Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Why is one person at peace and another aching inside?
What makes someone turn their face toward the teaching, and someone else turn away from it? How do you actually *meet* the One — and what makes a person feel cut off and far away? Who can show me the way?
The third stanza of questions turns to the heart's felt condition. Who is happy, and who is sad? Not a trivial question — Guru Arjan is asking what truly underlies contentment and sorrow, beneath all the surface reasons we give. Why does one person carry a deep gladness and another a deep ache, even in similar circumstances?
Then the pivotal pair: who, as sunmukh, turns toward the Guru, and who, as vaymukh, turns away? These two words — sunmukh (face turned toward) and vaymukh (face turned away) — name the most basic spiritual fact about a person: which direction they are facing. The whole song is quietly circling this. The question of happiness and sadness, of meeting and separation, will turn out to rest entirely on this one thing: which way the face is turned.
How can one meet the Lord? How is one separated from Him? — the ache of union and the wound of separation, the great theme of Maajh itself. And then the stanza ends with a cry that is the most human moment in the song: Who can reveal the way to me? After all the careful questions, the mask of the philosopher drops, and what is left is a genuine plea. Show me. I want to know. Who will point the way? It is the honest cry of every real seeker — and it is precisely the cry that the next stanzas will answer.
Right now, honestly — which way is your face turned, and what would help you turn it toward what matters?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI