Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Some people never once stop to think about death, and live puffed up with big plans and grand hopes — so they just circle round and round, life after life, never really arriving anywhere.
In their own minds, they're sure they're good people. But a heart turned only toward itself is, deep down, untrue even to itself, and feels no real thanks for everything it's been given.
Just going through the religious motions doesn't win the One's heart. What does? Actually reaching the One, and holding its Name with love. Those souls bow before it gladly — and in that bowing, they become what they were always meant to be.
This Pauree diagnoses a particular kind of forgetting — the forgetting of death, and with it, of gratitude. Some do not think of death; they entertain great hopes. To never contemplate that life ends is to live in a kind of fog, endlessly building plans on ground that is always about to give way. And the result is the familiar circling: they die, and are re-born, and die, over and over again. They are of no use at all — caught in the wheel because they never woke up to the one fact that might have turned them toward the One.
The sharpest line names the manmukh's self-deception: in their conscious minds, they call themselves good. This is the subtle trap — the self-willed heart is usually convinced of its own goodness. It is not that such people think themselves villains; it is that they award themselves a quiet certificate of virtue while remaining false to their own selves and, tellingly, feeling no gratitude for what they have been given. Ingratitude is the giveaway. A heart truly turned toward the One overflows with thanks, because it sees everything as gift; the heart turned in on itself takes everything as owed and thanks no one.
And the Pauree draws the crucial line between two kinds of religious life: those who merely perform rituals of worship are not pleasing to their Lord and Master. Going through the outer motions — even diligently — does not reach the One. Those who attain the True Lord and chant His Name are pleasing. The difference is between performing religion and reaching the One; between the form and the living contact. And those who make the real contact bow at His Throne gladly and fulfill their pre-ordained destiny — they become, at last, what they were always meant to be. The whole human point, missed by the self-satisfied ritualist and the death-forgetting planner alike, is simply this: wake up, be grateful, and make real contact with the One.
Do you ever award yourself a quiet certificate of being 'good' — and is your heart actually grateful, or does it take things as owed?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI