Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
But one bride *does* come to know her Beloved while still in her childhood home.
She turns toward the light. She understands the heart of what's real.
Her restless coming and going settles down and stops. She melts into the true Name like a drop into the ocean.
You do not have to wait for another world to meet the One. You can know the Beloved right here, now, in your everyday life.
This verse is the bright twin of the last one. Same setting: the parents' house, which means this life. But this bride chooses the other way. Pay-ee-arhai jin jaataa pi-aaraa — she came to know her Beloved while still in her parents' house. That little phrase holds all the hope of this song. You can know the One now, in the middle of your ordinary life. The crying bride and the happy bride live in the same house. The only difference is which way they turned.
Gurmukh boojhai tat beechaaraa — as a gurmukh, she understands the tat and thinks deeply on it. Gurmukh means "face turned toward the Guru." It is the opposite of the manmukh, "face turned toward the ego," from verse four. And tat means the heart of the matter, the one thing that counts. Not lots of facts. Not being clever. Just the one thing that matters most: the Beloved is real, and here, and hers. Real wisdom is not knowing many things. It is truly knowing the one thing that matters.
Then comes the answer the whole raag has been longing for. Aavan jaanaa thaak rahaa-ay — her coming and going comes to a stop. Remember the restless people of the earlier verses? The manmukh who found no resting place? The divided mind going back and forth? Here, at last, the restlessness stops. Think of a jar of muddy water. Shake it, and it swirls. Set it down, and it slowly goes still and clear.
Sachai naam samaavani-aa — she melts into the True Name, like a drop going back into the ocean it always belonged to. This is the deepest meeting in Raag Maajh. Not lover and Beloved standing side by side, but the lover melting into the Beloved. The being-apart, which was never quite real, finally melts away. The crying ends not because she was given something new. It ends because she found she was never truly apart.
The bride who finds her Beloved and the one who weeps for him live in the very same house — the only difference is which way they turned. What might "turning toward the light" look like in your own ordinary day?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI