soraṭhi mahalā 9
ikoaṅkār satigur prasādi.
re man rām siu kari prīti.
sravan gobind gunu sunaü aru gāu rasnā gīti.1. rahāu.
kari sādhsaṅgati simaru mādho hohi patit punīt.
kālu biālu jiu pario ḍolai mukhu pasāre mīt.1.
āju kāli phuni tohi grasihai samajhi rākhaü cīti.
kahai nānaku rāmu bhaji lai jātu aüsaru bīt.2.1.
-Guru Granth Sahib 631
Under Rag Sorath, Guru Teghbahadar has revealed twelve Sabads, which are recorded on pages 631-634 of the Guru Granth Sahib. Out of these, eight Sabads comprise of three stanzas each, and four Sabads comprise of two stanzas each. The stanza of rahau in each Sabad is separate from these stanzas.
Commentary
Literal Translation
Interpretive Transcreation
Poetical Dimension
Calligraphy
Sorath is a rag (musical mode) that evokes a tone of seriousness, love, separation, longing, and detachment.
In the first composition, Guru Teghbahadar says, O mind! Place your love in the Beautiful One. Listen to the virtues of the Earth-Knower with your ears and sing the songs of the Earth-Knower with your tongue. The Guru speaks to the mind and urges it to live in praise of the Earth-Knower, IkOankar (One Universal Integrative Force, 1Force, the One), and to place love in the Beautiful One, IkOankar. We are being urged to use our minds to develop love for the One, to use our physical sensory organs to develop love for the One.
O mind! Place your love in the Beautiful One. The Guru urges us to join the company of the virtuous beings and remember Madho. Madho refers to IkOankar as the Owner of Maya, or attachment to the material and to relationships. Madho is the Sovereign who owns or overpowers all things that deceive us or make us forgetful of the One. We spend so much time in love with Maya, driven by our attachments and consumed by our forgetfulness, and so the antidote to that love of Maya is to love the One who owns Maya. In remembrance of Madho, we become “purified from our sins,” uplifted and freed from our transgressions. The Guru lovingly reminds us that death is like a snake with its mouth wide open, that we really ought to understand that death can grasp us at any moment. If we can understand that, if we can understand that time is limited and we are in the conditions we are in, maybe we can begin to understand how to get out of them and where to place our love before we run out of time.
O mind! Place your love in the Beautiful One. The Guru continues with the imagery of death as a snake and says that today or tomorrow, it will swallow us up. This is the understanding we are being urged to keep in our consciousness — that the opportunity we have been given through our human lives is passing away in each moment. We have forgotten death. We need to remember death to understand the limited time we have, to reflect on what we have spent our time developing love for.
The world contains within it an infinite number of things we can love. Many of the things we love are manifestations of Maya, things that degrade our ability to love the One. We do not know when the gift of these human lives will be over. So why not take this opportunity while we still have to sing praises of the Beautiful One?
In the first composition, Guru Teghbahadar says, O mind! Place your love in the Beautiful One. Listen to the virtues of the Earth-Knower with your ears and sing the songs of the Earth-Knower with your tongue. The Guru speaks to the mind and urges it to live in praise of the Earth-Knower, IkOankar (One Universal Integrative Force, 1Force, the One), and to place love in the Beautiful One, IkOankar. We are being urged to use our minds to develop love for the One, to use our physical sensory organs to develop love for the One.
O mind! Place your love in the Beautiful One. The Guru urges us to join the company of the virtuous beings and remember Madho. Madho refers to IkOankar as the Owner of Maya, or attachment to the material and to relationships. Madho is the Sovereign who owns or overpowers all things that deceive us or make us forgetful of the One. We spend so much time in love with Maya, driven by our attachments and consumed by our forgetfulness, and so the antidote to that love of Maya is to love the One who owns Maya. In remembrance of Madho, we become “purified from our sins,” uplifted and freed from our transgressions. The Guru lovingly reminds us that death is like a snake with its mouth wide open, that we really ought to understand that death can grasp us at any moment. If we can understand that, if we can understand that time is limited and we are in the conditions we are in, maybe we can begin to understand how to get out of them and where to place our love before we run out of time.
O mind! Place your love in the Beautiful One. The Guru continues with the imagery of death as a snake and says that today or tomorrow, it will swallow us up. This is the understanding we are being urged to keep in our consciousness — that the opportunity we have been given through our human lives is passing away in each moment. We have forgotten death. We need to remember death to understand the limited time we have, to reflect on what we have spent our time developing love for.
The world contains within it an infinite number of things we can love. Many of the things we love are manifestations of Maya, things that degrade our ability to love the One. We do not know when the gift of these human lives will be over. So why not take this opportunity while we still have to sing praises of the Beautiful One?
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