What No Effort Scrubs Off, Love for the Name Dissolves
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
A hundred thousand helping hands cannot pull you out. The Name lifts you and carries you across.
Where countless troubles crowd in to crush you, the Name rescues you in a moment.
Through life after life of being born and dying, the Name brings you home to rest.
The ego wears a stain nothing can scrub off - and the Name dissolves it. Say it with love, dear mind. Nanak says: it is found in the Sangat.
What no amount of scrubbing can remove, love for the Name gently melts away.
Two lines hold the heart of this song. First: ha-o mailaa mal kabahu na dhovai — the ego is stained with a dirt that can never be washed off. Second: har kaa naam kot paap khovai — the Name erases millions of wrongs.
They seem to argue with each other, and that is on purpose. Nothing you do can scrub off haumai, the ego. No scrubbing, no ritual, no effort. Why? Because the one doing the scrubbing is the ego itself. Think of trying to lift yourself off the ground by pulling on your own shoelaces.
What removes it is not a job we do. It is a presence. Love placed on the Name moves the self out of the center.
Look at the closing line too. Naanak paa-ee-ai saadh kai sang — the Name is found in the Saadh Sangat, the Sangat — people gathered together to remember the One. Sukhmani keeps saying this is not a solo project. The friends you keep are the riverbank you climb out onto.
When you have done something wrong, what helps - punishing yourself, or turning toward something greater with love?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI