Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The One holds every power there is. I have nothing to brag about — but it is my resting place, and that is enough.
I've taken hold of its support and I live by saying its name. Please be kind, and let me become humble — low as the dust at the feet of the good. However you keep me, that's how I'll live; I'll wear and eat whatever you give, and be content. Just let me try, with all my heart, to sing your praises among the holy.
There's nowhere else for me to go, no one else to complain to. You're the one who clears away the dark of not-knowing. Bring this far-off soul back home — that's all I want. And the day I finally rest at the teacher's feet will be the day every joy arrives.
The closing stanza is a portrait of a soul that has stopped striving to be great and has found its rest in something larger. God is overflowing with all powers. I have no honor — He is my resting place. The two halves belong together: precisely because the soul has let go of its own honor, its need to be impressive, it can sink into the One as a resting place. Pride keeps you standing, exhausted, defending yourself; humility lets you finally lie down. Having no honor of one's own is here not a lament but a relief.
From that rest flows a beautiful contentment with the One's will: As You keep me, so do I live. I wear and eat whatever You give me. This is bhana, glad acceptance, lived out in the most ordinary terms — clothing, food, circumstance. The soul stops bargaining with life and simply receives whatever the One provides, trusting the hand that provides it. The endless anxious wanting quiets into enough.
And the prayer's deepest request is not for things but for humility itself and for the chance to praise: let me merge into the dust of the feet of the humble... may I make the effort to sing Your Glorious Praises in the Company of the Holy. The soul asks not to rise but to become low, and not to be served but to sing. The One is named, finally, as the Dispeller of ignorance, the Destroyer of darkness — the light that lifts the inner dark — and the whole prayer narrows, as the first stanza did, to a single longing: unite this separated one with Yourself. The day that longing is answered, the day the soul rests at the Guru's feet, is the day every joy arrives.
What might you be able to set down — some honor you keep defending — so that you could finally rest?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI