Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
What if you had hundreds of thousands of stacks of paper, and you never ran out of ink? What if your hand moved as fast as the wind, and you wrote and wrote forever?
Even then — you would not capture it all.
But here's what's beautiful: every page, every word, every honest attempt at reaching toward the infinite — that itself is a way of touching what cannot be fully touched. The attempt is the connection.
The closing pauri brings us to writing — the poet's own medium. Even the most prolific writer, with unlimited tools and unlimited time, cannot fully describe the greatness of the Name.
This is both a statement of humility and a validation of the poetic project. Guru Nanak knows his own words fall short. He says so explicitly. And yet he writes anyway — because the attempt itself is meaningful, even when the object of description exceeds all description.
Every shabad in the Guru Granth Sahib exists in this spirit: not a definitive account of the divine, but an honest reaching toward it.
Have you ever tried to describe something and felt your words weren't enough? Did the trying still feel worth it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI