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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.
prānī rāmu na cetaī   madi māiā kai andhu.
kahu nānak hari bhajan binu   parat tāhi jam phandh.31.
-Guru Granth Sahib 1427
Commentary
Literal Translation
Interpretive Transcreation
Poetical Dimension
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In the thirty-first stanza, Guru Teghbahadar says, blind in intoxication of material attachment, the being does not remember the beautiful One. Without praise of the 1-Light, the being suffers fear of death.

In the earlier stanzas, the Guru showed us what level of development we could get to -- we were taken to the “mountain” or “aerial view.” In this stanza, the Guru takes it back down to meeting us at the ground level: where we are, trying to wake us up from our current states, where we are blind and without remembrance or praise. Without praise, we are afraid, without remembrance, we are afraid, in the intoxication of material attachment, we are afraid, and the fear of death drives us.

An important part of renouncing attachment is praise. When we do not do that, and remain in intoxication instead, we are greedy and we only become greedier. We get to a level of greed and attachment that causes us to be blind to anything else. When we have no sense of reality, we no longer have shame or embarrassment. We are so singularly focused on our greed and intoxication that we do anything for it. This is true with powerful wealthy people, and with people without wealth and power who are trying to gain success on any scale -- there is a tendency to fall into a lack of ethics, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to get what we want. We do things that we know we ought not to do, because we can’t even see ourselves.

And because of that, because of our greed and intoxication, because of our lack of praise and remembrance and identification, we are suffering. We are in pain. But we can’t see our suffering or our pain because we are too engrossed in our intoxication. We are already suffering but we only worry about the suffering that comes at the end of life.
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