Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Forgetting the One, the body turns to dust, and everyone calls him a ghost.
And those he loved so much won't let him stay in their home even a moment.
Taking advantage of others, he piles up wealth — but what use is it in the end?
As he plants, so he harvests; the body is the field of his actions.
The ungrateful forget the One and keep wandering, lost.
The Pauree draws out the ghost-image starkly: the one who forgets is, at the end, not even let to "stay in their home for an instant" by the very people he loved — a poignant picture of a life poured entirely into relationships that cannot finally hold him. And the moral logic: "as he plants, so he harvests; the body is the field of actions." What you sow in the field of your life is what grows. This is not fatalism but responsibility — your actions are seeds, and they bear real fruit. The warning against "exploitation" (gathering wealth by taking advantage) is pointed: ill-gotten gain is useless at the end. The remedy, implied throughout, is simply not to forget.
If your actions are like seeds, what are you planting? What kind of harvest are those seeds growing toward?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI