Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The self-willed manmukhs do not know the Name. Without the Name, they lose their honor.
They do not taste the Shabad. They are attached to the love of duality — to the split between the divine and the ego.
They are like worms in the filth of manure — sunk in, absorbed in, consuming what doesn't nourish.
The contrast pauri — the manmukh's condition described with unflinching vividness. Gandh meh keeray — worms in filth — is one of Guru Amar Das's most direct images. It is not contemptuous but descriptive: the condition of those absorbed in ego and duality is genuinely unpleasant, genuinely unclean.
This sharpness serves a purpose: it makes the alternative (the Gurmukh's radiant face from Pauri 0) more vivid by contrast. And it invites honest self-assessment: where on this spectrum am I?
Is there any area of your life where you feel 'sunk in' — absorbed in something that doesn't nourish you but is hard to stop? What keeps you there?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI