Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You fool — why are you so proud of Maya, of appearances, of what you have and what you've accumulated?
Father, children, spouse, mother, all your relatives — at the end, none of them are your helpers. They cannot come with you.
So weed out evil, wickedness, and corruption. Leave them behind. Let your soul meditate on the source.
Let chanting, deep prayer and self-control be your guards. Then the lotus blooms, and the honey flows.
This is the Rahao, the "pause" line, the center of the shabad. It asks, with some urgency: why are you so proud of the things you own?
Kaahay garbas moorhay maa-i-aa: "you fool, why are you so proud of maya?" Maya means the shiny world of stuff, money and looks that pulls us away from the One. "Fool" here isn't an insult. It is the name for someone still asleep to what matters.
Pit suto sagal kaaltar maataa: father, children, spouse, mother, all your family. Hohi na ant sakhaa-i-aa: at the very end, they can't be your helpers. This doesn't make those bonds small. They are real and they matter. Guru Nanak isn't telling you to pull away from your family. He is telling you to know what the deepest ground is.
So pull out the weeds of wrong and wicked ways, in taj, and let your soul remember the One. When jap (repeating a prayer), tap (a hard, strict life) and sanjam (self-control) protect you like a fence, kamal bigsai: the lotus opens, and its honey flows.
Is there someone you lean on so completely that you don't know who you'd be without them? What would it look like to love them while also having your own ground?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI