Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Within Maya, the poise of intuitive balance is not produced. Maya leads to the love of duality.
The manmukhs perform religious rituals — but they are burnt down by their selfishness and conceit.
Their births and deaths do not cease. Over and over again, they come and go in reincarnation.
Maa-i-aa andar sahj na ho-ay, maa-i-aa dujai bhaa-ay — within Maya, sahj is not produced; Maya leads to the love of duality (dujai bhaa-ay — love of the second, the other-than-One). The boundary is absolute: Maya is the domain of the three qualities, the realm of duality, the oscillation between pleasure and pain. Within Maya, however refined and spiritually motivated one's practice, sahj cannot arise. Because sahj belongs to the fourth state, which is beyond Maya's domain.
Mannmukh karmee loobhee ho-ay, haumai kar-mai daa-hay — the manmukhs perform their karmic deeds driven by greed (loobhee); they are burnt (daa-hay) by their egotism (haumai) and karma. The manmukh's religious practice — the rituals, the study, the performance — is all within Maya because it is all driven by ego: the ego of the virtuous, the ego of the religious, the ego of the spiritually accomplished. And ego's fire burns what it touches.
Janam maran na chhutai, phir phir aavai jaai — their birth and death do not cease; again and again they come and go. The cycle of reincarnation continues because the root cause has not been addressed: the ego that generates karma that generates rebirth. All the rituals, performed within Maya, within the three qualities, within the ego — produce more karma, more rebirth. Phir phir — again and again, relentlessly.
What spiritual or personal practices in your life might be ego-driven — about how you appear to yourself or others — rather than genuinely transformative?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI