Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The food and care that keep you alive don't really come from any person's hand. In the end, everyone's hopes rest on the One.
Only the One truly is. Who else is there? You alone, Lord — You alone.
The litany now turns from impermanence to providence, and the shift is important. Having shown that no person or thing lasts, this shalok draws the practical consequence for daily life: our sustenance is not in the hands of any person. The food, the care, the support that keep you alive do not ultimately come from any human being — not your employer, not the powerful, not even, finally, yourself. The hopes of all rest in the One Lord.
This is quietly liberating. So much of human anxiety, and so much of human servility and fear, comes from believing that our survival is in the hands of people — that we must flatter the powerful, dread the cruel, and grip tightly to our own provision. The litany cuts that root: if no person holds your sustenance, then no person is finally to be feared or flattered for it. Your true dependence is on the One, and the One alone. The One Lord alone exists — who else is there? This does not mean human help isn't real or that work doesn't matter; it means the ultimate source behind every provision is the One. And so even our hopes are rightly placed not on shifting human powers but on the unchanging Giver. You alone, You alone — the refrain now carrying a note of trust as well as detachment.
Whose hands do you secretly believe your security rests in — and how would it change you to trust the One instead?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI