Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
What good is worldly greatness?
All the pleasures of Maya are tasteless and insipid. In the end, they shall all fade away.
Perfectly fulfilled and supremely acclaimed is the one in whose heart the Lord abides.
Kiaa jaanaa (what can I say) about worldly greatness — rhetorical dismissal. Maya sukhaa: pleasures of Maya. Guru Arjan uses pheekaa (tasteless, bland, insipid) — the pleasures of Maya are not even pleasurable in comparison to the divine. They are pheekaa.
This is not the argument "worldly pleasures are bad." It is the argument: "you have tasted something so much better that these are now comparatively tasteless." The person who has tasted the Naam's sweetness finds Maya's sweetness pheekaa by comparison.
Have you ever experienced something genuinely of higher quality that made something you previously valued seem comparatively bland? What was the higher thing? What did it make the other thing seem?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI