Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You can go through all the outward motions — the ceremonies, the routines everyone does — and those can be fine and good.
But motions alone do not change a heart. Joining the Sangat, you are lifted and carried across.
Avar karam sabh lokaachaar — other actions are worldly custom; mil saadhoo sang ho-ay udhaar — joining the Sangat, one is carried across. Empty going-through-the-motions, in any tradition, leaves a heart where it was; the living heart-connection does the transforming.
The Sangat — people gathered together to remember the One — is that living connection. The target here is empty formalism wherever it appears, never the rites of any particular faith.
When has doing something just because that is how it is done felt empty — and what made it come alive instead?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI