Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The treasure is sitting *inside* you — but the foolish person goes searching for it everywhere outside. Those who follow only their own ego stumble around blindly, restless and lost, like sleepwalkers. The one place the treasure actually is, they never think to look — so they keep wandering, fooled by their own confusion.
This one is about looking everywhere outside for something that is inside you.
This is the heart of the song, the line the others have been building toward. Antar vasat moorhaa baahar bhaalay — the precious thing is inside, but the foolish one searches outside. Earlier the song said that everything has been placed inside the body. Now we see the mistake. People carry the treasure inside their own chest, and they look for it everywhere else. In stuff, in winning, in faraway places, in what other people think of them. It's like tearing the house apart looking for your glasses while they sit on your face.
The picture of the manmukh, the one who faces their own ego, is strong: manmukh anDhay fireh baytaalay — blind, wandering, restless. Baytaalay can mean off the beat, like a dancer who has lost the music. Older translations say "like demons" or "like ghosts," spirits with no rest. It's like sleepwalking: always moving, never arriving, out of step with the One's order, the hukam, that the gurmukh learned to rest inside. The manmukh isn't wicked. They're lost. They search hard, even desperately, but always in the wrong direction.
And the saddest twist: jithai vath hovai tithhu ko-ay na paavai — right where the treasure is, there they never find it, because they never look there. Why not? Bharam: doubt, confusion, the restless idea that the answer must be out there somewhere. The whole problem turns on one wrong guess: that what I'm missing is outside me. Turn that guess around, look inside, and the searching can end. The treasure was never lost. Only the looking pointed the wrong way.
What is something you've searched for "out there" — happiness, peace, feeling enough — that might actually already be inside you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI