Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Why is one person quietly happy and another quietly sad? The one turned toward the teaching carries a settled gladness; the one turned only toward themselves carries a low ache.
One feels joined to the One; the other feels cut off and far away. And the whole difference is simply which way they're facing. The **gurmukh** is the one who can also show others the way.
Here the felt questions of the third stanza — happy or sad, turned-toward or turned-away, meeting or separation — are all answered with the same single distinction. The Gurmukh is happy, while the self-willed manmukh is sad. This is one of the most quietly profound claims in the song. The deepest happiness and sadness do not come from your circumstances; they come from your orientation. The Gurmukh, turned toward the One, carries a gladness that the world cannot install or remove. The manmukh, turned in on the closed loop of self, carries a sadness that no amount of getting can fill — because the self alone is not enough to satisfy the self.
The Gurmukh turns toward the Guru, and the self-willed manmukh turns away. The earlier stanza asked who is sunmukh and who is vaymukh; here is the plain answer, restated in the tradition's most basic pair. And from this everything else follows: the Gurmukh is united with the Lord, while the manmukh is separated from Him. The great ache of Maajh — meeting and separation — is revealed to rest on nothing but the direction of the face. You are not separated from the One by distance or by sin; you are "separated" only by facing the wrong way. Turn, and the separation that felt so absolute simply was never there.
And the song answers its own desperate plea — who can reveal the way to me? — gently: the Gurmukh reveals the way. The one who has turned is the one who can help you turn. The answer to "who will show me" is: someone who is already facing the right direction, and whose presence turns you too.
When you feel 'cut off' from what matters, is it possible you're not far away — just turned the wrong way?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI