Certain Hungers Only Grow by Being Fed

Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa

This short, piercing shalok gives four unforgettable images of insatiability — of appetites that cannot be filled by feeding them. The desert is not satisfied by rain — pour rain on sand and it vanishes, the desert as dry as ever. The fire is not quenched by desire — feed fire more fuel and it does not calm down; it grows. The king is not satisfied with his kingdom — give him a realm and he wants the next one. The oceans are full, but still they thirst for more — even the seas, brimming, seem to crave. Four pictures, one truth: certain hungers are structurally unfillable. The more you give them, the more they want.

This is the nature of trishna, craving itself — the fire of desire the whole Vaar keeps naming. Its cruel trick is that it disguises itself as a hunger that getting could satisfy: if I just had a little more — more wealth, more success, more pleasure — then I'd be content. But the desert, the fire, the king, and the ocean all testify that it does not work that way. Feeding the craving is pouring rain on sand. The very strategy of satisfying desire by fulfilling it is the trap, because desire grows by being fed. This is why so many lives are spent acquiring and acquiring and arriving, always, at the same dryness.

And so the shalok ends not with another acquisition but with a turn toward the only thing that ends the thirst: how many times must I seek and ask for the True Name? The question carries a weary tenderness — Guru Nanak, knowing the desert cannot be filled by rain, turns instead, again and again, to ask for the Name, the one water that actually satisfies. The deep thirst was never for what the senses and the ego chase; it was for the One. Stop pouring rain on the desert; ask, instead, for the Name — the single thing that, unlike kingdoms and oceans, leaves the soul finally, truly full.