Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
If I go looking for help from a little carved stone, what can it really hand me?
Pour water over a carved stone and it just sinks, it cannot lift itself, let alone lift me.
The One I am actually looking for is not trapped in any object at all. It is alive and everywhere, closer than my own breath.
dayvee dayvaa poojee-ai... ki-aa maago ki-aa deh — questioning what a carved image can give; paahan neer pakhaalee-ai jal meh booDheh — a stone image sinks in water. Handled evenhandedly per the interfaith rules: the point is not scorn for those who worship images but a turning from the lifeless vessel to the living, all-pervading One (the immanence just established in the previous pauri).
What is the difference between a picture of something and the real thing?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI