jo prānī mamtā tajai lobh moh ahaṅkār.
kahu nānak āpan tarai aüran let udhār.22.
-Guru Granth Sahib 1427
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 twenty-second stanza, Guru Teghbahadar says, the one who forsakes a false sense of self, greed, attachment, and pride swims across and causes others to swim across the world-ocean.
The word mamta that is invoked and translated as a sense of self is literally i-iness, or me-mineness. It is often used to refer to a maternal sense of ownership over and attachment to children. But it is an emotion that is true for all of us, not just in our relationships to people, but also to things — we are all caught up in i-iness or me-mineness. We have it when we are children, maybe with our parents or our toys, we have it when we are young adults, maybe with our friends or our things, and we have it in adulthood and old age, maybe with our families and our money and our houses. This is the first feeling that arrests us, the first thing that binds us and creates pain. We begin to have a sense of self and a sense of ownership very early in life. That feeling, in all of its manifestations, is due to greed and attachment and ego. But the one who is able to get rid of those things is the one who is able to transform themselves and transform others around them as well.
This stanza is very much about the person and not the mind. This is about human beings and the relationships we have with things and people. We are always trying to create relationships like these. We are always trying to maintain our relationships and maintain what things we want in our possession. When we do that, we are engrossed in our smaller selves and not in the Self, IkOankar. But if Identification is in the mind and nurtures us in our lives, then comfort and pain do not drive us. This anxious and all-consuming collection and maintenance of things and relationships does not drive us. If we can get there, we can become free -- free of the anxieties of maintaining our possessions, and free of the anxieties of losing them, too. We all have the potential to free ourselves from this entanglement and show others the way to become free, too.
The word mamta that is invoked and translated as a sense of self is literally i-iness, or me-mineness. It is often used to refer to a maternal sense of ownership over and attachment to children. But it is an emotion that is true for all of us, not just in our relationships to people, but also to things — we are all caught up in i-iness or me-mineness. We have it when we are children, maybe with our parents or our toys, we have it when we are young adults, maybe with our friends or our things, and we have it in adulthood and old age, maybe with our families and our money and our houses. This is the first feeling that arrests us, the first thing that binds us and creates pain. We begin to have a sense of self and a sense of ownership very early in life. That feeling, in all of its manifestations, is due to greed and attachment and ego. But the one who is able to get rid of those things is the one who is able to transform themselves and transform others around them as well.
This stanza is very much about the person and not the mind. This is about human beings and the relationships we have with things and people. We are always trying to create relationships like these. We are always trying to maintain our relationships and maintain what things we want in our possession. When we do that, we are engrossed in our smaller selves and not in the Self, IkOankar. But if Identification is in the mind and nurtures us in our lives, then comfort and pain do not drive us. This anxious and all-consuming collection and maintenance of things and relationships does not drive us. If we can get there, we can become free -- free of the anxieties of maintaining our possessions, and free of the anxieties of losing them, too. We all have the potential to free ourselves from this entanglement and show others the way to become free, too.
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