Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The person who lives only for their ego is collecting fake money and putting on a fake show. They work hard at things that aren't real, and it brings them heavy pain. Confused and lost, they wander around day and night, and waste the precious chance their life was.
Here the song returns to the merchant image from the very first stanza — but flips it. The opening said the truth-seeker "trades in sach, gathers sach." Now the manmukh is the merchant whose whole stock is khoti raas — counterfeit currency. They've worked their whole life building up a pile of money that turns out to be fake. Imagine spending years saving coins, proud of your hoard, only to learn at the end that none of them are real. That's the manmukh's tragedy.
And khota paasaara — a "fake display." The ego loves to show: the impressive house, the polished image, the performance of having it all together. But it's koorh, falsehood — a stage set with nothing behind it. And here's the sad mechanism: "koorh kamaavan dukh laagai bhaara" — practicing falsehood brings heavy pain. Not as a punishment imposed from outside, but as the natural weight of living a lie. Pretending is exhausting; the gap between the show and the reality aches.
The root is named: bharmay bhoolay — lost in bhram, doubt and delusion. The manmukh isn't evil; they're mistaken about what's real, and so they invest everything in the wrong currency. Set this beside Pauri5: the truth-seeker tasted the shabad and knew their own self; the manmukh, never tasting it, never sees through the fake and "loses the life." The whole contrast in this song is between two kinds of wealth — and the only difference is whether you found out, in time, which coins were real.
Where might you be putting effort into a "display" — looking a certain way — instead of into something actually real?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI