Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Make your trades — but deal in the true merchandise, or you will regret it later.
Drop your vices, practice virtue, and you will obtain the real essence.
The merchant of the Pause returns, and now the hymn talks shop. It does not say stop trading — it says check what you are stocking. Life remains a business trip either way; the only question is the cargo. Vices are the goods that spoil at the border; virtues and the Name are the merchandise that appreciates on arrival. This is Aasaa's great trading theme in Guru Nanak's blunter register: the regret named here is the merchant's regret — standing at the destination having hauled the wrong goods the whole way.
If your habits were cargo, which would spoil at the border and which would arrive as treasure?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI