Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The person who follows only their own mind is a field of sorrow. They plant sorrow, and they eat sorrow.
In sorrow they are born, and in sorrow they die. Their life slips by while they act from ego.
They do not see the coming and going of birth and death. Blind, they act blindly.
They do not know the One who gives, but they cling to what is given.
Nanak says: they act out what was written for them before. They cannot do anything else.
Where the Guru is the field where the Name grows, the mind turned away from the Guru (manmukh) becomes a field of sorrow, planting and harvesting its own pain. The engine is again haumai, ego. Such a person holds on to the gift and forgets the Giver, the same theme as the first shalok, seen from its shadow side. And it runs deep: a life lived from ego follows the grooves its own past actions have cut, and by its own effort it cannot simply step out of them.
When you are unhappy, do you look at the gift, or at the Giver behind it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI