Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
I would give everything I am for the people whose whole being delights in you.
You are my mountain — solid, unshakable. My shelter when the storm comes. My shield when something flies at me. There is no one anywhere like you.
This is the Rahao, the "pause" line — the center of the song. It is built almost entirely from pictures of safety.
After the opening verse's answer to worry, the pause line gives the heart something solid to lean on. Too mayraa parbat — You are my mountain. A parbat doesn't move. It is ancient, and no wind can shake it. Too mayraa olaa — You are my shelter and shield. Olaa is the place to hide in a storm, the guard that takes the blow meant for you. Worry needs somewhere to set itself down. Guru Arjan points to the one resting place that never gives way.
Ha-o vaaree — I would give myself — to a certain kind of person: gurmukh man tan bhaavni-aa, the gurmukh, the one facing the Guru, whose mind and body delight in You. Notice the wholeness here. It's not just the mind agreeing that the One is good. The whole person, mind and body together, is glad in the One. This isn't grim duty. It's someone who has found their shelter and is happy in it through and through, like a kid curled up safe at home during a thunderstorm.
The pause line ends by setting the One apart from every smaller shelter: tum sang lavai na laavani-aa — no one can match You. Every other shelter — money, status, cleverness, even another person — is a smaller mountain that can still be moved, a shield that can still crack. The One alone is the shelter with no rival. To know this deep down, not just in your head, is what the whole song reaches for: a safety so deep that worry simply runs out of ground to stand on.
Where do you usually run for safety when you're scared — and how steady has that shelter actually proven?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI