Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
O dear mind — think of yourself as a merchant, and the Name as the most profitable cargo there is. Load it. Carry it. That is the trade worth making.
Enter through the Lord's Door. Serve the One who is beyond all seeing and knowing — imperceptible, unfathomable. Those who serve Him settle into a permanent place: no more birth, no more death, no more the exhaustion of coming and going.
The account books that record every deed — every careless word, every selfish choice — torn up. The Messenger of Death who comes for everyone: he cannot touch you here. Not because you escaped, but because there is nothing left to take.
"Load the profitable cargo"
Har lade khep savlī — "load the profitable cargo of the Lord's Name." The merchant metaphor that runs through all of Siree Raag appears here in its most direct commercial form. Khep is a load, a shipment, a batch of goods for trade. Savlī means favorable, profitable, auspicious. The pauri opens and closes with this image: the specific practical instruction is to make the Name your cargo, the thing you actually carry and trade.
"The eternal Door"
Har dar nihchal malī — "enter through the eternal Door of the Lord." The word nihchal (eternal, permanent, unmoving) is the key. The Lord's Door does not change, does not move, is not subject to the shifting conditions that every other door in life is subject to. Finding this Door is the real accomplishment — and entering through it leads to the nihchal āsan (eternal seat, permanent position) that the pauri describes: the state from which there is no more return.
Chitr and Gupt — the record-keepers
In the Indian metaphysical tradition, Chitr and Gupt are the divine scribes who record every action of every soul — one recording what is done in the open, the other what is done in secret. Their records are the basis of the soul's accounting at death. Guru Arjan says these records are torn up (kāgad fāri'ā) — torn like paper, as if they never existed. This is not a legal loophole. It is what happens when the soul genuinely merges in the divine: the karmic account that measured the distance between the soul and the Lord no longer applies, because the distance is gone.
*What would it feel like to have every mistake, every careless act, every regret — genuinely torn up and gone? What would you do with that freedom?*
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI