Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Tell me - what can a person do alone? What pleases the One is what we end up doing.
If it were all in our hands, we would grab everything at once - all of it, immediately.
Not knowing better, people dive into what corrupts them; if they knew better, they would step out of the fire. Doubt spins them through all ten directions - the mind laps the whole world in an instant and comes back empty.
Nanak says: those the One mercifully draws into loving devotion are absorbed into the Naam - and rest.
It is a good thing that not everything is in our hands.
is kai haath ho-ay taa sabh kichh lay-ay — if it were in our hands, we would grab everything. Guru Arjan says this with dry honesty. It is simply true about people.
Think of a child let loose in a candy store with no limit. They would take it all, right now. So the limit on our power is also a kindness.
The next idea is just as practical. anjaanat bikhi-aa meh rachai — people fall into what harms them because they do not know better. jay jaanat aapan aap bachai — if they knew, they would save themselves. The trouble is not wickedness. It is not seeing clearly. This matches how Gurbani treats ha-umai, the "me-first" self: it is a mistake in seeing, healed by understanding, not by punishment.
Then a picture of the restless mind: nimakh maahi chaar kunt fir aavai — in a blink it circles the four corners of the world and comes back with nothing. The cure is not a faster lap. The cure is resting in the Name: naanak tay jan naam milay-ay, such people merge into the Name.
If you could have anything you wanted the moment you wanted it, what would happen to you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI