Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Now I see only the One — there's nothing and no one else that is truly separate. By the Guru's grace, I have drunk the sweet nectar, the **amrit**. The **shabad**, the Guru's Word, has finally quenched my deep thirst, and now I rest easily in **sahaj**, that quiet, natural peace.
This pauri is where the thirst of Pauri 2 gets answered — and notice the beautiful tension between them. In Pauri 2, the lover said "I'm never satisfied, I'm always hungry for more." Here he says tikhaa nivaaree — "my thirst is quenched." Are these a contradiction? No — they are two sides of the same deep truth. The grasping, painful thirst (the desperate craving for fading things) is quenched. What remains is the sweet hunger that keeps deepening in love. The pain stops; the longing turns into joy. That's what it feels like to drink the real nectar: the ache of lack dissolves, even as the love keeps growing.
The first line names what makes this possible: ayko vaykhaa avar na bee-aa — "I see only the One; there is no other." This is the great realization (Ik Onkar) finally lived rather than just believed. Once you truly see that everything is the One — that there is no separate "other" to chase, grab, fear, or envy — the whole frantic engine of thirst just switches off. You were thirsty because you thought satisfaction was always somewhere else, in the next thing. But if it's all the One, and the One is right here, then there's nowhere else to run. The thirst is quenched because the chase is over.
And the result, named again, is sahaj — sahjay sookh samaavania, absorbed in effortless peace and ease. This is the destination of the whole shabad and of so much of Guru Amar Das's teaching. Sahaj is the deep, natural calm that comes not from getting everything you wanted, but from no longer being driven by thirst at all. It's the peace of a person who has had a long, satisfying drink of cool water and now simply rests, content, in the shade. The drinking of the nectar (by grace, through the Shabad) leads straight to this resting. The journey from desperate thirst to quenched peace is the journey of the soul coming home.
Think about how good a drink of water feels when you're really thirsty. What might it feel like for your heart to feel that satisfied and settled?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI