Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Greed is like a dog — always hungry, always wanting more. Falsehood is like someone who cleans up filth for a living. Cheating is like eating rotting meat.
Slandering others is like picking up their dirt and putting it in your own mouth. The burning fire of anger is like the person who tends the cremation fires.
And here's the honest part: these are my actions. This is what I carry. I'm not pointing at other people — I'm looking at myself.
This shabad is startling for its directness. Rather than describing the vices of others, Guru Nanak speaks in the first person: these are my actions, O my Creator. It's a rare moment of radical self-honesty in sacred literature.
The metaphors are viscerally chosen for a 15th-century Indian audience: greed as a dog (considered impure), falsehood as a sweeper of sewage (the lowest caste occupation), cheating as eating carrion, slander as eating others' filth. These are not gentle images. They are meant to produce genuine revulsion — at our own tendencies, not at others.
This shabad is one of Guru Nanak's teachings about haumai — the ego-self that makes us believe our uglier habits are acceptable or even justified.
If you named your most persistent bad habit as an animal or a job, what would it be? Does that image make it feel more real?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI