Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Not the angels, not the demons, not human beings, not the great spiritual masters, not even the lifelong seekers — none of them stay on the earth forever.
Who else is there, when all of them are gone? You alone, Lord — You alone.
The litany widens. If the first shalok buried the human great — teachers, rulers, emperors — this one sweeps up the entire spectrum of beings, from the heights to the depths: neither the angels, nor the demons, nor human beings, nor the Siddhas, nor the seekers shall remain. Celestial beings above, infernal beings below, ordinary humans in the middle, the accomplished masters (Siddhas) and the earnest seekers — every rank of existence, holy and unholy, realized and striving, is named and dismissed from permanence.
The question that follows is almost vertiginous: Who else is there? Once you have honestly seen that everyone — every being in every realm — passes away, the question answers itself. There is no permanent thing anywhere in the whole catalogue of existence. And so the refrain lands again, now with the force of having excluded every alternative: You alone, You alone. This is not a depressing thought in the litany's hands; it is a clarifying one. When you stop expecting permanence from anything that cannot give it — angels, masters, your own striving self — you are freed to rest your weight on the only thing that can bear it.
Where are you leaning your weight on something that, however high or holy, cannot actually hold it forever?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI