Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You may say 'I am going, I am going' — but in the end, you really are going. You must really go.
Whoever comes into this world must also leave. Only the Guru and the Creator are Eternal.
So praise the True One continually. Love His Place of Truth.
Jaanaa jaanaa aakhee-ai, ant ta jaanaa hai — I may say "I am going, I am going" — but in the end, I really am going. Jaanaa (to go, to leave) — spoken abstractly, as a concept, it can be maintained at a comfortable distance. But the composition insists: you are not just conceptually going. You actually are going. Ant ta jaanaa — in the end, you really must go.
Aavan jaan sabh koi keevai, gur kartaa nirbaanaa — whoever comes must also go; only the Guru and the Creator (kartaa) are without end (nirbaanaa — beyond the cycle of coming and going, eternal). This is not nihilism — it is clarity about what is permanent and what is not. Everything that arrived can leave and will leave. Everything, that is, except the Guru and the Creator, who stand outside the cycle of aavan jaan (coming and going).
Saach saalaahnaa nit nit, saach thaan man laanaa — so praise the True One continually, day after day; fix your mind on His Place of Truth. The response to the universality of departure is not despair but reorientation: if everything that comes also goes, then fix your love on the One who doesn't. Nit nit (continually, daily, always) — this is not occasional praise at convenient moments; it is the daily practice of directing attention toward what is actually permanent.
If you knew you were really going — not someday but soon — what would you stop wasting time on and what would you give more attention to?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI