Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
A whole life can drain away in a running tally of 'mine, mine, mine.'
And then the strength you were counting on quietly dries up.
The Pause names what the wasted life was spent on: crying 'Mine, mine!' — the endless grasping to own things, claim things, pile things up. That grasping, Kabir says, is exactly what drains a life away (the pool of his power dries up). It's a vivid image — a person's vitality like a pool that slowly empties, spent on the exhausting work of clutching. For a child, it's a clarifying warning: a life spent mostly on getting and having and 'mine' leaves you, in the end, oddly empty — the pool dried up. The things you grasp can't fill the pool; only what you give and love keeps it full.
Have you noticed that grabbing and keeping doesn't fill you up the way sharing and loving do?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI