Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
When I look closely, no one really "belongs" to me, and I don't really "belong" to anyone else either — not in the way I cling to. The only One who is truly mine is the real One, the One running through all the worlds. So many people spend their whole lives shouting "me, me, mine, mine," and then, having hurt others along the way, they end up full of regret.
Let go of the small, worried "mine," and you find you belong to something without end.
Naa ko mayraa ha-o kis kayraa — no one is mine, and I am no one's. At first this sounds cold, even sad. But think about it longer and it turns into freedom. It does not mean we stop loving our family and friends. It means we stop clinging to people as if we owned them. Grabbing and saying "mine!" can turn love into owning, and into being afraid of losing. The people we love are not ours the way a toy is ours. They are free, and they are with us as a gift. They are precious because we do not control them.
Then comes the turn. Saachaa thaakur taribhavan mayraa — the True Master of all three worlds is mine. Guru Nanak loves this kind of surprise. When you let go of grabbing little things, you find you belong to something without end. You let go of the small "mine" and find the great "mine," the One who runs through everything. You do not end up with nothing. You end up belonging to it all. And this is not owning the One either. It is the deep belonging that all our grabbing was a nervous copy of.
Think of a kid clutching one marble so tight that his fist can't open. Then he opens his hand and gets led into a room full of friends playing a game.
The last line shows what goes wrong when we miss this. Ha-umai kar kar jaa-ay ghanayree — so many people go on and on in ha-umai, the ego. That is the "me first, mine, look at me" feeling. The words kar kar, "doing and doing," show how it just keeps going.
Kar avgan pachhotaavani-aa — they do wrong, and later they are sorry. This is Guru Nanak's clear view. The grabbing self does not even make us happy. It leads us to hurt others and end up full of regret. The way out is not to grab better. It is to let go of grabbing, and find that we already belong to the One.
Is there someone or something you hold onto so tightly that the holding has started to hurt? What might it feel like to love them with an open hand instead of a closed fist?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI