Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
My True Master is so very dear to me. The word of the Perfect Teacher is what I lean on — my support through everything. Nanak says: whoever truly receives the Name learns to take pain and pleasure the same way, with a steady, even heart.
The closing stanza brings the whole song to rest on two words: piaara (beloved) and adhaara (support). After all the talk of true and false wealth, the soul says simply: my Master is dear to me, and the shabad is what I lean on. This is what the truth-seeker has that the manmukh of the last stanza lacks — not a bigger pile of treasure, but something solid to stand on. The manmukh's fake fortune gave no support; it collapsed under any real weight. The shabad holds.
And the final line is the great fruit of the whole journey: dukh sukh sam kar jaananiaa — taking pain and pleasure "as one and the same." This is not coldness or not-caring. It's the deep evenness — the sahaj poise mentioned back in Pauri3 — of someone whose support no longer depends on which way the day goes. When your footing is the eternal shabad and not the shifting moods of fortune, good days don't inflate you and bad days don't crush you. You stay steady, because you're standing on something that doesn't move.
This is the natural endpoint of "losing the self" from the opening stanza. The ego rides every wave — thrilled when things go its way, devastated when they don't. But the person who set the ego down and found the One as piaara and adhaara has stepped off the rollercoaster entirely. Pain and pleasure still come, but they wash over a steady heart rather than tossing it around. That steadiness — not the absence of difficulty — is what the Name's greatness gives.
What helps you stay steady when things go badly — and is it something that can really hold your weight?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI