Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
I searched everywhere — all four directions, the whole wide world out there — and then, finally, I looked inside myself. And there it was: the true, unseen One, the Creator.
I had been wandering, lost in a wilderness, until the teacher showed me the way. All praise to the true teacher, through whom we melt into the truth! Right inside the home of my own self I found the jewel, and a lamp was lit in the dark.
Those who praise the Word live in a deep, true peace. But those with no awe of the One are overtaken by every kind of fear, and wrecked by their own pride; having forgotten the Name, the world stumbles around like something wild and possessed.
This Pauree tells, in the first person, the story the whole Vaar has been pointing toward: the great inward turn. After looking around in the four directions, I looked within my own self. There, I saw the True, Invisible Lord Creator. The soul searched outward first — north, south, east, west, the whole external world — as every soul does, and found the One nowhere out there. Only when it turned its gaze inward did it find what it had been seeking the whole time. The One it scoured the four directions for was within, all along.
And the inward turn was not self-achieved; it came through the teacher. I was wandering in the wilderness, but now the Guru has shown me the Way. The soul was lost — wandering in the wilderness, the trackless waste of a life without direction — until the Guru pointed it home, home being inward. So the Pauree breaks into praise: Hail to the True Guru, through whom we merge in the Truth. And it names the discovery in the tradition's most luminous images: I have found the jewel within the home of my own self; the lamp within has been lit. The priceless jewel was in the house of the self; the lamp that reveals it has been kindled in the inner dark. The long search ends not with an arrival somewhere new but with the lighting of a lamp at home.
The Pauree closes by contrasting two ways of living, and it turns on the word fear. Those who praise the Word abide in the peace of Truth. But those who do not have the Fear of God are overtaken by fear. Here is a paradox the next shaloks will deepen: the soul that holds a reverent awe of the One lives in peace, free of fear; the soul that lacks that awe is overtaken by fear — consumed by a hundred anxieties — and destroyed by its own pride. Without the one healthy fear (awe of the One), all the unhealthy fears rush in. And so the world, having forgotten the Name, roams around like a wild demon — unanchored, frantic, possessed by its own cravings and dreads. The cure for all of it is the inward turn: stop scouring the four directions, let the Guru light the lamp, and find the jewel that was waiting in the home of your own self.
Where have you been searching 'in the four directions' for something that the teaching says is waiting within your own self?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI