Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
You can't buy anything without money to buy it with. So how can anyone get the real treasure without the real capital?
Those who only follow their own ego (the **manmukhs**) have all wandered off the road.
Without the true capital, everyone leaves the marketplace empty-handed. Leaving empty-handed, they ache with the pain of it.
This one warns what happens if you come to the market with empty pockets.
The trading picture from the last verse gets sharper. To buy anything, you need raasee, starting money. Here the starting money is the Naam, the Name, the love and truth you carry in your heart. So the verse asks a simple, hard question: bin raasee ko vath ki-o paa-ay — without the money, how can anyone get the goods? You could stand in the market of life your whole life. But if your pockets hold none of the true coin, you'll buy nothing that lasts.
The manmukh gets this wrong. Manmukh means someone whose face is turned toward their own ego, the opposite of a gurmukh. The manmukh spent their money on the wrong things, or never gathered the true money at all. So they bhoolay, wandered off the road. But this is a direction you face, not a name stuck on you forever. A manmukh can turn around at any moment. Only while the face stays turned toward "me" does the trading go nowhere.
The last line is serious: khaalee chalay khaalee jaa-ay dukh paavni-aa — they leave empty, and going empty, they hurt. This pain isn't a punishment dropped from above. It is the natural ache of trading a whole life and coming away with nothing that lasts. Picture someone who works at a market stall all day. At closing time they find all their coins were fake. The sadness is in the waste. The kind part of the warning is that it comes now, while the market is still open and the true money can still be gathered.
What are you "saving up" that will still be valuable to you years from now — and what are you collecting that might turn out to be counterfeit?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI