Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The One slipped a soul into the body it had shaped, and it watches over everything it makes. Look at the gifts it handed out: eyes that see, a tongue that speaks, ears that wake up the mind, feet that walk, hands that work — and food and clothes that simply arrive.
And yet so many people use every one of these gifts without ever knowing the Giver who handed them over — doing things in the dark, blind to the One who is right there. When the clay pot of the body finally cracks, it can't be molded back together. And without a teacher to give a life real worth, there's nothing to carry it across.
This shalok holds up the body as a catalogue of gifts — and then names the strange ingratitude at the center of most human lives. First, the gifts: the One placed the soul in the body, and look what came with it — eyes that see, a tongue that speaks, ears that bring the mind to awareness, feet that walk, hands that work, and even they wear and eat whatever is given. Every faculty you use a thousand times a day is on loan, handed to you by a Giver you did nothing to deserve it from.
And then the ache: they do not know the One who created the Creation. The blind fools do their dark deeds. Here is the human tragedy in one line — using the eyes without seeing the One who gave sight, using the tongue without thanking the One who gave speech. It is the same point Guru Angad will sharpen in the next shalok (preferring the gift over the Giver): we are surrounded by, and made of, generosity, and we walk through it blind to its source.
The shalok grounds the urgency in mortality: when the pitcher of the body breaks and shatters, it cannot be re-created. The body is a clay pot — useful, beautiful, and breakable exactly once. There is no re-molding it after it shatters. So the chance to know the Giver is this chance, in this pot. And the closing line gives the Vaar's recurring refrain: without the Guru, there is no honor; without honor, no one is carried across. The teacher is what gives a life real worth — the worth that, unlike the clay pot, does cross over.
If your eyes, voice, and hands are all gifts, how might today feel different if you used even one of them with gratitude to its source?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI