Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
All my small, anxious fears -- the ones that gnaw at me -- get burned clean away by this one great awe. In its light, the words of the teaching dress me like fine clothes. But anything built without it is fake, no matter how hard I worked on it: a useless mold, and wasted hammer-blows shaping nothing real.
A crucial paradox: the one healthy bhau (reverent awe) burns away all the unhealthy fears -- the inner fire of dread is consumed by the one great awe. This matches the teaching exactly: the soul with reverent awe is set free of fear; the soul without it is overtaken by it. The smithy image -- the mold and the hammer-strokes -- says any life shaped without awe is counterfeit coinage: all that effort, all that craft, producing something that will not pass as real. Effort is not the problem; effort without awe is.
What small worries might quiet down if you stood in front of something genuinely awesome?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI