Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Drink in the **Name** like the sweetest nectar there is.
Let your life be steadied just by being around those who serve the One. And watch how your tangled worries quietly sort themselves out when you keep your heart bowed, humbly, at the teacher's feet.
This stanza is almost entirely instruction — three simple directions for a life turned toward the One. The first: Drink in the Ambrosial Essence of the Name. The Name is amrit, the nectar of immortality, and the verb is drink — take it in, let it become part of you, the way the body takes in water. As in the neighboring songs, the spiritual life is figured as a thirst that the Name alone truly quenches; here the instruction is simply to drink.
The second: live by beholding the face of the Lord's servant. There is a steadying power in the mere presence of those who serve the One — their darshan, their face, their company. Guru Arjan says to live by it, to let the nearness of the devoted be a daily nourishment. We are shaped by who we behold; behold the servants of the One, and you are steadied by them.
The third is the most practical and consoling: Let all your affairs be resolved, by continually worshipping the Feet of the Guru. This is not a promise of magic — that bowing produces money or removes every problem. It is something subtler and truer: when you keep your heart humbly centered at the teacher's feet, your tangled affairs begin to order themselves, because a life reorganized around the right center stops generating so much of its own tangle. Many of our knots are tied by the anxious, grasping ego; quiet it at the Guru's feet, and the knots loosen of their own accord. The drinking, the beholding, and the bowing are three faces of one simple turn — toward the Name, toward the company, toward the teacher.
Which of your 'tangled affairs' might loosen if you stopped gripping them and centered yourself somewhere steadier?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI