Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
My God is spotless, beyond reach, and has no edges or ending. He weighs the whole world without ever needing a scale — He just knows exactly what everything is worth. You cannot figure Him out by thinking harder. Only the one who turns toward the light, the **gurmukh**, really understands. And when you speak His good qualities out loud, you slowly become part of the very goodness you are praising.
This verse says the One is bigger than anything we can measure, and we come close by praising the One's goodness.
Guru Amar Das begins by stretching the mind past its edges. Mayraa parabh nirmal agam apaaraa means "my God is spotless, beyond reach, without end." Agam means you can't reach the One by thinking. Apaar means with no far shore, like an ocean you can never see across.
Then a wonderful picture. Bin takrhee tolai sansaaraa means "without a scale, He weighs the world." A scale is something a separate person uses to weigh separate things. But the One doesn't stand outside the world measuring it. The One knows its worth from the inside, because for the One there is no inside and outside. A mother doesn't need a ruler to know her own child. This is Ik Onkar, "there is One": no gap between the One who weighs and what is weighed.
So how can anyone understand something you can't reach by reaching? Not by getting clever. Gurmukh hovai so-ee boojhai means "only the one who becomes a Gurmukh understands." A gurmukh is someone facing the Guru's light instead of spinning around in their own thoughts.
And the way is very simple. Gun kahi gunee samaavani-aa means "speaking His good qualities, they melt into the One who holds all good qualities." Gun means a good quality, a virtue. You become what you keep your attention on. Praise isn't flattery sent upward. It is like tuning a radio. You turn the dial toward the right station until the music comes in clear, and then you are part of the song.
This is the seed of the whole Ashtapadee, the eight-verse song that follows. Everything after it grows from this first step: the sleeping bride, the waking bride, the question of who answers in the end. The One does it all. And the gurmukh is the one who stops resisting and lets praise carry them home.
What do you spend your words and attention praising all day — and is it making you into something you actually want to become?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI