Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You are the Master; this prayer is Yours to hear. This body, this life - Your property on loan.
You are our mother and our father; we are Your children. In Your lap are joys past counting.
No one has found Your edges. Highest of the high, most generous of all - the whole creation is beads strung on Your one thread.
Everything that came from You moves in Your flow. What You are - only You know. And Nanak, Your small servant, bows, and keeps bowing.
All of us are strung on the One's thread, like beads.
For seven verses, the song showed how people forget. Now, at the end, it does what it was getting ready for. It remembers.
The prayer gathers everything. It gives back what belongs to the One. Jee-o pind sabh tayree raas — this life and this body are all Yours. It comes close with love. Tum maat pitaa ham baarik tayray — You are our mother and father; we are Your children. It is one of the warmest family pictures in the Guru Granth Sahib. And it honors how huge the One is. Ko-ay na jaanai tumraa ant — no one knows Your limits.
Then the thread. Sagal samagree tumrai sutir Dhaaree — all of creation is strung on Your thread. That is Ik Onkar, "One Creator of all," in a single picture. Many beads, one thread. Take out the thread and there is no necklace. The beads just scatter.
The song began by shaking a sleeping fool awake. It ends with that same person praying like a child in a parent's lap. Asleep, then awake, then home. That is the whole journey of Sukhmani in small.
If you thought of the One as your mother and father, what would you say tonight before you sleep?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI