Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Let go of the things that cloud you: desire that grabs, anger that burns, lying, and tearing other people down. Set down Maya's glittering pull, and drain off the pride.
Loosen even your tight grip on the people closest to you — not by loving them less, but by clinging less. Trade your thirsty, restless wishes for love of the One. Do this, and right in the middle of the world's darkness, you find the spotless One. The True One settles into your heart, and through the Word you melt into the Name.
This shalok of the Fourth Mehl (Guru Ram Das) is a clear, practical list of what to set down — the inner weights that keep the soul from the One. It names the great enemies directly: sexual desire and anger (kaam and krodh), falsehood and slander, Maya and egotistical pride, selfishness, conceit and arrogant pride. Here are the five passions and their relatives, gathered into one honest inventory of what clouds a human heart.
The most tender and easily-misread line is the call to renounce your love for your children and spouse. This does not mean to stop loving your family — that would contradict the householder ideal that runs through this whole Vaar and the wider tradition. It means to loosen the clinging, the moha, the grasping attachment that treats people as possessions and outcomes as things owed to you. You can love your children and spouse fully and still hold them with open hands rather than clenched fists. What is renounced is not the love but the anxious grip — the thirsty, demanding hope that they will fill the emptiness only the One can fill.
And notice where the One is found, once these weights are set down: amidst the darkness of the world. Not in a forest, not after fleeing your life — right here, in the middle of ordinary existence, with its confusions and its dark. You do not have to go anywhere special; you have to put down the inner clutter. Abandon your thirsty hopes and desires, and embrace love for the Lord. The renunciation is not of the world but of the craving — and in its place, love. When the grasping is set down and love takes its place, the True One comes to dwell in your mind, and through the Shabad the soul is absorbed in the Name. The list of things to renounce turns out to be, at heart, a single move: trade the grip of craving for the openness of love.
Where might you be holding someone or something with a clenched fist that you could hold with open hands instead?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI