Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The people who carry truth inside them receive the True Name, and only true things come out of their mouths. They walk the path toward the One, and gently draw others onto it alongside them.
Choosing your company is a lot like choosing your water. Bathe in a clean, living pool and you come out clean; sit in a stagnant pond and you come out dirtier than before. And the truest, clearest water of all is the teacher — meditating on the Name, night and day. Such a soul is lifted, and lifts its whole family, and offers the Name out to the whole world. I would give anything for the one who keeps the Name and helps others keep it too.
Right after the portrait of the false leader, Guru Ram Das (the Fourth Mehl) gives us the true one — and the contrast is total. The false guide fed on falsehood; the true guide is one within whom the Truth dwells. From that inner truth everything follows: he receives the True Name, speaks only the Truth, walks the Lord's path, and — crucially — inspires others to walk on the Lord's Path as well. The false leader spread blindness; the true one spreads sight. Both reproduce what they carry, which is exactly why what a guide carries inside matters so much.
The shalok's beautiful teaching image is water as company. Bathing in a pool of holy water, they are washed clean; but bathing in a stagnant pond, they are contaminated with even more filth. Your companions are the water you bathe your soul in. A clean, living, flowing pool — the company of the truthful — leaves you cleaner. A stagnant pond — the company of the false — leaves you dirtier than you came. We do not stay the same in the water we sit in; we take on its quality.
And the cleanest water of all is named: the True Guru is the Perfect Pool of Holy Water — a living spring fed by ceaseless meditation on the Name. To bathe in that pool is to be truly cleansed. And the cleansing overflows: such a one is saved, along with his family, and bestowing the Name, saves the whole world. Where the false leader's corruption spread outward to ruin, the true guide's truth spreads outward to save — himself, his lineage, and the world. Guru Ram Das ends, as love always does in these songs, by bowing low: a sacrifice to one who chants the Naam and inspires others to chant it too.
What 'water' are you bathing your soul in lately — and is it leaving you cleaner or murkier?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI