Sikhism·Raag Maajh·Shabad 33
Verse 3 of 4

Hold the One and Fear Loses Its Grip

ਨਾਮੁ ਜਪਤ ਸਰਬ ਸੁਖੁ ਪਾਈਐ ॥
naam japat sarab sukh paa-ee-ai.
Chanting the Naam, all pleasures are obtained.
ਸਭੁ ਭਉ ਬਿਨਸੈ ਹਰਿ ਹਰਿ ਧਿਆਈਐ ॥
sabh bha-o binsai har har Dhi-aa-ee-ai.
All fears are erased, meditating on the Name of the Lord, Har, Har.
ਜਿਨਿ ਸੇਵਿਆ ਸੋ ਪਾਰਗਿਰਾਮੀ ਕਾਰਜ ਸਗਲੇ ਥੀਏ ਜੀਉ ॥੩॥
jin sayvi-aa so paargiramee kaaraj saglay thee-ay jee-o. ||3||
One who serves the Lord swims across to the other side, and all his affairs are resolved. ||3||

Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa

In plain words

When you keep the Name alive in your mind, a deep and complete peace fills you. Every fear melts away as you hold the One in your thoughts. Whoever gives themselves to the One crosses safely to the far shore, and everything in their life falls into its right place.

Hold the One in mind and fear loses its grip — peace is what remains.
The deeper layer

This stanza names the fruit of Naam simran directly: sarab sukh — "all peace," every kind of well-being. The project understands Naam not as a magic word but as the living presence of the One held in awareness. When that presence is genuinely held, sabh bha-o binsai — "all fear vanishes." Fear, in this teaching, grows from haumai, the sense of being a small separate self exposed and alone. Rest in the One, and the ground of that fear is gone.

The word paargiramee — "one who has reached the far shore" — is the ancient image of crossing the ocean of existence (the bhavsagar) to liberation. Notice the path across is sevaa, service and devotion — not withdrawal from the world but wholehearted orientation toward the One. And the result is wonderfully ordinary: kaaraj saglay thee-ay, "all affairs are resolved." The point is not that life stops having tasks, but that a mind rooted in the One stops being torn apart by them.

A Question to Sit With

When you are afraid, what would it feel like to remember that you are not separate and alone — that you belong to something far larger?

Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI

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