Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
This song turns lovely the moment your heart starts searching for the Name.
Guided by the teaching, you find yourself speaking the One again and again, day and night, until you are colored through and through with that love — the way cloth soaks up dye.
I looked across the whole world, and I found nothing else like this. There is nothing to compare it to.
Once the Name was planted in me, my mind stopped wandering off after every passing thing. It finally settled.
I belong to the One completely. I gladly serve those who serve the Guru.
Guru Ram Das answers Guru Nanak's opening verse in the same key: the song is lovely when it sends you looking for the Name.
Sorath taam suhaavanee jaa har naam dhandholay means Sorath is lovely only when it leads you to search for the Name. The music is a path, not the place you end up.
Har rang cholay means the robe of the self soaked in the color of love. The Vaar will use this dye picture again later. Har jaisaa purakh na labh-ee sabh daykhi-aa jagat mai tolay: I searched and weighed the whole world, and found no one like the One. Think of trying every flavor in the ice cream shop, and knowing which one is yours.
The last line calls Nanak gol golay, the servant of the servants. This is not putting himself down. It is the joy of belonging completely to something bigger than you. The mind has stopped wobbling, because it has finally found its center.
What is something that, once you found it, made a lot of other distractions lose their pull?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI