Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The One stirs its devotees to love it, and then fills the wishes of their hearts. It soaks through the waters and the lands — it is not off somewhere far away.
It is inside you and outside you, filling every place there is. The great Soul of all is spread through everything, watching over it all, present everywhere at once.
This stanza is a hymn to the One's immanence — its complete presence within and throughout all things. It begins by noting that even devotion itself is the One's doing: the Lord Himself inspires His devotees to worship Him, and then fulfills the desires of their minds. The love we feel for the One was first stirred by the One; the circle of devotion begins and ends in grace.
Then the stanza presses, line by line, the truth that the One is not far away. He Himself is permeating and pervading the waters and the lands... He is All-pervading — He is not far away. The Lord Himself is within the self, and outside as well... fully pervading everywhere. Notice the insistence — within and without, waters and lands, everywhere, not far away. Guru Ram Das is dismantling the deepest illusion of the seeking soul: that the One is somewhere else, to be reached across a great distance. No — the One is in the water and the land, inside you and outside you, diffused everywhere, the Supreme Soul present in every place at once, and beholding all. The seeking soul, aching for a distant Beloved, is like a fish searching for the ocean it is already swimming in. The One it strains toward is the very medium it lives in, closer than its own breath. This immanence is the quiet answer to all the longing of these shabads: the Beloved was never far; it was here, within and without, all along.
If the One you long for is 'not far away' but within and all around, where is the nearest place you could notice it right now?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI