Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
How does a person get all tied up in knots — and how do they ever get free?
How do you step out of the endless circling of coming and going? Who's caught in the karma-machine, and who has stepped past it? And who is it that holds the **Name**, and helps others hold it too?
The questions continue, and they move from the social categories of the first stanza to the inner machinery of the soul. How is one bound, and how is one freed of his bonds? What actually ties a person up — and what actually releases them? This is the most practical question a seeker can ask, and Guru Arjan poses it cleanly, without yet answering.
How can one escape from the cycle of coming and going? The restless circling — birth after birth, want after want, the same loops repeating — is the condition the whole tradition seeks release from. And who is subject to karma, and who is beyond karma? Who is still caught in the mechanical chain of action-and-consequence, and who has somehow stepped outside it? These are not idle puzzles; they are the questions of someone who genuinely wants out and is asking how.
The stanza ends on the gentlest of the questions: Who chants the Name, and inspires others to chant it? Notice the shape of it — it asks not only who remembers the One, but who kindles remembrance in others. Already the questions are pointing, quietly, toward a kind of person rather than a technique. The answer the song is building toward is not a method you perform but an orientation you live — and one that naturally spreads to those around you. But for now, Guru Arjan keeps us in the honest posture of not-yet-knowing, asking the real questions before offering the real answer.
What do you feel most 'bound' by right now — and have you ever honestly asked what would actually free you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI