Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
People who play with dangerous things — charming scorpions, handling snakes — end up marking and hurting themselves with their own hands.
And those who set themselves against the One's flow get knocked down, by the very order of things. If a self-centered heart picks a fight with a heart turned toward the One, it is the self-centered one who loses, judged by the truest Judge there is.
The One is master of this world and the next, sees everything, and weighs it all exactly. Know this for certain: everything that happens, happens within its Will.
This shalok of Guru Angad opens with a vivid image of self-inflicted harm: those who charm scorpions and handle snakes only brand themselves with their own hands. People who make a living playing with dangerous creatures eventually get stung and bitten — they bring the wound on themselves. It is a picture of those who play with what is harmful — with cruelty, with deceit, with the venom of the passions — and are surprised when it turns on them. The harm was in their own hands all along.
The shalok applies this especially to those who set themselves against the Gurmukh — the soul turned toward the One. If the self-willed manmukhs fight with the Gurmukh, they are condemned by the Lord, the True Judge. This is not a threat issued by the Gurmukh, who does no condemning; it is a statement about the order of reality. To attack a soul aligned with the One is, in effect, to attack the current of existence itself — like the snake-handler, you only brand your own hand. The True Judge — sacha niao, true justice — sees the matter exactly and renders it rightly, without the distortions of human courts.
And the shalok rests, as Guru Angad's so often do, on the sovereignty of the One: He Himself is the Lord and Master of both worlds. He beholds all and makes the exact determination... everything is in accordance with His Will. Two consolations live in this for anyone who has been wronged. First, there is a seeing that misses nothing and a justice that gets it exactly right — the True Judge is not fooled, not bribed, not mistaken, where human judges so often are. And second, even the conflict itself unfolds within the One's Will; the wronged soul does not have to carry the whole weight of setting things right, because the order of reality, in the end, is not indifferent. The snake-handler's wound, and the manmukh's defeat in fighting the Gurmukh, are not the Gurmukh's revenge — they are simply how a reality grounded in the One sorts itself out.
Where might you be 'handling snakes' — playing with something harmful — and assuming it won't eventually turn on you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI