Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
People scrub their clothes and wash their bodies and work hard at being disciplined.
But they never once notice the real grime, the kind that stains the inside, while they wash and wash at the outside dirt.
A mind that's blind to that wanders off and gets caught.
It looks at what belongs to others and aches to make it its own, and that grasping ego just brings pain.
O Nanak, when the ego finally cracks open in someone turned toward the teaching, they hold the Name.
They say it, sit with it, sink into it, and through it they settle into a deep peace.
This verse says you can scrub your body clean and still be dirty inside, because the dirt that matters is the grabbing ego.
It pairs with the verse before it. That one spoke of people who put the body through the hardest trials. This one turns to everyday outer religion: washing and scrubbing that look clean but miss the inside. "Vastar pakhaal pakhaalay kaa-i-aa" — they wash their clothes and scrub their bodies. "Antar mail lagee nahee jaanai" — they don't know about the dirt stuck inside. Guru Amar Das makes the same point elsewhere with a crane standing in holy water. Water touches only skin. You can scrub the body spotless and leave the heart grubby. The dirt that matters is ha-umai, the "me first" self, and it lives where no water reaches. It's like washing a car on the outside while the engine is full of sludge.
Guru Nanak names what that inner dirt does. "Vasat paraa-ee apunee kar jaanai" — they see other people's things as their own. "Ha-umai vich dukh ghaalay" — in ego, they suffer. The unwashed inner self is a wanting-what's-yours self. It eyes what belongs to others and aches to grab it. That's lobh, greed, working with the ego, and it pays out in pain. The person scrubbing while their heart grabs is anDhaa, blind. They're washing the wrong surface. The verse says they are caught in the net of death, however clean they look.
But the verse ends with the real bath. "Gurmukh ha-umai tutai" — in the one facing the Guru, the ego breaks. It isn't scrubbed off by effort. It cracks open. Then the Name flows in: "naam japay naamo aaraaDhay naamay sukh samaavai" — they repeat the Name, love the Name, and settle into peace through the Name. Real cleaning was never about soap. It's the ego breaking and the Name pouring in. And the result is peace: a heart that stops grabbing and starts remembering.
Where might you be busy 'washing the outside' of something while the real work is quietly inward?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI