The Judge Reads Only Where Your Attention Lived
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Get rich and swell with it - and not even a piece of straw travels with you at the end.
Lean your hopes on a great army - it can vanish in one instant.
Count yourself the strongest of all - ashes, in a moment. Think of no one but your own reflection - and the Judge of what is right will read the record aloud.
But whoever, by grace, lets the ego go - Nanak says - is welcomed in the court of Truth.
Nothing we own goes with us, and the Judge only has to read what filled our attention.
The verse looks at what pride leans on: money, armies, and strength. Then it weighs them against time and death. Tarin samaan kachh sang na jaavai — not even a piece of straw goes along. Gurbani says this again and again. Think of a video game. When you log off, the coins stay in the game.
The army that vanishes "in an instant" was not only a picture. People in Guru Arjan's time, under the Mughal emperors, watched great armies rise and fall.
The third picture goes deepest: one who thinks of no one but their own proud self. Here pride is a sickness of attention. The self keeps looking only at itself, and it crowds every other being out. Gurbani calls such a person a manmukh, someone who faces their own mind instead of the Guru. Dharam raa-ay, the Judge of what is right, only has to read that record aloud. The shame is already written in it.
The way out: the ego is dropped "by Guru's grace." It is let go, not beaten. After all, beating the ego is the ego's favorite project.
If someone reviewed the record of what you paid attention to this week, who would appear in it besides you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI