Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
And you, little bumblebee, drifting flower to flower — be careful, or you'll linger too long and get caught.
So I asked my wise teacher to help me understand: don't get so lost in what smells sweet that you forget to fly home before dusk.
The second fable is the bumblebee who wanders among the flowers — so entranced by the sweetness that (in the old image) it lingers inside a blossom until the flower closes at dusk and traps it. The bee isn't wicked; it's just careless — lost in pleasure, forgetting the time. The verse's warning ('terrible pain awaits') is softened here to what it really means: don't get so absorbed in something pleasant that you lose track of what matters and get stuck. Even the poet doesn't scold from above — he says I asked my Guru to understand this, standing beside the learner, not over them.
When has getting really absorbed in something fun made you lose track of everything else?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI