Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You made all of this — every color, every kind of creature, every shape — in more ways than anyone could ever count. You made it, and only you fully understand it; the whole vast thing is your play, your great game.
Some arrive and some slip away; and without holding onto your Name, everything that comes is bound to pass. But the ones turned toward the teaching get dyed in a deep, glowing crimson — soaked through with love of you, a color that never washes out.
So serve the True and Pure One, the great architect who shapes everything that happens. You know all of it, and you are greater than the greatest. I would give anything for the people who hold you in their thoughts.
After two shaloks showing the world to be a passing arc of ashes and smoke, the first Pauree turns and speaks directly to the Creator — and this direct address to the One is the structural heartbeat of the entire Vaar. Every Pauree will do this: lift its eyes from the human scene to the One behind it. And the first thing it says is the key that reframes everything: it is all Your Play — sabh tera khel.
This single phrase transforms the smoke and ashes of the shaloks. The world's impermanence is not a meaningless tragedy or a cosmic accident; it is the Play of the One — the lila, the divine game, brought forth in endless colors, qualities, and forms, and understood fully only by the One who is playing it. The coming and going that looked so bleak from the human side is, from the One's side, a vast and purposeful play. This does not deny the impermanence; it holds it inside a larger meaning.
And within the Play, the Pauree names what does not pass: those dyed in the deep crimson of the Lord's Love. The image is precise — majith, the fast madder-dye that soaks into cloth permanently, as opposed to the cheap dyes that wash out. While everything else in the Play comes and goes, the soul colored through with love of the One holds a color that does not fade. So the Pauree answers the shaloks' question. Yes, the world is smoke; yes, all things pass — but the Name does not, and the love-dyed soul does not. Serve that True and Pure One, the Architect of Destiny, and you anchor yourself to the one permanent thing inside a world of passing play.
Does it change how loss feels to imagine the whole coming-and-going as part of a larger, purposeful play?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI