No one comes to that door and is turned away empty-handed.
The Arc
A long opening verse: hold the pure, bright One, who kept you safe before birth and gave you body and life, and no one is ever sent away empty. The Pause names the Name as the support of mind and body. Then the honest middle — the passing mistaken for the real, the thirst that never settles, arriving and departing on our own — and the picture of unanchored wandering that finds rest only when mercy carries one across. It closes in shelter: the One as father-and-mother of the world, undoer of sorrow, reaching into the dark; the disciplines cannot be managed alone, so one simply asks for the Name.
Key Vocabulary
Simrahu ek niranjan — hold the One, immaculate and bright
Birthaa jaat na ko-oo — no one turned away empty-handed
Aadhaaraa — support, sustenance
Deenaa naath, jagat pit maaiaa — Master of the meek, father-and-mother of the world
Themes and Cross-Connections
The womb-protection and "father-and-mother" images make grace parental and pre-emptive — held before we can ask. The turn from wandering to shelter is the shabad's spine.
For Raag Maaroo
Mortality's questions are met with a parent's tenderness and an open, never-empty door.
Translation Notes
Extensive wellbeing softening in this shabad: the literal's beasts/ghosts, hell (narak), "severe punishment" and "sins," and the poison-potion imagery are dropped or bent toward hope; "come alone, go alone" is gentled from memento-mori dread toward treasuring what is real; "fool" (sath moorh) becomes honest self-address; "great fire" becomes the world's heat. The womb-protection line is kept because it is comforting, not frightening.
No one comes to that door and is turned away empty-handed.
The Arc
A long opening verse: hold the pure, bright One, who kept you safe before birth and gave you body and life, and no one is ever sent away empty. The Pause names the Name as the support of mind and body. Then the honest middle — the passing mistaken for the real, the thirst that never settles, arriving and departing on our own — and the picture of unanchored wandering that finds rest only when mercy carries one across. It closes in shelter: the One as father-and-mother of the world, undoer of sorrow, reaching into the dark; the disciplines cannot be managed alone, so one simply asks for the Name.
Key Vocabulary
Themes and Cross-Connections
The womb-protection and "father-and-mother" images make grace parental and pre-emptive — held before we can ask. The turn from wandering to shelter is the shabad's spine.
For Raag Maaroo
Mortality's questions are met with a parent's tenderness and an open, never-empty door.
Translation Notes
Extensive wellbeing softening in this shabad: the literal's beasts/ghosts, hell (narak), "severe punishment" and "sins," and the poison-potion imagery are dropped or bent toward hope; "come alone, go alone" is gentled from memento-mori dread toward treasuring what is real; "fool" (sath moorh) becomes honest self-address; "great fire" becomes the world's heat. The womb-protection line is kept because it is comforting, not frightening.
Last updated: 2026-07-09