Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The real wine — the wine of truth — isn't made from molasses or grapes. It doesn't ferment. It doesn't run out.
The True Name is what's inside it. And those who drink it — who hear it, who chant it — are changed by it in a way that lasts.
Only the one who finds their place in the house of this oneness gets to taste it fully.
This pauri inverts the intoxication metaphor from the rahao. The drug of falsehood makes you forget. But there is another kind of intoxication — the sachaa nasha (true intoxication) of being saturated in truth and the Name.
This dual-intoxication metaphor runs through Sufi poetry as well — Rumi, Hafiz, and others use wine and drunkenness as images for divine absorption. Guru Nanak is working in this same tradition.
"I am a sacrifice to those who hear and chant the True Name" — the speaker moves from description to devotion.
Have you ever been so absorbed in something good — music, a conversation, a sport — that you forgot everything else? What was that like?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI