You Can't Earn Being Loved; Love Comes First
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You could pile up countless good deeds, heroic acts, deep studies, and long devotions —
and before the Maker, none of it earns your way. What truly counts is grace — the gift of being loved, not the tally of what you did.
A striking, humbling shalok: it lists hundreds of thousands of the most impressive things a person could do — virtues, charities, penances, heroic deaths in battle, deep wisdom, endless scripture-reading — and then says, before the Creator, all these things are false (they don't buy your way). True is the Insignia of His Grace. This isn't saying good deeds are bad; it's saying they can't be used as currency to purchase the One's love. What actually matters is grace — being loved as a gift, not as a wage. It frees you from the exhausting scorekeeping of trying to earn your worth: you're loved first, before any tally.
Does it change how you act to know you're loved as a gift, not as a reward for a scorecard?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI