Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Maybe you are ruled by lust, anger and clinging. Maybe you are a greedy miser who loves your money.
Maybe you have done the four great wrongs and many more. Maybe you have even become a cruel, murderous person.
Maybe you have never taken the time to listen to holy books, songs or poems.
If you then remember the Supreme Lord God, and think of Him even for a moment, you shall be saved.
This one says that no one is too far gone to turn back to the One.
This is the boldest of the hard-time verses. The earlier ones were about troubles that happen to you. This one is about wrong a person has done. The list is long: kaam (lust), karoDh (anger), moh (clinging), and lobh (greed). These are four of the five big weaknesses Gurbani names. It adds the four great wrongs, and a person who has become a cruel destroyer. And it adds someone who has never listened to holy words. It is the worst case the verse can imagine. Yet the answer is the same.
Nimakh simrat tari-aa: remember the One for even one nimakh, and you are carried across. A nimakh is the blink of an eye. Even the person who fits every part of that list is saved by turning, for one blink, toward the One. This is one of Guru Arjan's deepest points. The One's kindness has no bottom. No one is so far away that the door is shut.
This does not make wrongdoing okay. It shows what grace is like. Grace is not handed out by points. The one who has gone most wrong needs grace most, and it is the One's nature to give. Think of a parent who never stops leaving the porch light on. The One is not reading a list of your past. The One is answering your turning back.
Do you believe in that kind of radical grace — that a single genuine turning toward the divine can change everything? What makes that feel true or untrue?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI