Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Clinging to Maya, the world's shiny show, brings the darkness of not-knowing.
The self-willed are caught by it, foolish and unaware.
Night and day, their lives slip away in busy chores.
They die and are born, again and again, and face hard consequences.
Holding on only to things that come and go leaves us in a fog, going round in circles.
Maa-i-aa moh agi-aan gubaar — clinging to Maya brings a fog of not-knowing. Maya is the pull of the world toward stuff, money and show. Manmukh mohay mugaDh gavaar — the manmukh, a person led only by their own wants, gets stuck and confused.
An-din DhanDhaa karat vihaa-ay — day after day slips by in busywork. Think of scrolling a phone for hours and looking up to find the whole evening gone.
Mar mar jameh milai sajaa-ay — the verse says they die and are born again and again, to hard results. In the Guru's picture, that is a tiring round, like a hamster wheel: always running, never arriving. The picture is there to wake us up to what we are here for.
What is something you chased that turned out not to matter as much as you thought?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI