Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
What is called Maya? And what does Maya actually do?
It binds beings in pleasure and pain. They do their deeds in egotism.
Without the Shabad, doubt is not dispelled — and egotism is not eliminated from within.
This one stops and asks straight out: what is maya, and what does it do?
Maa-i-aa kis no aakhee-ai: what do we call maya? Ki-aa maa-i-aa karam kamaa-ay: what does maya do? Here Guru Amar Das doesn't use a picture. Like a teacher at the board, he pauses to explain carefully. This is the pauri in this song that thinks hardest.
Dukh sukh ayhu jee-o badh hai: maya ties living beings to happy and sad. It doesn't just let them feel happy and sad. It ties them to the swing between the two. They get pulled from one to the other and can't step off. It's like a playground swing that never stops: up to joy, down to sorrow, up again.
Ha-umai karam kamaa-ay: they act from ha-umai, the "me first" ego. So the rope is named: ego and karma, which means our actions and what they bring back to us. Ego leads to actions. Actions bring results. The results feed more ego-driven actions. The loop keeps itself going.
Bin sabdai bharam na chook-ee: without the Shabad, doubt doesn't end. Naa vichahu ha-umai jaa-ay: and the ego doesn't leave from inside. The way out is the Shabad, the Guru's Word. Not willpower, not knowledge, not a pile of good deeds. The Shabad changes us at the root.
What is the cycle in your life that keeps repeating itself — what do you keep doing that generates the same results — and what might actually break it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI