tarnāpo iu hī gaïo līo jarā tanu jīti.
kahu nānak bhaju hari manā aüdh jātu hai bīti.3.
-Guru Granth Sahib 1426
Guru Teghbahadar Sahib reminds beings of the purpose of life, which is to remember and reflect on the virtues of IkOankar (the Divine). The saloks describe how life is wasted in the entanglements of familial and material attachments distracting from the purpose of life. They inspire seekers to search for deeper meaning beyond the attachment to family and temporary material things and develop a relationship with IkOankar. These saloks gently nudge seekers to live in awareness of IkOankar and see the entire world from that place of realization.
Commentary
Literal Translation
Interpretive Transcreation
Poetical Dimension
Calligraphy
In the third stanza, Guru Teghbahadar reminds us, youth is gone, and old age is taking over the body. This is not a reminder that we need to be of a certain age to understand. Even in youth, as we begin to become more aware of time passing and how it changes our bodies, we are reminded that the fullness of our physical strength is waning. It is that experience that shows us that the body has been conquered by aging, by this waning fullness.
The Guru urges us to get this reality clear in our minds as soon as we can, that time is passing away, and we are slowly being overtaken by aging. This is always happening to all of us, no matter how old we are. This weakening does not just happen physically — it often also happens mentally. If we are not consuming the right things, if we are centered in fear, if we are too far away from remembrance to remember that it is our purpose, if we are indulgent. This indulgence does not have to be something extreme. It can be something simple, like overeating, which we do from time to time, or maybe impulsively purchasing things, chasing after temporary pleasures on small and large scales. Another stanza in the Guru Granth Sahib speaks of five animals: the moth, the deer, the bumblebee, the elephant, and the fish. Each of them has one of the vices as their Achilles’ heel. The moth goes towards the lamplight and dies; the deer runs towards music and gets caught; the bumblebee is tempted by the fragrance of the flower and perishes inside of it; the elephant is motivated by lust and falls into the pit of the female elephant, and the fish gets greedy and falls for the bait. Human beings have all five weaknesses, and so we must be even more careful of how we conduct ourselves in the world. But when we fall for the vices too much, when we forget to remember, all of the other faculties of the body become weak. We no longer even have the strength to sing of the 1-Light. And because we have all five of the ‘wrestlers’ — lust, greed, anger, attachment, and ego working against us, we do not even have a moment to come out of it. In fact, indulgence in these vices makes the time pass more quickly.
We must work to take moments to disentangle ourselves from those vices, to make an effort to do the right thing again and again until the moments add up, till it becomes a habit.
The Guru urges us to get this reality clear in our minds as soon as we can, that time is passing away, and we are slowly being overtaken by aging. This is always happening to all of us, no matter how old we are. This weakening does not just happen physically — it often also happens mentally. If we are not consuming the right things, if we are centered in fear, if we are too far away from remembrance to remember that it is our purpose, if we are indulgent. This indulgence does not have to be something extreme. It can be something simple, like overeating, which we do from time to time, or maybe impulsively purchasing things, chasing after temporary pleasures on small and large scales. Another stanza in the Guru Granth Sahib speaks of five animals: the moth, the deer, the bumblebee, the elephant, and the fish. Each of them has one of the vices as their Achilles’ heel. The moth goes towards the lamplight and dies; the deer runs towards music and gets caught; the bumblebee is tempted by the fragrance of the flower and perishes inside of it; the elephant is motivated by lust and falls into the pit of the female elephant, and the fish gets greedy and falls for the bait. Human beings have all five weaknesses, and so we must be even more careful of how we conduct ourselves in the world. But when we fall for the vices too much, when we forget to remember, all of the other faculties of the body become weak. We no longer even have the strength to sing of the 1-Light. And because we have all five of the ‘wrestlers’ — lust, greed, anger, attachment, and ego working against us, we do not even have a moment to come out of it. In fact, indulgence in these vices makes the time pass more quickly.
We must work to take moments to disentangle ourselves from those vices, to make an effort to do the right thing again and again until the moments add up, till it becomes a habit.
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