Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
And here is the answer to all of it — in a single word.
The one who turns toward the teaching — the **gurmukh** — is the one who is free, and the one who is joined to the One. *That* is the real teacher and the real guide. Whether they keep a home or leave it behind, they are blessed. And they are the one who truly knows how vast the One is.
After four stanzas of questions, the answer arrives — and it is breathtaking in its simplicity. Every single question of the opening stanza is answered with one word: Gurmukh. Who is liberated? The Gurmukh. Who is united? The Gurmukh. Who is the real teacher, the real preacher? The Gurmukh. Householder or renunciate — which is blessed? The Gurmukh, either way.
That last point is the quiet revolution. The fierce debate of the age — is it holier to stay in the world or to renounce it? — Guru Arjan simply dissolves. Blessed is the Gurmukh, the householder and the renunciate. It is not the outer status that makes a life holy; it is the inner orientation. A householder turned toward the teaching is blessed; a renunciate turned toward the teaching is blessed. The robe and the begging bowl decide nothing; the direction of the face decides everything. This is one of the tradition's most liberating teachings — you do not have to abandon your home, your family, your ordinary life to find the One. You have to turn toward it, wherever you are.
And the unanswerable question — who can estimate the Lord's Value? — is answered too: the Gurmukh knows the Lord's Value. But notice how this is an answer. The Value was never going to be calculated; no mind can measure the infinite. The Gurmukh "knows" it not by estimating but by being turned toward it, living near it, drinking it in. You cannot weigh the ocean, but you can swim in it and know it that way. The one question that resisted all calculation is answered not by a number but by an orientation — which is the secret of the whole song.
Is there a 'holier-than' debate you've been caught in, that might dissolve if the real question were simply which way your heart is turned?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI