The Name Grows the More You Give It Away

Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa

This verse says the heart is a palace full of jewels, and the Name is a treasure that grows the more we use it.

Now the inner home becomes a mahal, a palace. Andar mahal ratnee bharay bhandaaraa — inside the palace are bhandaaraa, storerooms, full of ratan, jewels. This crowns all the shabad's pictures of treasure within. Your heart is not a bare little room. It is a palace with vaults of jewels. And the best jewel of all is naam apaaraa — the Name without limit. The richest treasure there is sits in the palace of your own heart.

Notice the careful word: gurmukh paa-ay — the one who faces the Guru finds it. The palace and its jewels are in everyone. But we only reach the vault when we turn toward the light, when the ego steps out of the doorway and the dark lifts, as the earlier verses showed. The treasure was always there. The gurmukh is just the one whose light has dawned enough to see it.

Then comes a picture of trading. Gurmukh vanjay sadaa vaapaaree — the gurmukh is a vaapaaree, a trader, who always deals in the Name. And the last line has a lovely twist: laahaa naam sad paavani-aa — the laahaa, the profit, is the Name itself. In ordinary trade, you give one thing to get a different thing, like money for a snack. Here, what you trade and what you gain are the same. You share the Name in love and remembering, and you end up with more of it: more love, more closeness to the One. Money shrinks when you spend it. This treasure grows. Think of a candle lighting another candle. The first flame does not get smaller. So the gurmukh is the wisest trader of all, drawing from a vault that never empties — and that vault was inside all along.