Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Those who forget the **shabad** have no home, no resting place — nowhere to settle. Lost in doubt, they're like a crow flapping around an empty, abandoned house, finding nothing. They lose out on both this life and the next, and they spend their days going from one ache to the next.
This verse says that when we forget the Word, we lose our inner home and wander like a crow in an empty house.
The picture is hard to forget. Bharam bhoolay ji-o sunjai ghar kaa-o — lost in doubt, like a crow in a deserted house. A crow flies into an empty house looking for food, looking for anything. It flaps from room to room, calling out, finding only dust. It cannot settle, and it cannot leave happy. That, says Guru Amar Das, is the inner life of someone who has forgotten the shabad, the Word. They search the empty rooms of the world for something to fill them, and find only more emptiness. It is the opposite of the happy, secure bride of the verse before.
The cause is sabad visaaran — they forgot the Word. It is forgetting, not being wicked. An earlier shabad spoke kindly in the same way about forgetting the Giver of peace. The result is tinaa tha-ur na thaa-o — no home and no place to rest. This is not about lacking a house. It is about lacking a home inside. An earlier shabad called it nij ghar, our own true home within. Without it, the soul can never stop searching or feel at home. That is bharam: doubt, the wandering mind that keeps saying the answer must be in the next empty room.
Halat palat tinee dovai gavaa-ay — they lose both halat, this life, and palat, the next. We might think someone at least enjoys this life even if they skip the deeper one. But a heart with no inner home cannot truly enjoy even this life. Each pleasure turns to dust, and the same ache comes back: dukhay dukh, one ache after another. This is not an angry God's threat. It is simply what happens when we look for home where there is none. The way out is gentle: stop flapping through empty rooms. The Word is the door to the one home, within, that is really full.
Where do you keep "searching for something" that never quite satisfies — and what would it mean to find a home *inside* instead of in the next empty room?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI