Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
By grinding others down he piles up wealth — gold, silver, money.
But the load-carrier earns only a pittance, and the rest of the pile passes on to other hands.
The verse turns to how wealth is often gathered — "by continual oppression and exploitation" — and delivers a stinging image: the man who amassed it all is really just a "load-bearer" who gets "paltry wages," while "the rest of the money passes on to others." You carried the heavy load your whole life and kept almost none of it. The exploitation was not even profitable in the end. It is a moral and practical warning at once: the grasping life harms others and shortchanges the grasper.
Is there any way you're 'carrying a heavy load' for gains that won't even stay with you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI