ਊਚੇ ਮੰਦਰ ਸੁੰਦਰ ਨਾਰੀ ॥
oochay mandar sundar naaree.
Your palaces are lofty, and your brides are beautiful.
ਰਾਮ ਨਾਮ ਬਿਨੁ ਬਾਜੀ ਹਾਰੀ ॥੪॥
raam naam bin baajee haaree. ||4||
But without the Lord's Name, you shall lose the game entirely. ||4||
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Towering palaces, beautiful companions, every kind of splendor, we gather them all.
Yet without the Name of the Beloved held in the heart, the whole game slips through our fingers unwon.
The real prize of life is love, not the trophies we collect.
The verse weighs worldly splendor against the one thing that lasts. Baajee haaree (losing the game) is not a threat but a clear-eyed reckoning: the point of a life is not its trophies but its love. Everything else is on loan.
A Question to Sit With
If life is a kind of game, what would count as truly winning it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI
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