Do not build your worth on what fades; turn your "wow" toward the Carefree One who lasts — and let good company, honest company, remake you.
The Arc
This long Ashtapadee (Ghar 10, in short shalok-like couplets, 34 verses plus the Pause) opens by refusing to hand our praise to the perishable: the world passes, people return to dust, so don't hang your worth there (Pauri 0). The Rahau turns that redirected praise into its keynote — vaahu, vaahu: the sheer "wow" of awe, aimed at the True and carefree One (Pauri 1). From there the shabad unfolds a patient meditation on how a life is actually shaped: by the company we keep (2, 5, 20, 24, 25), by the law that you become what you serve and eat what you plant (7, 19), by the Giver who feeds all creation (10), and by the Name as the mind's inexhaustible travel-provision (27, 28, 32). It closes on the rare few who find the True Friend and are never parted again (34).
Key Vocabulary
vaahu — the exclamation of awe; the same wonder that lives inside Waheguru.
gurmukh / manmukh — one turned toward the teaching / one turned toward the isolated self.
haumai — ego, the sense of being a separate, cut-off self; named here as a disease (rog).
sahaj — natural, unforced ease; the poise of the aligned soul.
tosaa — travel-provisions; the Name as the food that lasts the whole journey.
nav nidh — the "nine treasures," here the inexhaustible wealth of the Name within.
Themes and Cross-Connections
Two great currents run through the shabad. The first is company: who and what we keep close quietly remakes us and everyone around us — a theme Guru Amar Das returns to again and again (Pauris 5, 9, 20, 24, 25). The second is what actually stays: gold gathered by wrongdoing does not follow us, but the Name is the one wealth that travels all the way through (27–28, 34). Between them sits the plain machinery of karma — you become what you serve, you eat what you plant (7) — stated not as threat but as natural law, like water finding its level.
For Raag Soohee
Soohee is the raag of love and the deep bond of union. Here that bond is drawn as family made of truth (24–25) and as the Beloved who colors the heart with love in natural ease (31): union not as reward but as the natural home of a heart that has stopped building on what fades.
Translation Notes
Per the project's wellbeing rules, several frightening images in the source are softened while their teaching is kept: the "City of Death" (Pauri 2), the drowning of families and lineage (5), the blackened faces and "horrible hell" of slanderers (6), and the snake-fed-on-milk figure (16) are all bent away from fear and toward the enduring lesson — that this life is a precious chance, that our company shapes us, that slander hardens the one who speaks it, and that a closed heart cannot absorb even the kindness offered it. The soul-bride imagery (15, 31) is carried gently as "the One I love," child-safe. The word karma is used plainly, as the guidelines allow.
Do not build your worth on what fades; turn your "wow" toward the Carefree One who lasts — and let good company, honest company, remake you.
The Arc
This long Ashtapadee (Ghar 10, in short shalok-like couplets, 34 verses plus the Pause) opens by refusing to hand our praise to the perishable: the world passes, people return to dust, so don't hang your worth there (Pauri 0). The Rahau turns that redirected praise into its keynote — vaahu, vaahu: the sheer "wow" of awe, aimed at the True and carefree One (Pauri 1). From there the shabad unfolds a patient meditation on how a life is actually shaped: by the company we keep (2, 5, 20, 24, 25), by the law that you become what you serve and eat what you plant (7, 19), by the Giver who feeds all creation (10), and by the Name as the mind's inexhaustible travel-provision (27, 28, 32). It closes on the rare few who find the True Friend and are never parted again (34).
Key Vocabulary
Themes and Cross-Connections
Two great currents run through the shabad. The first is company: who and what we keep close quietly remakes us and everyone around us — a theme Guru Amar Das returns to again and again (Pauris 5, 9, 20, 24, 25). The second is what actually stays: gold gathered by wrongdoing does not follow us, but the Name is the one wealth that travels all the way through (27–28, 34). Between them sits the plain machinery of karma — you become what you serve, you eat what you plant (7) — stated not as threat but as natural law, like water finding its level.
For Raag Soohee
Soohee is the raag of love and the deep bond of union. Here that bond is drawn as family made of truth (24–25) and as the Beloved who colors the heart with love in natural ease (31): union not as reward but as the natural home of a heart that has stopped building on what fades.
Translation Notes
Per the project's wellbeing rules, several frightening images in the source are softened while their teaching is kept: the "City of Death" (Pauri 2), the drowning of families and lineage (5), the blackened faces and "horrible hell" of slanderers (6), and the snake-fed-on-milk figure (16) are all bent away from fear and toward the enduring lesson — that this life is a precious chance, that our company shapes us, that slander hardens the one who speaks it, and that a closed heart cannot absorb even the kindness offered it. The soul-bride imagery (15, 31) is carried gently as "the One I love," child-safe. The word karma is used plainly, as the guidelines allow.