Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Do good deeds, live rightly, keep your practices and your prayers — all of this is beautiful.
And through every one of them, let me know the One presence behind them all, and not mistake the practice itself for the goal.
Karam dharam naym barat poojaa — good actions, righteous living, disciplines, fasts, worship. Notice: none of these are dismissed. Paarbarahm bin jaan na doojaa — "but know none other than the Supreme One." The teaching is subtle and evenhanded: the practices are honored, and the One is kept at the center of them. Commentators often read this as meaning practices are doorways rather than destinations — the mistake being to polish the doorway and forget to walk through it. Read that way, the caution about empty formalism belongs to no one tradition's rituals in particular; the point is to keep the One in view through the practice.
Have you ever done something so "correctly" that you forgot why you were doing it in the first place?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI