Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
A heart filled with jealousy of others never comes to any real good for itself.
No one pays much mind to what such a person says; the words scatter like shouting into an empty field.
When gossip becomes a habit, it undoes everything the person builds — the effort just drains away.
This body is the field where our actions take root: whatever you plant is what you'll harvest.
Fairness isn't settled by talk alone — actions carry their own results, the way eating something harmful has its own effect no matter what you say about it.
Look, friends, at the fairness woven into things: as a person acts, so they meet the fruit of it.
This understanding has been given to Nanak, and he simply passes it along — the plain word of how the One's world works.
A Shalok of the Fourth Mehl on taat paraa-ee — jealousy of others — and its self-defeating nature. The verse's engine is one of Gurbani's steadiest ideas: karam Dhartee sareer — "the body is the field of action," and jayhaa ko beejay tayhaa ko khaa-ay, you harvest what you plant. This is a description of how reality works, as neutral as gravity. The image of eating poison becomes "eating something harmful has its own effect": consequences follow actions on their own, whatever words are said about the actions. The Kali Yuga ("Dark Age") reference becomes plain present tense: this is simply how the field of a human life works.
Why do you think jealousy hurts the jealous person most of all — draining away even the things they've worked to build?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI