Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Whatever is written deep in your story cannot simply be rubbed out by anyone's hand.
The One pours strength into us, and the One draws it back out again — both are held in the same hands. You alone, Lord — You alone.
The litany closes on the theme of destiny and strength, both held entirely in the One's hands. That destiny which is pre-ordained and written on one's forehead — no one can erase it. As elsewhere in this raag, the language of "written destiny" should be read not as cold fatalism but within the litany's larger movement: it is one more way of saying that the deep shape of things rests with the One and not with our anxious management. We cannot rub out the deep writing of our lives by force of will; some things are simply held in a hand larger than ours.
And the same is true of our very strength: the Lord infuses strength, and He takes it away again. Even the power we act with is lent — poured in by the One, and drawn back by the One. We did not generate our own vigor, and we cannot finally hold onto it; both the giving and the taking belong to the One. This is the same humbling truth the whole litany has circled: nothing, not even our own strength, is ours in the way the ego imagines.
And so the seven-fold refrain reaches its final repetition: You alone, O Lord, You alone. Taken as a whole, the litany is a long, steadying exhalation — naming, one by one, everything the heart might grasp for permanence (the holy, the powerful, all beings, the virtuous, the cosmos, our provision, our destiny, our strength), and after each, releasing it back to the only One that remains. By the end, the soul that has truly followed the litany has let go of every false handhold and found the one that does not give way. You alone.
What would it feel like to release, one by one, every false handhold you've been gripping, until only the One remains?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI