The River Checks No Credentials; Cleverness Drowns
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Take wisdom's advice, dear stubborn heart - plenty of clever people have drowned with all their cleverness dry.
Worship with real feeling, friend, and the inner sight clears.
Keep the Beloved's feet in your mind, and the weight of countless old lifetimes lifts off. Say the Name yourself - and help others find it too.
Hearing it, speaking it, living it - that is the whole road out. The realest real is the True Name. Sing it with natural ease.
This one says being clever is not enough to get across. Living the Name is.
bhagat binaa baho doobay si-aanay — without devotion, many clever people have drowned. Being smart has the same record as every other plan. Think of a river that does not check your report card. Getting across takes something else.
The center gives three verbs: sunat kahat rahat gat paavhu — by hearing, saying and living it, you are set free. The third one decides it. Rahat means living it, the way you act each day. That is what makes the hearing and the saying real. A recipe does its full work when you cook the food and eat it. Sukhmani has used this picture of Har Ras, the taste of the One, before.
Then the sharing line: aap japahu avraa naam japaavhu — say the Name yourself, and help others say it too. There is no private rescue here. The Name is a wealth that grows by being shared, as an earlier section taught.
And the last word is sahj, natural ease. After all the urgency, the singing is meant to be relaxed and unforced. The river now carries the ones it rescued.
You know things you do not yet live. What is one heard truth you could move into the living column this week?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI