Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
People go through life crying 'Mine! This is mine!' — and then they depart, with body, wealth, and family all left behind.
Without the Name, wealth is wasted. Deceived by what they thought they owned, they lost their way.
So serve the True Lord. Become Gurmukh. And speak what cannot ordinarily be said.
Mayree mayree kar ga-ay — "Mine! Mine! they cried and then departed." The repetition of mayree (mine) enacts the ego's compulsive claiming. And then the stark fact: tan dhan kalat na saath — body, wealth, and wife did not go with them. Nothing called "mine" actually followed the soul at death. The entire project of accumulation ended in zero.
This is Guru Nanak at his most direct, and what makes it sharp is that he does not target the obviously wicked. The merchant who built an empire. The father who raised children. The scholar who filled libraries. If they did all of this while crying "mine" and without the Name — they depart as empty-handed as they arrived.
Bin naavai dhan baad hai — without the Name, wealth is baad (wasted, vain, hollow). The same word used in Shabad 108 Pauri 0 for the bride's ornaments without the Husband: baad. The repetition is part of the teaching — the wasted adornment and the wasted wealth are the same mistake: form without substance.
Akko kaath — "speak the Unspoken." The same phrase from Pauri 2: what the Gurmukh does is speak what cannot ordinarily be said — not because they have special vocabulary, but because their life has become an expression of what exceeds all vocabulary. The life of the Gurmukh is itself the speaking of what cannot be spoken.
If you could take only one thing from your life into whatever comes next, what would it be — and does how you live reflect that?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI