly rank people: smart and stupid, successful and failing, wise and foolish. This verse pulls the whole ranking down. If a person's wisdom or folly unfolds within the one ordering, then no one gets to take credit for being clever, and no one deserves contempt for being "foolish."
This dissolves haumai at its most subtle. The ego's favorite food is comparison — I am smarter, I am better, I figured it out myself. But vartai sabh kichh teraa bhaana — "everything operates by your way" — removes the ground from under all such pride. Whatever cleverness I have is not mine to boast of; whatever folly another shows is not theirs to be despised for. This is a deep root of humility and of compassion: I cannot look down on anyone, because the same one ordering moves through us all.
The verse then returns to the "beyond" names — agam agochar beant athaahaa (unreachable, beyond senses, infinite, bottomless) — and adds: teree keemat kahan na jaaee — "your keemat (value, worth, price) cannot be told." Here is the final humbling: not only can we not rank each other, we cannot even measure the One. The mind that loves to evaluate, price, and rank everything meets something it simply cannot price. Before the infinite, all our scorekeeping falls silent. The verse invites the deep ease of no longer having to be the cleverest, no longer having to win the comparison — because in the One's vast ordering, the whole game of fool-and-clever dissolves.
How much of your worry comes from comparing yourself to others — smarter, better, ahead? What would change if "no one is foolish, no one is clever" were really true?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI