Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Few are the ones who receive this deepest taste of the Name - and whoever drinks it stops dying.
The one whose mind is lit by that treasure of goodness does not perish; around the clock, the Name stays on their lips.
The One teaches His servant true things from within; the glitter cannot smudge such a mind - it holds the One alone, dear and close.
In the pitch-black dark, a lamp is shining. Doubt, clinging and pain - erased.
When a light comes on, the dark is simply gone. It never fights back.
Amrit peevai amar so ho-ay — whoever drinks this nectar becomes deathless. Us purakh kaa naahee kaday binaas — that person never perishes. This needs to be read at the right depth. Bodies do die, even the Gurus' own. What does not die is what the person has come to live in. Their mind is lit by the treasure of goodness. They have moved their home from the part that ends to the part that never ends. It is like a wave learning it was always the ocean.
Gurbani has a phrase for this: jeevat marnaa, "dying while living." It means letting the old me-first self fall away now. Then death no longer has your address.
Then comes the lamp. AnDhkaar deepak pargaasay — in the pitch dark, a lamp shines. That is the Guru's whole job in a few words. And lamps teach something. Darkness never fights back against light. It has nothing to fight with. Switch on one light in a cave that has been dark for a thousand years, and the dark is gone at once.
It is the same with bharam moh dukh: doubt, clinging and pain. The last line does not say they are beaten in a battle. It says they are naasay, gone. They leave the way the dark leaves: because the light is here.
What is your version of a thousand-year-dark cave - and what would one small lamp in it change?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI