Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
If I get my Love — the Name — then I am truly alive.
There is sweet nectar inside the temple of the mind, and through the teacher's guidance we drink it in. My mind is soaked in love of the One, and I keep drinking the deep sweetness of it. I found the One inside myself, and so I live.
This shabad opens by making the Name a matter of life itself: if I receive my Love, the Naam, then I live. Not then I am happier or then I am better — then I live. Without the One, the soul merely exists; with it, the soul is truly alive. And where is this life-giving Love found? In the most intimate place imaginable: in the temple of the mind is the Ambrosial Nectar of the Lord.
This image — the temple of the mind, man mandir — is one of the loveliest in these shabads, and it carries the whole tradition's interiority. The image turns the seeker inward: the temple is your own mind, and the amrit, the immortal nectar, is already enshrined within it. The Guru's role is to teach you to drink: through the Guru's Teachings, we drink it in. And drinking, the soul is transformed — drenched with the Love of the Lord, continually drinking in the sublime essence (har ras, the taste of the One). The stanza closes by gathering it all: I have found the Lord within my mind, and so I live. The temple was within, the nectar was within, the Beloved was within — and finding it there is not an interesting discovery but the very thing that makes the soul alive.
If the 'temple' holding what you most need is your own mind, what would it mean to go there and drink?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI