Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Make your deals, you dealers — but take care of your merchandise. Be intentional about what you are accumulating.
Buy that object which will actually go with you — not just here, but through everything.
In the deepest accounting, the all-knowing Merchant will look at what you brought and hold it with care.
This shabad opens Guru Nanak's most sustained use of the merchant metaphor. In Guru Nanak's Punjab, merchants (vaṇaj) were central to economic and cultural life — the trading routes of the region connected Persia, Central Asia, India, and beyond. The metaphor is vivid, immediate, and universally understood.
What is the vastu (object/merchandise) that travels with you? In Gurbani, it is the Name — the inner orientation, the accumulated character of a life genuinely lived. Everything else is left at the border.
If you had to say what you are 'trading in' with your life — what you're accumulating and what you're giving — what would you say?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI