The truest yoga isn't a posture — it's a mind so at home in the One that nothing can shake it.
The Arc
Verse 1 (P0): neither thrilled by gain nor grieved by loss — the mind stays well.
The Rahau (P1): this is how the mind is joined; attachment, sorrow, sickness, and public opinion lose their hold.
Verse 2 (P2): pure in every realm; wherever I look, I see the One.
Verse 3 (P3): beyond wind, water, and form is where the formless One abides.
Verse 4 (P4): "mine and yours" dissolves; I blend into the One like water into water.
Key Vocabulary
man jognee — the mind joined to the One; the real "yoga."
rognee — the mind's sickness of ups and downs, here healed.
log — public opinion; freedom from crowd-fear.
aagi-aakaaree — living in step with the flow of existence.
avigat / agam — the unmanifest, unapproachable One.
ambhai ambh — water blended into water; oneness.
Themes and Cross-Connections
Guru Arjan borrows the yogis' own words — jog, naath, union — and moves them inward. The union is not with a posture or a breath technique but with the One, and its fruit is equanimity: steadiness through arrival and loss, freedom from the tyranny of "what will people think." The shabad ends in the great image of the drop merging into the sea.
For Raag Raamkalee
The raag of yogis is here given a yoga of the heart. Where the yogi withdraws to a mountain beyond wind and water, Guru Arjan finds that same still ground inside a mind that has stopped clinging.
Translation Notes
Shiva and Shakti (P3):siv saktee is treated respectfully as the world of form that is transcended, not as figures to mock.
"apart from the people / alog" (P2): rendered as freedom from being ruled by the crowd, not contempt for people.
"obedient / aagi-aakaaree" (P2): rendered as alignment with the flow of life (hukam), not servile obedience.
The truest yoga isn't a posture — it's a mind so at home in the One that nothing can shake it.
The Arc
Key Vocabulary
Themes and Cross-Connections
Guru Arjan borrows the yogis' own words — jog, naath, union — and moves them inward. The union is not with a posture or a breath technique but with the One, and its fruit is equanimity: steadiness through arrival and loss, freedom from the tyranny of "what will people think." The shabad ends in the great image of the drop merging into the sea.
For Raag Raamkalee
The raag of yogis is here given a yoga of the heart. Where the yogi withdraws to a mountain beyond wind and water, Guru Arjan finds that same still ground inside a mind that has stopped clinging.
Translation Notes