Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Some people go off to live in the forest, eating wild fruits and roots. Some put on holy robes and call themselves yogis or monks.
But if the wanting is still burning inside — if they still ache for food and clothes and comfort — then they've slipped between two stools: not really householders, and not really renouncers either. The fear of death still hangs over them, and the three-stranded craving still has its hold.
But death doesn't even come near the ones who follow the teaching and humbly serve. The True Word lives in their hearts, and right inside their ordinary lives they stay free. Serving a true teacher, they rise all the way from wanting to wanting-nothing.
This Pauree takes aim at half-hearted renunciation — and its critique is bracing. It pictures the familiar figures of holiness: those who live in the wilderness eating fruits and roots, those who wander in saffron robes as Yogis and Sanyaasees. The outer costume of renunciation is complete. But Guru Nanak looks past the robe to the inside: there is still so much desire within them — they still yearn for clothes and food. The body left home; the craving came along.
And this in-between state, the Pauree says, is the worst of both worlds: they are neither householders nor renunciates. They have given up the householder's honest engagement with the world and failed at the renunciate's actual inner freedom — left with the appearance of having renounced and the reality of still wanting. The Messenger of Death hangs over their heads, and they cannot escape the three-phased desire — the craving woven through the three gunas. Changing your clothes and your address does nothing to the craving in your chest.
Against this, the Pauree names where real freedom lives — and it is not in the forest but within the home of their own inner beings. Those who follow the teaching and serve humbly find the True Shabad dwelling in them, and they remain detached right where they are. This is the householder ideal once more: you do not escape desire by escaping your life; you outgrow desire by serving the Guru until you rise from desire to desirelessness — trishna giving way to a deep contentment that no forest could grant and no robe could fake. The freedom is inner, or it is not freedom at all.
Is there something you imagine you'd be free of if you could just escape your circumstances — when the real work might be inward?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI