Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
If your master were poor and hungry, how could their servant ever be well fed?
You can only receive from a house what is in it — you can't get from someone what they don't have.
If you give yourself to something that itself will be called to account, that service turns out empty and hard.
Nanak says: give yourself to the True Guru, whose presence is a blessing that bears fruit — and in the end nothing will be missing.
A short, shrewd Shalok of the Fourth Mehl built on a single practical image: you can only draw from a source what that source holds. Serve something small and passing, and you get something small and passing; give yourself to what is boundless, and you draw on something inexhaustible. The question underneath is where you invest your devotion. The phrase safal darsan — "fruitful vision" — points to a giving of oneself that yields something, in contrast to effort poured into what has nothing to give back. It is a gentle piece of wisdom about choosing well where to place your loyalty and love.
If you can only get from someone what they have to give, what does that tell you about who to look to for the deepest things?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI