Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
I sing His Glories, I describe His Glories, I speak of His Glories, O my mother.
The Gurmukhs — my spiritual friends — bestow virtue. Meeting with them, I sing the Glorious Praises of the Lord.
The Diamond of the Guru has pierced the diamond of my mind, which is now dyed in the deep crimson color of the Name.
The image of heere heera bhediya — diamond piercing diamond — is one of Guru Ram Das's most vivid and precise. A diamond is the hardest natural substance; only a diamond can cut a diamond.
The hardened, ego-encrusted mind cannot be softened by anything ordinary. Only something equally hard — the Guru's teaching, which is itself like a diamond in its permanence and truth — can pierce it. And when it does, the result is not breaking but opening: the mind is now dyed (rangaa-i-aa) in the crimson color of divine Love.
The crimson dye (laal rang) is permanent and brilliant — the color of deep devotion in the bride's register.
What has actually pierced your hardened assumptions or ego in the past — what reached through your defenses? What was it about that thing that could get through?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI