Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The One makes everything, watches over everything, and gives everyone their part to play. Some draw from a bounty that never runs dry; others get only a handful. Some sit on thrones like kings; others have to beg.
But the Word is alive inside every single one of them — and Nanak simply keeps the Name in mind.
After the personal joy of the previous stanzas, this closing one widens to the whole sweep of creation and its bewildering inequalities. The Lord Himself creates, and the Lord Himself beholds; the Lord Himself assigns all to their tasks. Everything — making, watching, the handing-out of roles — is the One's own doing. And the roles are wildly unequal: some partake of the bounty which never runs out, while others receive only a handful; some sit upon thrones as kings, while others must beg for charity. Guru Ram Das does not pretend the world is fair; he names the gulf between the king and the beggar plainly.
But he sets against that visible inequality one invisible constant that matters more than all of it: the Word of the Shabad is pervading in everyone. However different their outer fortunes — throne or begging bowl, overflowing bounty or a single handful — the Shabad, the Word, the living presence of the One, is alive inside every one of them. Read as an ethical reflection, this says the king is not closer to the One because of his throne, nor the beggar farther because of his bowl: at the level that counts, the level of the indwelling Word, all are graced with the same Presence. And so the soul's response is not to envy the king or pity the beggar but simply to turn to the one thing open to all: Nanak meditates on the Naam. The outer lot is the One's to assign; the inner treasure — the Name within — is open to everyone, throne or no throne.
Does it change how you see both the powerful and the struggling to remember the same Presence lives in each?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI