Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Those who refuse to serve the True Teacher are like people stumbling in the dark — how could they ever find the way out? They get stuck going around and around: dying, coming back, dying again, never breaking free. Without ever turning toward the truth, they keep repeating the same painful loop.
This is the stanza's dark mirror, and we should read it gently rather than as a threat. "Mar mar jamahi fir fir aavahi" — dying and being born, again and again — is the image of being stuck in a loop. You don't need to take rebirth literally to feel its truth: think of anyone trapped repeating the same mistake, the same hurt, the same dead-end pattern, year after year. The loop is real even within a single life.
Why are they stuck? Not because they're wicked, but because they're andh — blind. They simply can't see the doorway (mokh duaar) that would let them out. And the song says the blindness comes from not "serving the Guru" — not turning toward the teaching that could open their eyes. It's not punishment; it's the natural consequence of facing the wrong way, the manmukh orientation.
Set this stanza beside the opening one. There, the person who lost the self gained everything and traded in truth. Here, the person who clings to the self keeps circling, struck again and again at "Death's Door." Two roads from the same crossroads. The whole point of naming this loop so starkly is hopeful, not grim: the door out is right there, and turning toward the Guru is how you find it.
Is there a pattern in your life that keeps repeating — and have you ever wondered which way you'd have to turn to break out of it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI