Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Everyone who touches this teaching becomes something more than they were. Those who chant it — purified. Those who listen — blessed. Those who write it down — the goodness reaches back through their family for generations.
Those who found the Saadh Sangat, dyed in the Lord's Love — they began to contemplate God not as an exercise but as their natural breath. Their lives were remade. God's perfect mercy descended and took over where effort could not reach.
God took their hands. Held them. Gave them His praises as the food of their lives. The long wandering from birth to death and back again — ended. The three great enemies — desire that consumes, anger that burns, greed that never lets go — conquered at last, through meeting the True Guru.
The Lord cannot be put into words. Nanak knows this and does not try. He simply offers himself — forever devoted, forever a sacrifice to the One who cannot be spoken but can be loved.
"Those who chant are sanctified; those who listen are blessed; those who write save their ancestors"
Kahte pavitar sunṭay sabh dhann likhtī kul tāri'ā — three categories, three blessings, three directions the teaching flows. Guru Arjan is describing the communal transmission of sacred wisdom: it sanctifies those who speak it, blesses those who hear it, and the act of writing it saves the writer's ancestors. This last claim is striking: spiritual merit flows not only forward into the future but backward through family lines. The person who engages with sacred wisdom in the present sends something backward in time through the lineage they came from.
The three great enemies
Kām krodh lobh māri'ā — "conquered sexual desire, anger and greed." These three are three of the five great impediments in Gurbani (the full set includes moh, attachment, and ahankār, pride/ego). They are named "enemies" because they act against the soul's genuine interest — not because pleasure, emotion, or wanting are bad in themselves, but because in their uncontrolled form, these forces hijack the soul's energy and direct it away from the Lord. Meeting the True Guru — being in the genuine presence of the teaching — is what subdues them, not willpower alone.
"The Lord cannot be described"
Kathan na jā'e akath su'āmī, sadkai jā'e naanak vāri'ā — "our Indescribable Lord and Master cannot be described. Nanak is devoted, forever a sacrifice to Him." The entire composition — all ten pauris, all this beauty of language and image and longing — ends in the admission that none of it was adequate. The Lord cannot be caught in words. What Guru Arjan has done in Shabad 135 is point, not describe. Every image (the fish, the sewn jewel, the intoxicating drug, the held hand) is a direction, not a destination.
Nanak's response to the undescribable is not frustration. It is devotion. Vāri'ā means "a sacrifice," "one who gives everything." He offers himself — not as someone who has succeeded in describing the Lord but as someone who could not stop trying, and who loves what he could not capture.
*Have you ever experienced something so beautiful or profound that you couldn't find the right words for it — and found that the inability to describe it was itself part of the experience?*
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI