Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Maker, through Your own creative power I have fallen in love with You.
You alone are my Lord within and my Lord without — and yet You stay free of all You have made. In an instant You set up and take down; how wondrous is Your form! Who could know Your play? You are the Light shining in the dark.
Guru Arjan opens with the raag's non-dual paradox held in one breath: the One is "my spiritual and temporal Lord" — inside and outside, the whole of my life — "and yet detached from all Your creation." Fully present in everything, yet free of it; the actor in every scene and the untouched witness. And it is "the Light in the darkness" — the one thing that shines where all else goes dark. To love such a One is to love both the nearest presence and the freest mystery.
Where has a light shown up for you in a dark stretch — present with you, yet somehow untouched by the dark?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI