Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Meeting the One, my mind came back to life. By the teacher's grace I found it.
Everything there is, and every place there is, belongs to the One. I give myself to it, forever.
This short stanza reports the revival that meeting the One brings. Meeting Him, my mind is revived — hariaa, turned green again, the dried-out mind made fresh and living. The image of revival recurs through these shabads because it captures exactly what the encounter does: a withered, weary inner life is brought back to greenness. And the meeting is grace: by Guru's Grace, I have found the Lord, Har, Har. Found — not earned, not achieved — found, through the Guru's grace.
And the revived soul looks around and sees everything differently: All things belong to God; all places belong to God. The world that the un-revived mind saw as a field of mine and yours, of things to grasp and defend, is now seen as it is — all of it the One's. This is a quiet liberation: if everything belongs to God, then the anxious clutching of mine loosens its grip; you can hold things lightly, as a steward rather than an owner. And the soul, revived and seeing rightly, gives itself away: I am forever a sacrifice to God. The whole movement — revived by the meeting, finding by grace, seeing everything as the One's, and offering the self — is the natural unfolding of a mind brought back to life.
If 'all things belong to God,' how might that loosen your grip on what you think of as yours?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI