The Clues Slide Past a Heart Sealed by Greed

Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa

This stanza continues the portrait of the entranced soul, and sharpens it. The problem is not a lack of signs — quite the opposite. The riddles and hints are given, and he sees them with his eyes. Life is full of reminders — of impermanence, of what matters, of the One; they are placed right in front of him, and he sees them. The clues are not hidden. His eyes are open.

But seeing is not the same as receiving. He is foolish and greedy, and he never listens to what he is told. The blockage is named precisely: greed — lobh. Greed is what turns a person foolish before the obvious; it fixes the attention so hard on getting and having that the hints sliding past the open eyes never land. He sees the riddle and cannot read it, because greed has him reading only one thing: more. This connects to the closed-vessel teaching elsewhere in this raag — wisdom offered to a sealed heart is wasted, not because the wisdom is weak but because the vessel is shut. Here the seal is greed. The hints are generous and constant; the eyes are open; and still nothing gets in, because a heart fixed on acquiring cannot hear what it is being told. The tragedy is not that the truth is absent but that it is everywhere, seen and unheard.