Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You yourself turn a heart toward the light and set it free. And you yourself let a heart turn inward on its ego and wander, lost. It is all your doing, all your great game playing out in the open for anyone to see. Nanak gives himself to you, marveling — the whole show, start to finish, is yours.
This verse says everything, even our turning toward the One, happens within the One's own play.
It widens all the way out to the biggest view: it is all the One's doing. Toon aapay gurmukh mukat karaa-ihi means "You Yourself set the Gurmukh free." A gurmukh is someone who turns toward the Guru, toward the light. Mukat means free. Toon aapay manmukh janam bhavaa-ihi means "You Yourself let the Manmukh wander through births." A manmukh turns toward the ego. Both ways of facing, and both endings, happen within the One. This is Hukam, the One's will. Not God barking orders, but the one way everything truly runs. Even the difference between the awake heart and the ego-bound heart is part of one unfolding story.
That might sound gloomy, but it is really the opposite. It clears away the last idea that "I" am a separate doer, running the show. If even my turning toward the light is, deep down, the One's own movement, then there is no proud self to take credit. And there is no worried self who has to carry the whole weight alone.
Sabh tayraa khayl dasaahraa means "Your whole play is plain to see." Khayl means a play, a game. The whole of life is pictured as the One's play, out in the open for anyone with eyes to see. Life isn't a test you pass or fail by yourself. It is more like a school play where the One is acting through every part, both the hero and the one who gets lost for a while.
So Nanak answers, naanak daas tayrai balihaarai: "servant Nanak gives himself to You." It is the same giving-of-self that ran like a heartbeat through the earlier verses. Now it rests on seeing that everything is the One's khayl: the longing, the finding, the hard times turned sweet, even this love itself. The song that began with deep longing for the Beloved's face ends in calm wonder at a Beloved who was playing every part all along.
If you imagined your whole life as part of a single, vast "play" that the One is performing, would anything feel different about your worries or your choices?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI