Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
My Master turned kind to me. I was full of wrongs, and I was made clean simply by taking hold of the teacher's feet.
The teacher cleared away my doubts and my fears — and even washed the hatred out of me. The teacher gave me everything my heart wished for.
This stanza is a testimony of transformation by grace, and it includes a detail too easily passed over. It begins where grace always begins: My Lord and Master has become merciful to me. The mercy comes first; everything else follows from it. I was a sinner, and I have been sanctified, taking to the Guru's Feet. The soul does not clean itself up to deserve the mercy; the mercy finds the sinner and, through the simple humility of taking the Guru's feet, makes the unclean clean.
And then the list of what the Guru removed: dispelling my doubts and fears, the Guru has rid me of hatred. Notice that third item — hatred, bair, enmity. It is one thing to have doubts and fears lifted; it is something deeper to have hatred washed out of the heart. This is a profound mark of real transformation. The grace of the Guru does not only comfort the anxious soul; it heals its enmities, drains the hatred out of it, so that the soul no longer carries the poison of holding others as enemies. A heart freed of doubt and fear but still full of hatred would not be free at all; Guru Arjan names the removal of hatred as part of the cleansing. And the stanza ends in fulfillment: the Guru has fulfilled the desires of my mind. The merciful Master, through the Guru, cleaned the sinner, calmed the fearful, un-hated the heart, and gave it its deepest wishes — the whole work of grace, gathered in four lines.
Is there a hatred or enmity you carry that you'd want washed out — and might that be part of what real freedom means?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI