Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
In the third watch of the night, the one who is spiritually blind is busy gathering poison — storing up things that harm. Tangled in attachment — to children, to family — while inside, waves of greed keep rising and rising.
God goes unremembered. The Sangat — the community of those who actually seek the truth — is avoided or never found. And without that, the soul wanders, suffering, through one life after another.
Not one moment of genuine stillness. Not one instant of real attention turned toward the Creator.
Says Nanak: in the third watch, the blind and ignorant gather poison.
"The blind and ignorant gathers poison"
Bikh sanchai andh agi'ān — "the blind and ignorant person gathers poison." Bikh (poison, venom) is Guru Arjan's sharpest word in this pauri. What is being gathered? Everything the ego accumulates that looks like wealth or security but is actually toxic: attachment that binds, greed that corrodes, the accumulated weight of living for yourself alone.
The word andh (blind) appears both at the start and end of this pauri as a kind of frame. The person gathering poison does not know they are gathering poison. This is the nature of the blindness: not willful wickedness, but the spiritual blindness of someone who genuinely cannot see what they are doing to themselves.
"Waves of greed rising within"
Antar lahar lobhān — "the waves of greed rising up within." Lobh (greed) in Gurbani is not just wanting money. It is the grasping quality that reaches for more of everything — more security, more control, more recognition, more pleasure. Like waves, it is never satisfied: one wave passes and another is already forming. The person in the third watch who never found the Naam is at the mercy of these waves.
The Saadh Sangat as the specific remedy
Sādh Sangat si-o sang na kī-ā — "he does not join the Saadh Sangat, the Company of the Holy." Guru Arjan (like Guru Amar Das before him) consistently prescribes the Sangat as the specific remedy for the wandering soul. You cannot find your way alone. The company of those who are genuinely seeking raises your own seeking. The absence of Sangat is not neutral — it is described here as one of the direct causes of the soul's ongoing wandering through painful incarnations.
*Have you ever stepped into a community of people who were genuinely seeking something good — and felt yourself become more alive in their presence? That is what Sangat is.*
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI