Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
I haven't produced good deeds or righteous faith in myself, not even a little; no pure conduct has welled up in me.
So I let go of cleverness and self-punishing effort, Nanak, and simply fall at the teacher's feet.
This is one of the clearest statements of grace-before-works in the whole raag. Guru Arjan says plainly: I have not earned this — no accumulated merit, no righteous track record, no pure conduct of my own. And rather than despair, he does the one thing that follows: he stops trying to earn it ("renouncing cleverness and self-mortification") and simply falls at the feet. This directly rejects the idea that you must first perfect yourself to be worthy of grace. The stone doesn't learn to float; it is carried. Even "self-mortification" — harsh effort against yourself — is set down, because grace was never waiting for you to suffer enough.
Why might trying to 'earn' love or acceptance actually get in the way of receiving it?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI