Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Is there a word that can quiet a mind that just won't stop wandering?
Is there a teaching that lets you stay steady whether life goes well or badly? Is there a way of living that keeps you close to the One? And how does a person learn to sing its praises?
This is the last stanza of questions, and it is the most practical of all — the questions of someone ready to actually do something, asking what exactly. What is that Word, by which the wandering mind can be restrained? Everyone who has ever tried to sit still knows the wandering mind — the restless, hopping attention that will not settle. Guru Arjan asks: is there a Word that can actually quiet it? Not suppress it by force, but settle it.
What are those teachings, by which we may endure pain and pleasure alike? This is the question of equanimity — the steadiness that holds whether fortune smiles or frowns. Most of us are tossed up by good news and down by bad; is there a teaching that lets us stay level through both? And what is that lifestyle, by which we may come to meditate on the Supreme Lord? Not just an inner technique but a whole way of living that keeps the One in view.
The stanza ends on the warmest of the practical questions: How may we sing the Kirtan of His Praises? Kirtan — the singing of the One's glory — is the destination toward which all the others point. Notice how the questions have descended, stanza by stanza, from the grand categories (liberated, teacher, householder) to the cosmic (karma, the cycle) to the felt (happy, sad, meeting, separation) and now to the utterly practical (the wandering mind, steadiness, the right life, singing). Guru Arjan has walked us all the way down from abstraction to the actual texture of a day. And now, finally, he will answer — all of it, with one word.
Of all these questions, which one is most *yours* right now — the one you'd most want answered?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI