soraṭhi mahalā 9.
man re gahio na gur updesu.
kahā bhaïo jaü mūḍu muḍāio bhagvaü kīno bhesu.1. rahāu.
sāc chāḍi kai jhūṭhah lāgio janamu akārathu khoio.
kari parpanc udar nij pokhio pasu kī niāī soio.1.
rām bhajan kī gati nahī jānī māiā hāthi bikānā.
urajhi rahio bikhian saṅgi baürā nāmu ratanu bisrānā.2.
rahio acetu na cetio gobind birthā aüdh sirānī.
kahu nānak hari biradu pachānaü bhūle sadā parānī.3.10.
-Guru Granth Sahib 633
Guru Teghbahadar Sahib addresses the mind and encourages it to imbibe the teachings of IkOankar (the Divine). Religious garbs and empty rituals cannot compare to the experience of enshrining Nam (Identification with IkOankar) within.
Commentary
Literal Translation
Interpretive Transcreation
Poetical Dimension
Calligraphy
In the tenth composition, Guru Teghbahadar addresses the mind and says, O Mind! You have not grasped the teaching of the Wisdom. What good happens just by shaving your head and putting on saffron garbs? The Guru is referencing those who, instead of coming to an understanding through effort and guidance of the Wisdom, choose to wear a particular garb to signal that they are detached and learned or wise or ‘holy,’ and use that garb as a way to skirt around doing the internal hard work of grasping the teaching of the Wisdom. They put on their garb and they shave their heads, which in Indic culture, is symbolic of detachment and abandonment. In their detachment, they ask for alms. They believe that this will somehow help them unite with the Divine. We all do this in our own way. There is an element of this kind of detached person in all of us — the parts of us that would rather do the easy thing of assuming a visible external identity or going through certain protocols and checklists instead of doing the internal work of actually adopting the teaching of the Wisdom.
O Mind! You have not grasped the teaching of the Wisdom. The Guru continues addressing the mind and says that we have abandoned the Truth and remained entangled and engrossed in lies and falsity. We have abandoned the only One who is eternal and instead concerned ourselves with the temporary. It is because of this that we have lost our lives in vain. We scheme and lie, deceive to get what we want and continue to fill our bellies, unable to feel satisfied or satiated. We are asleep like animals, constantly overconsuming and overindulging. And in that sleep, we remain unconscious of our own conditions and unable to find a way out. That unconsciousness feeds our continued overconsumption and entanglement.
O Mind! You have not grasped the teaching of the Wisdom. Our minds have not known the value of the praises of the Beautiful One. We have not known the method or the movement of the praises of the Beautiful. We have not learned how to be in the recitation of the Beautiful. We are too busy scheming, selling ourselves into the hands of Maya, or attachment to the material and relationships. We say that things are in the hands of the Divine, but it is really Maya whose hands we are in. Maya really decides our fate, drives us, and controls us. We remain intoxicated in the pleasures of the senses, driven mad in our intoxication and the poisons of vices. We are so steeped in this poison that we have forgotten the jewel-like Nam, or Identification with IkOankar (One Universal Integrative Force, 1Force, the One).
O Mind! You have not grasped the teaching of the Wisdom. We remained ignorant; we did not remember the Earth-Knower, the One who is everywhere in creation, and instead spent our lives in vain. All of our moments have been wasted. The Guru shows us how to ask the All-Pervasive, the 1-Light, for help. We can ask the One to recognize the One’s nature or intrinsic Self because we are forgetful people. The Guru gives us empathy and understanding in this last line, no longer attempting to tell the mind what to do and instead showing us how to ask for help. We are too asleep and too unaware and too steeped in our conditions to figure out how to remember the One or praise the One.
The Guru asks us to really reflect on whether or not we are making an effort to grasp and inculcate the teachings of the Wisdom. Are we changing our internal worlds and our external behaviors? Or are we only changing our external garbs? Are we following disciplines that are life-affirming or life-negating? Are we participating in the world or shunning it? If we can understand the teaching of the Wisdom, we can understand how to be in the world and not of it. We can begin to live in remembrance and not in forgetfulness. We can change the way we understand what it means to be detached. Are we willing to put in that effort beyond changing our attire? Are we merely detaching physically and abandoning externally? Are we ready to embrace the Wisdom internally and behaviorally?
O Mind! You have not grasped the teaching of the Wisdom. The Guru continues addressing the mind and says that we have abandoned the Truth and remained entangled and engrossed in lies and falsity. We have abandoned the only One who is eternal and instead concerned ourselves with the temporary. It is because of this that we have lost our lives in vain. We scheme and lie, deceive to get what we want and continue to fill our bellies, unable to feel satisfied or satiated. We are asleep like animals, constantly overconsuming and overindulging. And in that sleep, we remain unconscious of our own conditions and unable to find a way out. That unconsciousness feeds our continued overconsumption and entanglement.
O Mind! You have not grasped the teaching of the Wisdom. Our minds have not known the value of the praises of the Beautiful One. We have not known the method or the movement of the praises of the Beautiful. We have not learned how to be in the recitation of the Beautiful. We are too busy scheming, selling ourselves into the hands of Maya, or attachment to the material and relationships. We say that things are in the hands of the Divine, but it is really Maya whose hands we are in. Maya really decides our fate, drives us, and controls us. We remain intoxicated in the pleasures of the senses, driven mad in our intoxication and the poisons of vices. We are so steeped in this poison that we have forgotten the jewel-like Nam, or Identification with IkOankar (One Universal Integrative Force, 1Force, the One).
O Mind! You have not grasped the teaching of the Wisdom. We remained ignorant; we did not remember the Earth-Knower, the One who is everywhere in creation, and instead spent our lives in vain. All of our moments have been wasted. The Guru shows us how to ask the All-Pervasive, the 1-Light, for help. We can ask the One to recognize the One’s nature or intrinsic Self because we are forgetful people. The Guru gives us empathy and understanding in this last line, no longer attempting to tell the mind what to do and instead showing us how to ask for help. We are too asleep and too unaware and too steeped in our conditions to figure out how to remember the One or praise the One.
The Guru asks us to really reflect on whether or not we are making an effort to grasp and inculcate the teachings of the Wisdom. Are we changing our internal worlds and our external behaviors? Or are we only changing our external garbs? Are we following disciplines that are life-affirming or life-negating? Are we participating in the world or shunning it? If we can understand the teaching of the Wisdom, we can understand how to be in the world and not of it. We can begin to live in remembrance and not in forgetfulness. We can change the way we understand what it means to be detached. Are we willing to put in that effort beyond changing our attire? Are we merely detaching physically and abandoning externally? Are we ready to embrace the Wisdom internally and behaviorally?
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