Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
This whole world has lost its way — and even that somehow happens within Your great plan. People forget the One and fall in love instead with the second thing, with all the many things that aren't the One. So they wander all day and all night, confused and doubting, never settling, never satisfied. And without the **Naam**, that living sense of the One, all that wandering just turns into pain.
This verse shows the lost world — the opposite of coming home. People forget the One and chase "the second thing."
Ik visaar doojai lobhaa-i-aa — forgetting the One, they are hooked by the second. That pull is dooja bhaav: loving the many things as if they were the real prize. For Guru Amar Das this is the root problem. Enjoying the world is fine. The trouble is forgetting the One behind it. Once you think something else is worth chasing more than the One, you are split in two, and that split hurts.
Look at the moving words: firai bharam bhoolaa — wandering, lost in doubt. Bharam means confusion or doubt. The mind stays restless because no single thing can be the One it is really hungry for. So it jumps from thing to thing, like scrolling a feed that never ends. It is the same restless bride as in the shabad just before this one. She is sleepless not from having too little, but from chasing the wrong things. Bin naavai dukh paavni-aa — without the Name, there is pain. Nothing that ends can fill a longing that has no end.
The first line, "You Yourself have deluded it," can sound hard. It is the same teaching as the hidden One in the opening verse. Even our forgetting happens inside the One's order, hukam. There is no second power running things. The veil, and the lifting of it, both belong to the One. This is not blame. It is comfort: there is no place where you are lost beyond the One's reach.
What "second thing" do you keep chasing, hoping it will finally make you feel full — and does it ever quite work?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI