Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
O my soul, here is the one task truly worth doing: keep the One's Name on your lips.
Let the teaching be your mother — the one who teaches you to hold the Name in your mouth. Let contentment be your father. And know that the teacher is the timeless One, never born and never dying. With great good fortune, you will meet the One.
This verse gives the soul a new family: the teaching as mother, contentment as father, and the Guru as the timeless guide.
Guru Ram Das starts with the closest people in a child's life, mother and father, and gives them a deeper meaning. First, the one task worth doing: gurmukh jindoo jap naam karammaa — O my soul, facing the Guru, make this your deed: repeat the Naam, the Name.
To learn it, the soul gets a new family. Mat maataa — let mat, the teaching, be your mother. Like a mother teaching a toddler their first words, the teaching gently helps you keep the Name on your lips. Santokh pitaa — let santokh, contentment, be your father. Contentment means feeling that what you have is enough. It gives a soul steady ground to stand on, the way a good father does.
This is not about replacing real parents. It says the soul also has a family that shapes it. A healthy soul is raised by the teaching and steadied by contentment. Over this family stands gur purakh ajnamaa — the Guru, the timeless One, never born and never dying, not only a human teacher but the forever source. Raised by such a family, the soul is ready for the meeting the verse promises: vadbhaagee mil raamaa — by great good fortune, you meet the One.
If your soul were raised by 'the teaching' and 'contentment' as its parents, what in you would grow differently?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI