Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Some people deal in priceless jewels; others spend their whole lives trading worthless glass and feeling sure it's treasure.
When the true teacher is pleased, you find the real jewel at last — and it turns out it was inside you all along. No one finds it without a teacher; the blind and the false just wander until they drop. A self-centered heart rots away in 'two-ness,' never learning how to be still.
There is only the One — so who else would you even take your complaints to? Some people have nothing and wander; some have storehouses stuffed full. But without the One's Name, none of that is real wealth — it's all just poison and ashes. The One acts, and moves everyone else to act; and by the flow of its Will, a soul is made beautiful.
This Pauree sorts all of human life into two kinds of commerce: some trade in priceless jewels, while others deal in mere glass. It is the difference between a life spent on what is truly precious and a life spent on glittering worthless things mistaken for treasure. The tragedy of the second kind is that the trader does not know — he is sure his glass is gems, and spends his whole life on it.
The real jewel is found in one way only: when the True Guru is pleased, we find the treasure of the jewel, deep within the self. Two things stand out. First, the jewel is within — not acquired from outside but uncovered inside, as so often in this raag. Second, it is found through the Guru — without the Guru, no one has found this treasure. The clever and the self-willed, trusting their own glass, die in their endless wanderings and putrefy in duality, never learning the one thing that would have shown them the jewel: how to be still, how to meditate, how to turn toward the One.
And the Pauree states the value-judgment bluntly: without God's Name, there is no other wealth. Everything else is just poison and ashes. This is not a denial that worldly riches exist or function — some are destitute, some have full storehouses, and that is simply how the Play runs. It is a claim about what is real wealth, the kind that lasts and feeds the soul. Measured against the Name, the world's treasure is poison (because clinging to it harms) and ashes (because it will not last). The glass dazzles; the jewel endures. And the closing line returns everything to the One: the Lord Himself acts, and causes others to act; by the Hukam of His Command, we are embellished. Even the finding of the jewel is grace — the soul is made beautiful not by its own clever trading but by the One's Will moving through it.
What 'glass' have you been sure was treasure — and what might the real jewel, already within you, be?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI