gaüṛī mahalā 9.
koū māī bhūlio manu samjhāvai.
bed purān sādh mag suni kari nimakh na hari gun gāvai.1. rahāu.
durlabh deh pāi mānas kī birthā janamu sirāvai.
māiā moh mahā saṅkaṭ ban tā siu ruc upjāvai.1.
antari bāhari sadā saṅgi prabhu tā siu nehu na lāvai.
nānak mukati tāhi tum mānahu jih ghaṭi rāmu samāvai.2.6.
-Guru Granth Sahib 219-220
Guru Teghbahadar Sahib, from the first-person perspective, makes a plea before a truth-oriented companion to help inculcate the virtues of IkOankar (the Divine). Even after reading religious texts and listening to truth-oriented companions, a forgetful mind engrossed in materialism does not sing the praises of IkOankar and, thus, does not find liberation.
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Interpretive Transcreation
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GAURI 6
In the sixth composition, Guru Teghbahadar says, O mother! Someone make my forgetful mind understand. Listening to the way of the Vedas, Puranas, and the sages, it does not sing virtues of the All-Pervasive for even a moment. The Guru identifies with the seeker’s voice and invokes the maternal figure from whom we came, who loves us despite our flaws and missteps. This is the relationship we can invoke when we are in this state of introspection, when we want to bare our flaws and reflect on how we have spent our time, or when we want to ask for help. Here, we are asking for someone, anyone, to come to teach our minds the things it has forgotten, to help us understand. Even after listening to the religious texts and the spiritual beings, our minds are still not contemplating the virtues for even a moment. This is how forgetful the mind is!
O mother! Someone make my forgetful mind understand. Having received the rare opportunity of these human bodies and the lives that are difficult to obtain, we are spending our lives uselessly. The world is a great and perilous forest of attachment to Maya, or attachment to the material and to our relationships, and our minds only cultivate interest with that attachment. We have to make our way through the thickets of Maya, and it is Maya that has come to cause great trouble for all of us.
O mother! Someone make my forgetful mind understand. The companionship of Prabhu is always with us, within us, and around us, but we do not attach our love with that One. The Guru invokes Prabhu as one of the many attributes of IkOankar (One Universal Integrative Force, 1Force, the One). Prabhu invokes the royal and godlike nature of One, whose job is to fulfill a particular role. This is not about an obligation that IkOankar has to us. It is about the intrinsic goodness present in IkOankar that the Guru is invoking. This is the One who is capable of helping us when no one else can. This is the One under whom even Maya, which has a power of its own, is subject. We may have a hard time ridding ourselves of Maya on our own. But we can go into the sanctuary of the One who has power over even this all-entangling attachment. And yet, we are not attaching our love to that One. The Guru says that we ought to consider the free ones to be those in whose heart the Beautiful dwells. These are the ones whose hearts are drenched in the color of love of the Beautiful and who thus become like the One they love, beautiful through that drenching.
The Guru shows us how to get our minds to come onto the path of freedom, despite being entangled in the attachment of our relationships and the world around us. We are shown how to remedy our forgetfulness and cultivate love and attachment with the One who is above attachment to the material world and relationships. We are shown that those who are truly free are those within whose hearts the Beautiful dwells, who are drenched in love for the Beautiful, and who become like the Beautiful. Will we learn to remember the One? Will we become immersed in love for the One so much that it changes us? Will we learn how to adopt the path of freedom?
In the sixth composition, Guru Teghbahadar says, O mother! Someone make my forgetful mind understand. Listening to the way of the Vedas, Puranas, and the sages, it does not sing virtues of the All-Pervasive for even a moment. The Guru identifies with the seeker’s voice and invokes the maternal figure from whom we came, who loves us despite our flaws and missteps. This is the relationship we can invoke when we are in this state of introspection, when we want to bare our flaws and reflect on how we have spent our time, or when we want to ask for help. Here, we are asking for someone, anyone, to come to teach our minds the things it has forgotten, to help us understand. Even after listening to the religious texts and the spiritual beings, our minds are still not contemplating the virtues for even a moment. This is how forgetful the mind is!
O mother! Someone make my forgetful mind understand. Having received the rare opportunity of these human bodies and the lives that are difficult to obtain, we are spending our lives uselessly. The world is a great and perilous forest of attachment to Maya, or attachment to the material and to our relationships, and our minds only cultivate interest with that attachment. We have to make our way through the thickets of Maya, and it is Maya that has come to cause great trouble for all of us.
O mother! Someone make my forgetful mind understand. The companionship of Prabhu is always with us, within us, and around us, but we do not attach our love with that One. The Guru invokes Prabhu as one of the many attributes of IkOankar (One Universal Integrative Force, 1Force, the One). Prabhu invokes the royal and godlike nature of One, whose job is to fulfill a particular role. This is not about an obligation that IkOankar has to us. It is about the intrinsic goodness present in IkOankar that the Guru is invoking. This is the One who is capable of helping us when no one else can. This is the One under whom even Maya, which has a power of its own, is subject. We may have a hard time ridding ourselves of Maya on our own. But we can go into the sanctuary of the One who has power over even this all-entangling attachment. And yet, we are not attaching our love to that One. The Guru says that we ought to consider the free ones to be those in whose heart the Beautiful dwells. These are the ones whose hearts are drenched in the color of love of the Beautiful and who thus become like the One they love, beautiful through that drenching.
The Guru shows us how to get our minds to come onto the path of freedom, despite being entangled in the attachment of our relationships and the world around us. We are shown how to remedy our forgetfulness and cultivate love and attachment with the One who is above attachment to the material world and relationships. We are shown that those who are truly free are those within whose hearts the Beautiful dwells, who are drenched in love for the Beautiful, and who become like the Beautiful. Will we learn to remember the One? Will we become immersed in love for the One so much that it changes us? Will we learn how to adopt the path of freedom?
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