Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Here's a puzzle: the people who let go of their own little self end up gaining everything. Through the Guru's word, they fall in love with what is true and real. From then on, all their "business" is in truth — what they buy is true, what they save up is true, every deal they make is true.
The opening line is one of the great paradoxes of the whole tradition: aap vanjaae taa sabh kichh paae — "lose your self and you gain everything." It sounds backwards. We spend our lives trying to build up the self: more achievements, more praise, more "me." But Guru Amar Das says that very self — the haumai, the separate ego — is exactly what blocks you from the everything that's already here. Set it down, and the whole ocean rushes in.
This is jeevat marnaa in spirit: dying while still alive. Not the body dying, but the small clutching self dissolving while you go on living and breathing. When that self gets out of the way, you don't become empty — you become full, because you're no longer fencing yourself off from the One that is everything.
The stanza then reaches for Guru Amar Das's favorite metaphor: vaapaar, trade. Once the ego is gone, all your dealing is in sach — truth, the real and permanent. You buy truth, you save truth, you trade in truth. Compare this to the manmukh later in the song (Pauri7) whose whole "wealth" is khoti — counterfeit. Two merchants, two currencies: one deals in what lasts, one in what evaporates. The difference between them is whether they were willing to lose the self.
What's one thing you cling to as "mine" that might actually be getting in the way of something much bigger?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI