Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The Great Giver has given a kind of intoxicating drug — the drug of falsehood. And people have taken it. They are intoxicated, they have forgotten death, and they are having a great time — for a few days.
But those who don't use this drug? Who stay clear-eyed and grounded in truth? They dwell in a different kind of court entirely.
What's the difference? One is a party that ends badly. The other is a life that actually holds.
This shabad uses the metaphor of intoxication to describe the state of forgetting one's deeper nature. The "drug of falsehood" is not heroin or wine — it is the pleasant numbness of distraction, ambition, and the illusion that this momentary life is all there is.
The line "they have fun for a few days" is almost gently ironic. Guru Nanak doesn't condemn the fun. He simply notes: it's temporary. The forgetting eventually ends — and what's left when it does?
The contrast is the saachay — the true ones — who live without this drug and dwell in a court of clarity.
Is there something you use to avoid thinking about hard things — a show you watch, a phone you pick up? Is that bad? Or just human?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI