Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
One stone is lovingly dressed and adored; another stone is walked on underfoot.
If the first is a god, then the second must be a god too. Naam Dayv says: I serve the One.
This is Naam Dayv's famous, gently devastating critique of idol-worship: if a carved stone is "a god," then so is the stone in the road, for they are the same substance. The logic exposes the arbitrariness of locating the divine in one object and not another. But note the aim — it is not to mock devotion but to redirect it: "I serve the Lord," the formless One who is equally in all stones and none. The point is not that nothing is sacred, but that everything is, so no single object can monopolize God. Handled evenhandedly: this critiques the confining of the divine to an object, not any people who revere images.
Where might you be locating something sacred in one object or place, when it's really present everywhere?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI