Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
A life lived without ever coming to know the One is, in the end, simply wasted.
Only a few make it across the rough sea of the world, and they do it by grace. The One is the cause behind all causes — the reason there are reasons at all — and everything that exists hangs upon the Creator, held up moment to moment by its power.
This brief shalok of Guru Angad states, with great economy, both the stakes of a human life and the ground of all existence. The stakes first: life is useless, as long as one does not know the Lord God. This is bracing, but it is the consistent verdict of the whole Vaar. Not less good, not partly wasted — useless, in the deepest accounting, if the one thing a human life is for — coming to know the One — is never done. All the activity of a life that never makes this one contact is, in the end, motion without arrival. And the crossing is rare and gifted: only a few cross over the world-ocean, by Guru's Grace. The bhavsagar, the terrifying sea of worldly existence, is crossed by few, and never by their own strength alone — only by grace.
Then the shalok lifts from the human stakes to the cosmic ground, naming the One with one of its great titles: the All-powerful Cause of causes — karan karan samarath. Behind every cause there is a further cause, and behind them all is the One: the Cause of causes, the reason there are reasons at all, the source from which the whole chain of happening hangs. This is said after deep deliberation — it is not a casual claim but the considered conclusion of long reflection on how things are.
And the closing line gives the relationship between Creator and creation: the creation is subject to the Creator, who sustains it by His Almighty Power. Creation is not a machine that, once made, runs on its own; it is sustained, moment to moment, by the power of the One. Everything that exists is being held in being right now — not just made once long ago, but upheld continuously, like a song that exists only as long as it is being sung. This is both humbling and reassuring. Humbling, because nothing — including us — stands on its own; we are held. Reassuring, because the holding is by an Almighty Power that is also, as the whole Vaar insists, love. To know this One — the Cause of causes who sustains all things — is the one thing that keeps a life from being, in the final reckoning, useless.
If everything is being 'held in being' moment to moment, how does that change the way you see your own existence right now?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI