Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Giving yourself to the teaching is time well spent; a life lived that way is blessed.
The ones who never let the teacher slip from mind — in good times and hard times alike — are the truly wise.
They lift up everyone around them, and their whole family is blessed through them.
People like that are never really described as gone, because they live on inside the Word they loved.
safli-o satgur sayvi-aa — service to the true teacher is fruitful. Guru Amar Das makes a striking claim: the person absorbed in the Word (gur kai sabad samaahi) is not counted among the dead — what they lived by continues. The shalok contrasts the gurmukh (turned toward the teaching) with the manmukh (turned toward the self), and the guidelines' care applies: the 'cycle of birth and death' is left light, and the emphasis falls on the positive — that a life given to truth blesses everyone it touches and outlasts the body. kul uDhaaray — one such person raises a whole family.
Who is someone whose good influence still lives on in the people around them?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI