Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Why carry the water-pot, saffron-robed one? Why trek to the sixty-eight holy places?
Trilochan says: listen — you have no grain, so what are you trying to thresh?
If there is no grain, threshing is just hard work for nothing.
Trilochan ends with a farm picture. At harvest, farmers beat the stalks on a floor to shake the grain loose. That is threshing. Kan bin gaahu ke paahee — you have no grain, so what are you threshing?
Carrying the kamandal, the holy water-pot, can be like that. So can walking to the sixty-eight pilgrimage places. Without the inner truth, the outer forms bring in no harvest. It is the whole shabad in one farmer's line. Do the inner work first. Otherwise all the effort is just threshing air.
Where are you 'threshing with no grain' — doing the forms of something without the substance that gives it a yield?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI