Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
For me there is no one as great as You — nothing else even compares. You Yourself make the whole world, and You Yourself fold it back up again. You shape things, You break them, and You make them beautiful — all of it is Your doing. O Nanak, says Guru Amar Das, we ourselves are made truly beautiful by the **Naam**.
The shabad ends by zooming all the way out to the One behind everything — then all the way back in to you.
TuDh aapay sirjee aapay go-ee — You Yourself create, and You Yourself end. The same One who makes the world also unmakes it. Beginnings and endings are both in the one divine hand. There is no rival power running a competing show. This is Ik Onkar: one Source of both the building up and the taking down.
The third line makes it personal, almost playful: aapay hee gharh bhann savaareh — You Yourself shape, break and make beautiful. Picture a potter at the wheel. She shapes the clay, gharh. If it comes out lopsided, she presses it back down, bhann. Then she forms it again, more beautifully, savaareh. This is how the One works on us. The "breaking" includes the ego melting away, the "dying while alive" of these shabads. It isn't breaking for its own sake. It is a potter reshaping a pot into something lovelier. Every breaking here serves a remaking. Nothing is wasted in the One's hands.
The last words, naanak naam suhaavani-aa — Nanak, we are made beautiful by the Name — bring the shabad full circle. It began with the jewel hidden inside and the spotless One found in the soot. It ends with the soul made beautiful by the Naam. All the big talk — the endless inside the body, the Real everywhere, the One making and ending worlds — comes home to one close result: a person glowing from within, holding the living presence of the One. That's the only beauty that lasts, like the majeeth dye that never fades. The potter who shapes the galaxies bends close to make you beautiful. That is where the prayer rests.
When something in your life "breaks" — a plan, a friendship, a version of yourself — is it possible that it's being reshaped into something better? Can you think of a time that turned out to be true?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI