Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Everyone makes mistakes. Only the Guru and the Creator are infallible.
The one who instructs their own mind through the Guru's wisdom comes to love the Lord.
O Nanak — do not forget the Truth. The Infinite Shabad will unite you.
Bhulan andar sabh ko, abhul Guroo Kartaar — everyone makes mistakes; only the Guru and the Creator are infallible (abhul — free from error). This is a statement of compassion rather than condemnation: the wandering of the manmukh throughout this ashtapadee is not exceptional wickedness — it is the universal human condition. Everyone is within the realm of error. The only exception is the Guru and the Creator.
This is also a statement of humility for the reader: you are not more advanced than the soul-bride who wandered to foreign lands and climbed mountains looking in the wrong places. Everyone is in the same category. The difference is not moral superiority — it is having found the Guru who shows the way home.
Gurmat man samjhaa-i-aa, laagaa tisai pi-aar — one who instructs their mind through the Guru's teachings comes to embrace love for the Lord. The mind that has been samjhaa-i-aa (instructed, set right, brought from error into clarity) through the Guru's teaching naturally comes to love. The love is not commanded; it arises from the clarity the Guru's teaching produces.
The closing Nanak line: saach na veesrai, maylay sabad apaar — do not forget the Truth; the Infinite Shabad unites. After all the wandering, all the pilgrimage, all the reading — the thing not to forget is the simplest: Truth. And the Infinite (apaar) Shabad brings the union that pilgrimage and books and religious robes could not.
When you make a mistake — especially a spiritual one — how do you treat yourself, and does that treatment help you return or keep you stuck?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI