Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
And now the other side. Imagine my body racked with pain, everything seeming to go wrong at once, as if the very stars had turned against me. Imagine cruel rulers holding power over me, grinding me down.
Even then — even in the worst of it — I would still worship you. My longing to sing your praises would not shrink at all.
Having imagined the heights of pleasure and power, the third shalok turns to the depths of suffering — and asks whether that could lessen the soul's love. The picture is grim and specific: my body afflicted with pain, under the evil influence of unlucky stars, and the blood-sucking kings — cruel, exploitative rulers — holding power over me. Bodily agony and political oppression together, the worst that fortune and tyranny can inflict.
And the refrain holds, identical to the refrains of abundance and power: even if this were my condition, I would still worship and adore You, and my longing to chant Your Praises would not decrease. This is the deeper and harder half of the teaching. It is one thing for love to survive good fortune; the genuinely difficult test is whether it survives suffering — whether you keep loving the One when your body is in pain and cruel powers crush you. Guru Nanak says: yes. The love that is real does not waver when the weather turns.
This is equanimity in its truest form — the steadiness that holds through pain and pleasure alike, which the tradition prizes above almost everything. The soul anchored in the One is not at the mercy of its circumstances. When everything is milk and gold, it loves the One; when everything is pain and oppression, it loves the One. The love is sourced not from the conditions but from a place the conditions cannot reach. This does not mean the suffering isn't real or that injustice should be accepted — Guru Nanak fought tyranny his whole life. It means the soul's deepest love has a root the tyrant cannot touch.
What in you stays steady when everything goes wrong — and where is its root?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI