Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
My playful friends — the ones I laughed with, the ones who were young with me — have gone to sleep in the graveyard.
In my own double-mindedness, I know I will go too. I cry in a feeble voice.
This is not despair. It is honesty. And honesty is the beginning of actually living.
This pauri is unusually personal and emotionally raw. The speaker's contemporaries are dying — the friends of youth, the playmates. The speaker is left behind, knowing they will follow.
"Crying in a feeble voice" — dub dub rova — is the sound of grief that doesn't have much strength left. This is not the wailing of someone young; this is the quiet weeping of someone who has already outlived many.
The instruction in this vulnerability is implicit: don't wait. The double-mindedness (dujaa bhaav) that the speaker names as their own flaw — this is still the enemy of alignment.
Is there something you keep putting off — a conversation, a decision, a change — because you assume there's always more time? What if there isn't?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI