Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You are the thread, and you are also all the beads strung on it. You are the knot that holds them, and the special big bead at the top too. At the very beginning, all through the middle, and at the very end — it is you, only you. I cannot point to anything anywhere that is not you.
This pauri uses a single, perfect object to teach oneness: a maalaa, a rosary or prayer-bead necklace. Picture it. There is the soot — the thread running through everything. There are the manee-e — the individual beads. There is the ganthee — the knot. And there is the mer — the larger "head bead" (the sumeru) at the top where the necklace comes together. To the eye, these are different parts: thread, beads, knot, head-bead. But the verse says: toon soot, manee-e bhee toonhai... toon ganthee, mer sir toonhai — "you are the thread, and you are also the beads; you are the knot, and you are the head-bead too." Every single part of the maalaa is the One.
Why is this such a good image? Because a maalaa is something used in simran — you move it bead by bead as you remember the Name. So the very object of the practice becomes the teaching: as you finger each bead, the verse whispers that the beads, the thread, the knot, and your fingers and your remembering are all the One. The seeker, the practice, and the goal are not three things. And notice the thread especially: it is the one continuous strand that runs invisibly through all the beads, holding them together. The One is like that — the single hidden thread running through every separate-seeming thing, making the many into one necklace.
The conclusion extends oneness across time: aad madh ant prabh soee — "at the aad (beginning), the madh (middle), and the ant (end), it is that One." Not only is the One everything (all the parts of the maalaa), it is everywhen — before all things began, all through their existence, and after they end. There is no moment when the One is not, just as there is no place where it is not. Avar na koe dikhaaleeai — "no other can be dikhaaleeai (pointed to, shown)." The whole of space and the whole of time, like the whole of the necklace, is the single One. The mind that loves to separate — beginning from end, bead from thread, self from other — is gently shown that all its divisions are one strand.
On a string of beads, the thread connects them all but you barely see it. What might be the invisible "thread" that connects everything and everyone? Could you sense it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI