Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The religious scholars read loudly and proclaim their knowledge — but they are attached to the love of Maya.
They don't recognize God within themselves. With all their learning, they cannot see what is right inside them.
In the love of duality they try to teach the whole world — but they themselves haven't understood meditation.
They lose their lives uselessly. They die and are reborn, over and over again.
A recurring pattern in the Vaar
This is the third critique of the scholarly class in the Vaar (following Pauri12 and Pauri36). The Vaar keeps returning to this because it is addressing an audience that likely included or revered religious scholars — and the teaching is that external learning without internal recognition is not just insufficient but actually harmful.
Paṛhe bolah ḏhokhā — "they constantly read and proclaim their knowledge for the sake of the love of Maya." The Pandit's reading and proclaiming is done for the love of Maya — worldly recognition, financial reward, social status. The knowledge is real but the motivation is wrong.
"They do not recognize God within themselves"
Hari āp na pach'hān, so moorkh gāvārā — "they do not recognize God within themselves — they are so foolish and ignorant." The word āp (within themselves, themselves) is the key. The God they are reading about, the God they are teaching about, the God they are performing worship for — this God is inside them, and they cannot see it. All the external learning about God has not helped them find God in the most obvious place: within.
This is the Vaar's consistent teaching: the Lord is within (ghati ghati rami'ā) and the Guru's role is to make this perceptible. External religious machinery can actually obscure the interior perception if it substitutes for it.
*Do you think you can learn about something to the point where you know so much about it that you've stopped actually experiencing it? Can you think of an example?*
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI