Humility Is the Gift That Ends Pride's Portraits
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Carry the pride of power inside you, and you are already living in a small hell of your own snarling.
Preen over your young beauty, and you are loving something already turning - like fruit going soft.
Boast of your own virtue, and the boasting circles you back into the same lessons again and again. Strut over wealth and lands, and you have blinded your own eyes.
But the heart mercifully blessed with abiding humility - Nanak says - is free right here, and at peace hereafter.
Pride comes in four kinds, each with a strong picture, and there is one cure.
The pictures are meant to shock. Pride in power turns a person into a dog. Pride in young good looks turns them into a maggot in manure. These are not stories of the One getting even. They are pictures of what each pride already is on the inside. Power-pride snarls and guards its patch, like a dog. Beauty-pride clings to something that is already fading, since the body's youth never stays.
The third case is the trickiest: pride in being good. Claiming your good deeds keeps you going in circles, "living and dying, wandering." Goodness that brags about itself cancels itself out. A later verse in this song makes that even sharper.
The fourth is pride in money and land, which leaves a person blind.
Against all four stands one gift. Kar kirpaa jis kai hirdai gareebee basaavai — the One, in mercy, places gareebee, humility, in the heart. Even the cure is a gift, never a prize you win. If it were a prize, it would just become a fifth pride.
Which is easiest to feel proud about: being strong, good-looking, good, or rich? What does that pride do to you from the inside?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI