What Dies While Alive Is Only the Grasping Ego

Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa

This short verse is a riddle. It says: let the grabbing "me" go quiet, and something deeper will see and act through you.

It comes from Guru Angad. A shalok is a short verse like this one. "Akhee baajhahu vaykh-naa vin kanna sunnaa" — to see without eyes, to hear without ears. Then to walk without feet, work without hands, and speak without a tongue. How can anyone do that? The next line gives the key: "i-o jeevat marnaa" — like this, one is dead while still alive. Jeevat marnaa, dying while living, is a big teaching in Sikh thought.

What "dies" isn't the body. The eyes still see. The tongue still talks. What goes quiet is the ego, the small grabbing self that calls all the seeing and speaking "mine." To see without eyes means to look without the ego tinting everything, like taking off sunglasses. To speak without a tongue means to let words come from somewhere deeper than showing off. The senses keep working, but now something deeper looks out through them. Think of a lamp. The bulb stays the same. The One's light shines through it clearly once the "me" stops getting in the way. An earlier shalok in this set uses that same picture of borrowed light.

The last line solves the riddle. "Naanak hukam pachhaan kai ta-o khasmai milnaa" — Nanak says, recognize the Hukam and you meet your Master. Hukam is the way the One makes everything flow. Khasam means Master. Stop fighting the flow, and you blend in. The ego fades when it stops insisting on its own way.

This isn't gloomy. It's the lightest thing there is. All that goes is the heavy job of guarding a separate self. What's left sees clearly.