Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Every spiritual master, every student, every ruler of the world — one day all of them lie under the ground. Even the great emperors pass away.
Only the One lasts forever. You alone, Lord — You alone.
Here begins a litany of seven short shaloks, each ending with the same hushed refrain: You alone, Lord, You alone — tu hi tu hi. It is one of the most powerful passages in the Vaar precisely because of its simplicity: a steady drumbeat of impermanence, naming category after category of things people imagine to be permanent, and after each, the same return to the only One that remains.
This first shalok aims at the two kinds of greatness people most revere: the spiritually great and the worldly great. All the spiritual teachers, their disciples and the rulers of the world shall be buried under the ground. The emperors shall also pass away. Not only kings and emperors — even the gurus and their disciples, the holy and the wise, go down into the earth. No greatness, sacred or secular, is exempt from the grave. God alone is Eternal. And then the refrain, which is less a statement than a settling of the whole heart onto its only solid ground: You alone, You alone. When everything that could be named has been named and seen to pass, what is left to say is just this — only You.
What greatness — your own or others' — do you treat as permanent that will, in time, also pass?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI