Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
If you forget the One, you lose the very thing that makes you whole. But when the One is holding you up, nothing can knock you down.
A life without remembering feels restless and hot inside, like a fire that never rests — you could live a long time and still miss the point. You could rule the whole world and still walk away at the end having missed the real game.
The image of life "like a burning fire, even if one lives long, like a snake" is striking: a snake lives long but is imagined here as always restless, coiled, never at ease. Length of life isn't the measure; quality of presence is. And then the grand deflation — "rule over the nine regions" (the whole known earth) — and still "lose the game of life." Guru Arjan keeps returning to this: the biggest outer win can sit right next to the deepest inner loss. The "game" (baazee) is a favorite Gurbani image: life as a match you can win or lose, and winning has nothing to do with the size of your kingdom.
What would it mean to 'win the game of life'? Is it the same as winning the games the world keeps score of?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI